It is against such contexts that Helena Kelly builds her case in Jane Austen, The Secret Radical. Clever, spirited Elizabeth Bennet is one of the great heroes of the British novel: we watch as she overcomes the challenges set by "uncompanionable" sisters, negligent parents, arrogant gentlemen and a marriage market over which she has no control. So imagines the "foolish, headstrong" Lydia Bennet of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813) as, observed by her sister Elizabeth, she prepares to spend a summer on the skirts of a military encampment at Brighton. “She saw all the glories of the camp – its tents stretched forth in beauteous uniformity of lines, crowded with the young and the gay, and dazzling with scarlet and, to complete the view, she saw herself seated beneath a tent, tenderly flirting with at least six officers at once.”
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