Mr. Collins

I find him incredibly amusing. I wonder how a person like that can manage to live with themselves. It's sickening to a certain extent. What I don't understand is what Austen is trying to do with him. I see that she is creating almost a caricature of a person, rather than a person, but why? Indeed, there are 'annoying' and 'shallow' people in the world, but that doesn't seem a good enough reason. Austen must have intended something deeper through Collins.
I am probably not seeing it and all you are thinking it's quite obvious.

Any thoughts?

An obvious effect of Mr Collins' presence is to show Elizabeth that Charlotte, her soul mate, sees very marriage differently. Just as Darcy sees marriage somewhat differently from Bingley, Lydia sees marriage differently from Wickham and Elizabeth, and Mrs Bennet doesn't share Mr Bennet's view of marriage, etc.

Perspective is a major element in 'Pride and Prejudice'.

As for the ridiculous Mr Collins, as far as I remember, we are given no interior monologue to understand him better.

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Originally Posted by zYvy

I find him incredibly amusing. I wonder how a person like that can manage to live with themselves. It's sickening to a certain extent. What I don't understand is what Austen is trying to do with him. I see that she is creating almost a caricature of a person, rather than a person, but why? Indeed, there are 'annoying' and 'shallow' people in the world, but that doesn't seem a good enough reason. Austen must have intended something deeper through Collins.
I am probably not seeing it and all you are thinking it's quite obvious.

Any thoughts?

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Clergymen were quite respected by that society. Austen's father was a clergyman, I thought, which makes it all the more naughty that she should draw her clergymen in such unfavorable light.

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Originally Posted by sciencefan

Clergymen were quite respected by that society. Austen's father was a clergyman, I thought, which makes it all the more naughty that she should draw her clergymen in such unfavorable light.

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She never explicitly says anything though. She merely shows us the person, and it is we who judge how stupid and ridiculous he is.

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Originally Posted by JBI

She never explicitly says anything though. She merely shows us the person, and it is we who judge how stupid and ridiculous he is.

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Well, she does work to make us come to that conclusion/judgement.
We sympathize with Mr. Bennet and Elizabeth, so when Mr. Bennet explicitly states that he is absurd, and when Elizabeth is appalled at how ridiculous he is, we tend to side with their opinions.

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Originally Posted by JBI

She never explicitly says anything though. She merely shows us the person, and it is we who judge how stupid and ridiculous he is.

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You are right.
I don't see him as much a buffoon as some do.

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Originally Posted by sciencefan

Austen's father was a clergyman, I thought, which makes it all the more naughty that she should draw her clergymen in such unfavorable light.

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Originally Posted by zYvy

...Mr. Bennet explicitly states that he is absurd, and when Elizabeth is appalled at how ridiculous he is, we tend to side with their opinions.

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Why then do I feel almost pity for Mr Collins?

I don't think we are supposed to feel sorry for Collins. Austen constantly beat him down - flat out saying he is selfish and stupid. I think she was making a point about sycophancy toward the aristocracy, marriage (that one should marry for love)

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Originally Posted by zYvy

I find him incredibly amusing. I wonder how a person like that can manage to live with themselves. It's sickening to a certain extent. What I don't understand is what Austen is trying to do with him. I see that she is creating almost a caricature of a person, rather than a person, but why? Indeed, there are 'annoying' and 'shallow' people in the world, but that doesn't seem a good enough reason. Austen must have intended something deeper through Collins.
I am probably not seeing it and all you are thinking it's quite obvious.

Any thoughts?

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I think she was primarily using him to criticize her society. Here's a man so shallow and stupid that the reader feels they wouldn't be able to spend five minutes in the same room with him. And yet in this society where women and girls cannot fend for themselves but have to be dependent on some man, he is considered a very good catch.

I don't know whether he was considered a good catch for everyone... A sure catch might be a better denomination... Stable income and good society for the (future) children with Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
I suppose he was a good catch for girls who weren't looking at exceptional catches, like the Bingleys, and mainly for the Longbourn Estate which was entailed to him. Mrs Bennet was determined to marry one of her daughters off to him because she wanted to keep the estate in the family in order to safeguard her own future and the future of the rest of her daughters if they were not married yet when Mr Bennet would die. In a time where every day could be the last, Mrs Bennet is certainly accounting for the death of her husband and the loss of her estate if Collins marries someone else.
Charlotte Lucas won't have a lot to catch, apart from a Wickham or a Collins, because her fortune is not unbelievably big. She marries for security, not for great money. (Recall Charlotte Brontë's circumstances, they were far from rich, and he was a clergyman...)
No wonder that Mrs Bennet is totally over the moon when Elizabeth finally marries Mr Darcy. Her future and the one of her daughters are guarantied with two sons-in-law like Bingley and Darcy.

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Originally Posted by mona amon

I think she was primarily using him to criticize her society. Here's a man so shallow and stupid that the reader feels they wouldn't be able to spend five minutes in the same room with him. And yet in this society where women and girls cannot fend for themselves but have to be dependent on some man, he is considered a very good catch.

