The Significance of Mr. Collins’ Role in Pride and Prejudice

I recently reread Pride and Prejudice (SPOILERS), and something that always gets me is that everything just works out perfectly in the end between Lizzie and Darcy. They fall in love and Lizzie, who’s well-off but nowhere near as rich as the handsome, crazy-wealthy Mr. Darcy (not to mention her sex, which disables her financial situation), gets snapped up by said Darcy. They happen to love each other and of course Darcy is also insanely rich. The happiest marriage for the time in every way.

I often imagine Austen writing Elizabeth as what she appears as to others—intelligent, witty, and ahead of her time. Austen’s lover died young and Austen herself chose to die alone at forty-one rather than risk an unhappy, money-driven marriage. It makes sense that she chose to live in her books instead.

And of course Darcy happens to be perfect. When he proposes to Lizzie for the second time, he says (paraphrasing), “I’ll always love you, but one word from you will silence me forever.” This heavily juxtaposes Collins’s rhetoric, who not only is disgusted by Lizzie’s refusal, but does not digest it even after she repeats it several times in an increasingly blunt manner. Collins and Darcy represent the two ways Elizabeth’s life could have spiraled away: married off to a man she hates so that she could have a comfortable life, and actively marrying a well-off, handsome, polite man whom she genuinely loves. (There’s actually another direction in that she could have remained single.)

Furthermore, Lizzie rejects Darcy’s proposal the first time around, even after she spurned Collins’s advances—and even after Collins suggested that this may be the only proposal she would ever receive, that he was her only option. Still, Lizzie held fast, proving that, like Austen herself, she would prefer to never marry than to become chained to a man she didn’t like. (Similar to Marriage a la Mode—the picture where the depressed bride looks down while her fiancé happily admires himself in the mirror, while, at her feet, two dogs sit in similar positions as her and her soon-to-be husband, chained at the neck.)

Austen no doubt saw herself hurtling down a similar path if she ever married, so instead of wasting her time trying to snag a husband she didn’t like, she instead poured her time into her writing. If she couldn’t marry a man she loved, she reasoned, she could create him. And so we now have Mr. Darcy—a perfect man in every respect, who doesn’t bat an eye when the gender roles are reversed (he chases after her)—and, though he is cruelly shot down the first time around, proceeds to watch over Elizabeth from afar without being creepy or overbearing. He loves her in the purest way possible; when Elizabeth expresses her unwillingness to marry him, he forces himself to be content by trying to ensure her happiness without him.

Then, when it dawns on Lizzie how perfect she and Darcy would be together, he swoops in and they become engaged. Both are immensely happy and their marriage turns out perfectly. Even though this is kind of unrealistic, it’s a very satisfying ending after all the trials and tribulations that last for basically the whole book. Lizzie, unsatisfied with her life and way ahead of her time, carves a new path for herself and effortlessly loops in a man who is hopelessly in love with her, perfect for her in every respect, and also loaded.

You can practically see the fangirling. Thank God for Jane Austen.