Our importance, our respectability in the world must be affected by the wild volatility, the assurance and disdain of all restraint which mark Lydia’s character. Excuse me – for I must speak plainly. If you, my dear father, will not take the trouble of checking her exuberant spirits, and of teaching her that her present pursuits are not to be the business of her life, she will soon be beyond the reach of amendment. Her character will be fixed, and she will, at sixteen, be the most determined flirt that ever made herself and her family ridiculous.
– Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 41. Elizabeth lectures her father over his questionable parenting of his youngest daughter Lydia. Fifteen-year-old Lydia has received an invitation from the wife of Colonel Forster to come with the militia regiment to Brighton. But Elizabeth is opposed to the wild and unrestrained Lydia going, ominously warning that she will become the "most determined flirt" and damage the family’s reputation and standing. Mr. Bennet fails to "check" his daughter’s "exuberant spirits" as demanded by Elizabeth, with very troubling consequences later on, as we discover. This foreshadows the scandal Lydia will soon become embroiled in.