Who Is Mr Collins In Pride And Prejudice

In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the good friend of Elizabeth Bennet, Charlotte Lucas, marries the Bennet’s cousin, Mr. Collins. Mr. Collins is a very interesting character in that he acts like a clown, and Austen satirizes throughout the novel by giving him puerile characteristics. He has a lack of knowledge of dancing and an amusing way of speaking (using malapropism). In marrying Mr. Collins, Charlotte makes the right decision because of her personal nature, her lack of attractiveness, and the money she gains.
Charlotte is a young woman who does not know how to love. While talking to her best friend, Elizabeth, she explains her reasons as to why she married Mr. Collins, “I am not romantic, you know; I never was. I ask only a comfortable …show more content…
In marrying Mr. Collins, Charlotte helps relieve her younger siblings from their duty for caring for Charlotte. Her younger sisters, now that Charlotte is married, are allowed to come out, “The younger girls formed hopes of coming out a year or two sooner than they might otherwise have done” (Austen 87). Allowing her sisters to come out made them happy, which is one reason why Charlotte marries Mr. Collins. When a single female is older than the age of forty in the Regency Society, they become an ape leader, “A woman who did not marry could generally only look forward to living with her relatives as a `dependant'… so that marriage is pretty much the only way of ever getting out from under the parental roof” (“Marriage and the Alternatives” 2). Her younger brothers are released from the ape leader trap Charlotte would have gotten them into if she did not marry Mr. Collins, “The boys were relieved from their apprehension of Charlotte’s dying an old maid” (Austen 87). Charlotte would have become an ape leader, an old maid, and would have had to stay with one of her brothers for the rest of her life, so marrying Mr. Collins released the weight on their shoulders, ultimately making her family as whole …show more content…
Collins’s visit to Longbourn ultimately helped the Lucas family as a whole, “The Lucas family is delighted at Charlotte's engagement. Lady Lucas, we must presume, worries about her daughters' futures just as Mrs. Bennet (silly in so many ways but utterly practical in this) worries about her daughters. Mr. Collins's present circumstances made it a most eligible match for their daughter, to whom they could give little fortune” (Newark 8). The Lucas family, as stated before, is relieved from the stress of Charlotte’s ape leader trap, and they could continue with their lives as normal people without worrying about Charlotte’s