BarbaraB thanks,, I am perhpas rabbitting on too much about all this, especially as I have to make arrangements over next few days for a trip and I shoudl not let myself be tempted to stay on the computer! But I'd just like ot make one point... while perhaps Regency girls didn't have TV etc and were in soem ways very sheltered, compared wiht girls nowadays, they would have probably been MUCH MORE subjected to religious training and being told that from a religious Point of view, they must behave themselves and keept themselves chaste with men...and they must have been far more aware of hte risks of sex given that there was no reliable contraception. Men were OK - they weren't left "holding hte baby"... but women must have been constantly aware of how vulnerable they were.

I do think that a HUGE share of hte blame should have rested iwth E's friend's careless father... and E's friend herself. He had the responsibility of caring for E while she was staying iwth him and Brandon doesn't seem IMO to have been half as angry iwth him as he should have been. But I do wonder as I said in another post if perhaps a lot of the "Drama" of the Eliza story is "plot driven" and since Austne was then a relatively inexperienced novelist, she was not able to make things a bit more plausible....It does seem to me as if Eliza is very silly, her freind very silly and worng minded, etc but that was necessary in order for the plot to play out as it did....When she wrote Lydia's seduction in P&P, it seems more plausible.. Lydia is more developed, her seduction while an importnat part of hte plot does not result in total ruin for her.. etc