Age
Mrs. Bennet tells us that Lydia turns 16 in June of the novel.
Family and Situation
Lydia is the fifth and youngest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, making her the sister of Jane, Eizabeth, Mary, and Kitty. We know that her mother thinks she is the best tempered of all the girls and we’re led to believe they’re pretty close.
Lydia lives with her family at Longbourn House in Hertfordshire. Through her father’s estate, she will get “one thousand pounds in the four percents, which will not be [hers] till after [her] mother’s decease,” making her prospects pretty meager.
We are told of the Gardiners that Lydia “had never been a favourite with them.”
Other Connections
By the spring of the novel, she and Kitty are spending time with Mrs. Forster, Harriet and Pen Harrington, and select officers from the regiment. Lydia at first comes home with a crush on Captain Carter who seems to be replaced as soon as Lt. Wickham enters on the scene. Later on, she asks Harriet Forster to ask Sally to mend her worked muslin gown in the note she leaves before running off with Wickham, which makes it likely that Sally was the servant putting up with Lydia's antics, either as a maid for the Forsters or from Longbourn.Appearance
Lydia herself tells us that she’s the tallest, though also the youngest. The narrator elaborates by saying “Lydia was a stout, well-grown girl of fifteen, with a fine complexion and good-humoured countenance; a favourite with her mother, whose affection had brought her into public at an early age.” Presumably she’s also one of the Bennet girls about whose beauty “Mr. Bingley had heard much”, suggesting that she must be fairly attractive.
Character
Lydia seems to be fairly intelligent, but is impatient and stubborn. The narrator tells us that she has “more quickness of observation and less pliancy of temper than her sister [Jane]”. Later on we’re told “She had high animal spirits, and a sort of natural self-consequence, which the attention of the officers, to whom her uncle's good dinners, and her own easy manners recommended her, had increased into assurance.” Lizzy thinks of her as “self-willed and careless,” a person who would “would scarcely give them a hearing” if they gave her advice about better behavior. We’re told that “She seldom listened to anybody for more than half a minute, and never attended to Mary at all.”
Lydia is, by far, closest to Kitty who she seems to enjoy dragging along with her on various social occasions. We’re told that “their minds were more vacant than their sisters” and as a result they’re much less likely to sit still with a book and tend instead to walk to Meryton where they can socialize and get gossip from Aunt Phillips.
Based on context clues, it seems like some of these traits have gotten worse in the past year or so, perhaps since she came out into society. In the midst of the elopement crisis, Lizzy gets on a bit of a tirade, saying “for the last half-year, nay, for a twelvemonth—she [Lydia] has been given up to nothing but amusement and vanity. She has been allowed to dispose of her time in the most idle and frivolous manner, and to adopt any opinions that came in her way. Since the ——shire were first quartered in Meryton, nothing but love, flirtation, and officers have been in her head. She has been doing everything in her power by thinking and talking on the subject, to give greater—what shall I call it? susceptibility to her feelings; which are naturally lively enough.”
Overall, it sounds as though the people of Meryton look upon Lydia with some disdain. After she’s located in London and with Wickham, we’re told “The good news spread quickly through the house, and with proportionate speed through the neighbourhood. It was borne in the latter with decent philosophy. To be sure, it would have been more for the advantage of conversation had Miss Lydia Bennet come upon the town; or, as the happiest alternative, been secluded from the world, in some distant farmhouse [in other words, become a prostitute or gotten pregnant out of wedlock]. But there was much to be talked of in marrying her; and the good-natured wishes for her well-doing which had proceeded before from all the spiteful old ladies in Meryton lost but a little of their spirit in this change of circumstances, because with such an husband her misery was considered certain.”
