I'm sorry Bridget I'm popping up to disagree with you again. But first I must congratulate you as others have done. Your tenacity in sticking to your guns has allowed us all to delve into the depths of understanding Willoughby. I thank you for that.

I'm not confident in my ability to disagree without being disagreeable. I hope that this comes across that way.

I see a discrepancy in your argument between flirtation by Willoughby and by Eliza. You said in this post, in support of Willoughby, that you don't see flirtation as such a bad thing as some may do. Yet down below in the other thread you said Eliza and her friend's ranging over town was "sending out a message that they were not respectable girls." It seems you are making a negative judgment on Eliza's character, but in Willoughby it's not so bad.

I might as well take this opportunity to say what I didn't explicitly say down below. I don't believe Willoughby was sadistic and I do understand that 16 yr Eliza did something wrong. She knew she shouldn't sleep with someone before she was married, but she did. It was a sin for which she will pay the consequences for the rest of her life. My point was juveniles, though they on the verge of being adults, may not always have the best judgement. This is why in general juvenile criminals are treated more leniently. The further I get from 16 myself, and being a parent of a teenager and seeing some of the attitudes I previously had reflected back at me by my teenage kid, remind me that I didn't know it all back then, even though I thought I did. My point was Eliza's guilt does not excuse Willoughby one bit for his creepiness in taking advantage of a young impressionable girl.