William Collins Character Analysis




mr. collins proposes to elizabeth bennet

Mr. Collins is one of Jane Austen’s most wonderful creations. We see her genius for comic satire at its best in the actions and words of this pompous, puffed-up parson.

He is presented as a ridiculous churchman more interested in living well in his “valuable” new position and kowtowing to aristocratic benefactor Lady Catherine de Bourgh, than in devoting his life to spiritual matters.

He is a caricature of a proud and conceited person. Full of vanity and self-importance, he enters the record books for making the worst marriage proposal in English literature to Elizabeth Bennet. When he fails there, he simply switches attention to Elizabeth’s friend Charlotte Lucas and marries her instead.

His unsuitability as a clergyman is shown by his unsympathetic letter to the Bennets following Lydia’s elopment with George Wickham. In it he cruelly suggests: “The death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison of this.”

Writing in the British newspaper The Observer, literary editor Robert McCrum described Collins “a vile, self-centred social mountaineer.” He called his opportunism “gruesome – and ludicrous.” Mr. Collins one of the most universally ridiculed characters in literature and film.

Five key Mr. Collins quotes with analysis that help explain the pompous parson:

“Mr. Collins was eloquent in her praise. The subject elevated him to more than usual solemnity of manner, and with a most important aspect he protested that he had never in his life witnessed such behaviour in a person of rank – such affability and condescension, as he had himself experienced from Lady Catherine. She had been graciously pleased to approve of both of the discourses which he had already had the honour of preaching before her.”

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 14. Over dinner at the Bennets’ home, Mr. Collins spends much of his time describing the woman who helped him establish his career in the clergy, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. The fawning obsequiousness and servility he displays towards his patroness, coupled with his pretentious manners and obsessive formality, help make Mr. Collins one of English literature’s unforgettable comic characters. Here Austen is satirizing the behavior of the noble class through Collins’s absurd admiration for Lady Catherine and her treatment of him. She is also being ironic – for nobody in their right mind admires being condescended to.

You may never get another offer

“In spite of your manifold attractions, it is by no means certain that another offer of marriage may ever be made to you. Your portion is unhappily so small that it will in all likelihood undo the effects of your loveliness and amiable qualifications.”

Chapter 19. Mr. Collin’s proposal to Elizabeth is probably the most famous and worst marriage proposal in literature. And this passage would be hard to surpass for the top prize for the worst chat-up line ever! When Elizabeth politely turns him down, Mr. Collins comes back to tell her that she may never get another marriage offer – he, in effect, is her last chance saloon! He demeans her by insulting her (and all women) that her income is so little she will never get another chance of winning a husband. And this is how Mr. Collins asks for a woman’s hand in marriage? What arrogance and vanity! Mr. Collins obviously never went to charm school, he never felt the need to as he thinks so highly of himself!




“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.”

Chapter 20. Irony is Jane Austen’s most powerful weapon. She uses it here to humorous effect through the character of Mr. Bennet, when he speaks about Mr. Collins’s marriage proposal. He tells Elizabeth that she will metaphorically be a stranger to her mother if she doesn’t marry Mr. Collins, and a stranger to her father if she does.

“Mr. Collins is a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man; you know he is, as well as I do; and you must feel, as well as I do, that the woman who married him cannot have a proper way of thinking.”

Chapter 24. Elizabeth tells Jane that her best friend Charlotte cannot be thinking straight to marry the empty-headed, vain and pompous Mr. Collins.

“”You ought certainly to forgive them as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their names to be mentioned in your hearing.”

Chapter 57. Mr. Collins advises Mr. Bennet in his letter that Lydia and Wickham should be shunned, after they ran away together and were finally forced to marry. He notes that they were received at Longbourn following the marriage and hopes that the family will never receive them again. For a clergyman Mr. Collins has an unusual interpretation of Christian forgiveness. Of course he is being ironic without realizing it – his idea of forgiveness is not forgiveness at all. It is also a good example Mr. Collins being used by Austen as a satirical figure.
Close