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There is the man Bendix Grünlich in "Buddenbrooks" by Thomas Mann. He evokes repulsion similar as Mr. Colins does. Tony Buddenbrook must marry him, he fails as a businessman and Tony gets divorced. That seems to be a bad story - and is - but Mann's irony lets us laugh.

I'm not trying to be religious here, but perhaps Austen was making a point on the Church then? Collins, being a clergyman, is expected to be pious and all, yet, he places a lot of emphasis on materialism, status and wealth. It's just something I thought of, I'm not particularly clear on the religious environment then.
The above are just my 2 cents. I'm not trying to be religious here (I am atheist, actually).

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Originally Posted by warm

I'm not trying to be religious here, but perhaps Austen was making a point on the Church then? Collins, being a clergyman, is expected to be pious and all, yet, he places a lot of emphasis on materialism, status and wealth. It's just something I thought of, I'm not particularly clear on the religious environment then.
The above are just my 2 cents. I'm not trying to be religious here (I am atheist, actually).

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Interestingly, Austen's father was a clergyman.

Back in those days, being a clergyman was an honorable profession. There were lots of reasons for such a choice... financial security, social power, social respect, etc. That and the military were two popular choices for the lower classes because it was a way to improve your social/financial standing in England at the time.

Perhaps Austen created Collins to show a little more reality to her novel. I mean, there might actually be people as "annoying" as he was in her time. Or as implied by the film, "Becoming Jane". One man who proposed to her was very similar to Mr. Collins.

Austen sprinkled flaws all over the characters of Pride and Prejudice probably to add to the humanity of her characters. Each person was unique with their own weirdness in dispostion. So I think he is there the same reason why Mrs. Bennet was irritable(in some ways-that is..not all)

I feel that Mr. Collins was pitiable because he seemed to feel that he had to be so cloyingly thankful for everything that might possibly come his way.
I didn't feel that his character was such a dig on clergy or the church (although I may certainly be wrong about this) but was more of a dig on how 'livings' were given out regardless of a person's integrity.

Also, in response to some of the above postings... Although clergy may have been held in some high esteem in society, I don't know that it was the church relationship which carried the esteem so much as the land and the living that came along as a part of the deal.

~Thadeus

In her personal letters, Austen advises friends only to marry for love.

Through the plot of the novel it is clear that Austen wants to show how Elizabeth is able to be happy by refusing to marry for financial purposes and only marrying a man whom she truly loves and esteems.

The same idea is behind the rejection of Collin’s proposal by Elizabeth.

I think Mr Collins is so absurd to show how low a person may sink their standards to gain stability and position through marriage. If Collins had been ordinary, Mrs Bennet's obsession with uniting one of her daughters with him to concrete their future at Longbourne wouldn't have been as horrifying to the reader.

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Originally Posted by smiles135

Through the plot of the novel it is clear that Austen wants to show how Elizabeth is able to be happy by refusing to marry for financial purposes and only marrying a man whom she truly loves and esteems.

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Originally Posted by IJustMadeThatUp

I think Mr Collins is so absurd to show how low a person may sink their standards to gain stability and position through marriage.

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I'm not so sure. What about the narrator's attitude to Charlotte, who actually marries the absurd Mr Collins? Isn't the narrator, and perhaps Jane Austen herself, sympathetic to Charlotte?

I found a little bitter tone in the story that Charlotte was telling to Elizabeth when she comes to visit.

I can't help feeling she deliberately sends Mr Collins away (into the garden, walking to Lady Catherine, into his library...) so that 'sometimes one whole day passes without saying a word' (or something in that sense).

However, I don't think it is absolutely clear that Charlotte is really unhappy. I don't have the impression she is. The only thing that is the case is that she married for comfort, but she didn't have any higher ambition. If she could put up with his annoying ways, then why not? The man is only blessed with someone who is not annoyed by him (unlike Elizabeth would be).

Maybe Austen thought that there were two kinds of people: the ones that marry for comfort and the ones that marry for love. The ones that marry for comfort should do just that because it makes them happy. If they wait for love that will never come 'because they are not romantic,' like Charlotte puts it, they will grow unhappy and never find that comfort. For the ones that marry for love it remains to be seen if they will be really happy. Although, if they choose well enough, they should be able to find their true partner like Elizabeth and Darcy find each other. But, the ones that want to marry for love shouldn't relinquish their happiness for comfort, because it would make them unhappy. I think Austen was aware of those two kinds of people, and she was obviously one of the 'for love'-kind.

Hm. I thought Austen wasn't really one who's for a marriage born out of love alone. It's more like a moderation between marrying for love and comfort.
Austen isn't for a marriage for comfort, if so, she would probably have given Charlotte a less sympathetic end. On the other extreme end of the spectrum, we have Lydia and Wickham whose marriage is entirely based on personal desire and youthful vivacity. Quite obviously their marriage didn't turn out well either.

In my opinion, Austen's idea of an ideal marriage is probably one like Darcy's and Elizabeth's; they both love each other, and Darcy is definitely capable of giving them both a good life.