Becoming Lydia Bennet
I have never liked Lydia Bennet. Jane Austen does not intend for any of us to like Lydia Bennet, I don’t think. She is frivolous and selfish and stupid, all qualities the opposite of our heroine, Elizabeth, who is smart and witty and a little too sharp and also fathoms deep. I love Elizabeth, or I do now. I will admit that it took into my late twenties for me to like Pride and Prejudice. I had always preferred Emma, and I wasn’t that great a Jane Austen fan until I was a little older. This is one thing that makes me laugh when high school students read and do not like/understand Pride and Prejudice. Of course they don’t.
Back to Lydia. If you don’t know this already, I will explain that when you go through the Mormon temple for the first time, you are given a “new name.” Unlike other new names, however, you won’t be called by this new name and you are supposed to keep it secret from everyone unless you are a woman. When you are married, the first part of the ceremony is at the “veil of the temple” where your husband will act as the “God” figure in the ceremony, ask for your new name, and pull you through the veil into the metaphorical “celestial kingdom.” We can argue about how literally Mormons take this ceremony and the supposed signs and tokens to get into heaven that it offers. I thought literally that this would be the name that my husband would use to resurrect me from the dead on the day of the Second Coming of Christ.
I do not believe this anymore. I was sometimes annoyed by the reality that much of the Mormon wedding ceremony is not symmetrical. That is, I did not receive my husband’s new name. Now I know that these new names are not much of a secret, since the male name and the female name (no, there are no non-binary names) are on a set calendar schedule and if you know the date of someone’s endowment, you can go look up their name. I am also now painfully aware of the reality that nowhere in the Mormon temple ceremony does either party promise to love and cherish, nor to take care of the other in sickness or health, or anything like this. There aren’t really promises to each other at all, only to the church and to God. Which makes a lot more sense of my divorce, since I was the one who left Mormonism.
The name “Lydia” niggled at me for all those years that I was a true believer, though. I kept thinking that someone had actually picked this name for me (possibly God) and it seemed such a bad name. I was NOT a Lydia. I did not get bamboozled by a handsome and manipulative narcissist. I would not have chosen the pottage of sexual adventure over my birthright that was tied to sexual purity. I was not selfish and I did not choose myself over my sisters or my family.
Only, actually, maybe I did. I am not ashamed of the choices that I made, but the version of me who thought Elizabeth was the good woman—maybe she would see me as Lydia now. I have depended on the financial generosity of others to deal with my new life. I have chosen poorly on many occasions in this life. I did not understand what my choices would mean and was blind to the consequences of my actions. I was, by the judgment of the Mormon church, arrogant in my insistence that I knew things better than the church leaders and publishing about them online. I was selfish in my decision to prioritize my own authenticity and comfort in being myself over other things in life.
And really, why do we all think so badly of Lydia Bennet Wickham? She pursued what she wanted. She did not care about respectability and she did not get it. She cared about having fun and about being with a handsome man and having nice clothes. She got what she wanted. If Jane Austen judges her for this, I am not sure that I should. Is she really stupid? Or is she, like some of the women I knew who left the Mormon church far younger than I did, actually the smart one who saw things that I didn’t see? The aristocratic system in England was certainly not set up to prioritize the happiness of young ladies. So why shouldn’t they prioritize it for themselves?
I am reclaiming this “new name” and sharing it with you publicly. It has only the power that I give to it. I admit that any random name could be significant to me if I look at it the right way, just as any book can be scripture if it is treated as such. (Certainly most non-Mormons who read The Book of Mormon don’t see anything special in it.) But it is an important part of the work of leaving Mormonism to decide what things to take with you and what things to leave behind—and what things to transform completely. This is in that last category for me.