Character Sketch Of Lydia Languish The Rivals by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

 

Sheridan is found to have a rare sense of what is funny or conical in the human world. His characters are basically comic portraits to give required mirth and fun to his audience. His comic world contains the characters that are mainly five comic caricature of the strange quality of human nature.

Lydia is Sheridan’s heroine in the Rivals. She is one of the romantic girls who is in fond of reading romances and imagining life as sensational game. A sensational elopement, a secret marriage and thrilling paragraphs in the newspaper haunt her mind and paralyses her power of reasoning and judgement. Lydia is a rich heiress and there is and there is provision in her father’s will that she will have to miss her vast fortune if she marries without the consent of her guardian, Mrs. Malaprop. She is determined to have a romantic love-intrigue with a poor man Beverly who is none but Captain Absolute and wants to marry him even after her aunt’s opposition. Her dream is to enjoy a romantic courtship an uncommon wedding and a love ladder life amid poverty. She is terribly shocked to hear that her Beverly is in reality the son of a rich Baronet, and that her aunt has already settled her marriage with this very person. In a tone of despair, she exclaims pathetically,

      “so there will be no elopement after all”

She is also unhappy because there will be no sout stirring paragraphs in newspaper. She cannot tolerate the very idea of humdrum marriage with a Bishops license and her aunt’s blessings.

She tells Julia after dismissing Captain Absolute

“oh I shall die with disappointment”.

She had idealized everything romantic, but nothing romantic happened.

In fact, Lydia is a Fag comments “a lady of very singular taste.” She is attracted towards everything that is strange, forgetting that real life is hardly thrilling. When Lydia comes to know about the real identity of Ensign Beverly, she was in great anger, because of the failure of her romantic plans of the elopement and she talks about this to Julia. Julia gives her a piece of advice and says that she should not make the man who loves her suffer only because of her whims, she further says that whims can only inflict sufferings. Julia’s advice brings her to senses. Her love for Beverly is genuine and though she dislikes him as Captain Absolute for shattering her dreams, she is disturbed at the news of the impeding duel in which the life of her lover is in danger and rushes at once to the place of the duel to prevent it. Thus here we see through Lydia has strange character, still she is a soft hearted person. We know that Lydia loves her lover, but she seems to care more for the mystery and excitement of love than the lover himself. Lydia bluntly tells Mrs. Malaprop that she will follow her own inclination where her marriage is concerned. This shows Lydia’s independence of mind and her strong will-power.

                                                           Thus we see that Sheridan has shown Lydia as a lady who lives in her own dream land. She is perfect example of the fashionable society that lives among plenty of money to leisure. They have nothing but drawing room gossips, idle fancies, and cheap romances to care for Lydia loves to live in suspense to Languish in aptly chosen to signify this aspect of her character. She is definitely humour character in the comedy.