'Pride and Prejudice' is about relationships and all the different themes that are linked to it. In the play Mrs. Bennet is trying to get her daughters married; " Oh, single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!" However one of the daughters runs off with a man and Mary does not wish to be married yet.
Mr. Collins is a clergyman in the parish of Lady Catherine. Mr. Collins represents comedy as Jane Austen satirises him. Jane Austen would purposely do this to show the difference in characters in her book. This is a useful technique as she can then draw readers to her book by making them feel like they can relate to the different people as many people will know people like him.
Mr. Collins is relevant to the story because when Mr. Bennet dies Mr. Collins would be the owner of the Bennet family home. This is called entailing; this is where the next male in the house takes over before any female. Jane Austen would not agree with this because she is female and also through out the story she makes comments that show her disagreement to the acts of people in those times; "It is truth universsaly known that a single man in possesion of a good fortune must be in want of a wife" here Jane Austen is being sarcastic. Jane Austen would have done this to show her annoyment with the statement.
Mr. Collins is servile towards Lady Catherine; " The garden in which stands my humble abode is seperated only by a lane from Rosings Park, her ladyship's residence." This adds humour to the story as Mr. Collins is so servile towards Lady Catherine that the other charcters are able to joke about it the audience finds this funny.
Mr. Collins is an absurd character that lays himself out to ridicule through his pomposity and blind deference to Lady Catherine "Mr. Collins was employed in agreeing to everything her Ladyship said, thanking her for every fish he won, and apologising if he thought he won too many." Jane Austen is trying to show how Mr Collins is naive to Lady Catherine, he agrees as he thinks she is right with everything. Jane Austen does this to add humour to the play.
Mr. Collins is brought into the story because he wishes to meet the Bennet’s and marry one of the daughters so that the house will stay with the Bennet family and give the Bennet women some security. I think Jane Austen does this because she wants to show that at that time women were always last to be asked in decisions and also that what they wanted didn’t always make a difference in this times. Mr. Collins asks Elizabeth to marry him, after she turns him down Mr Collins marries Elizabeths friend. I think Jane is trying to say that in the nineteenth century men and women would marry for pride, money and security rather than love.
Mr. Collins is fawning the Bennet home as he thinks that by telling them they can keep their home he expect in return one of the daughters to marry him.
Lady Catherine is a woman of wealth, she is condescending to everyone. She looks down on the Bennet family numerous times and she is also disrespectful when Mr. Darcy wants to marry Elizabeth; "I take no leave of you, Miss Bennet ... You deserve no such attention." She is also self regarding when she thinks that Mr. Darcy is going to marry Elizabeth because she doesn’t want him to marry Elizabeth because she wants to keep the money in the family so therefore marry her daughter.
Lady Catherine thinks about herself a lot of the time and this is portrayed in the story. Lady Catherine is brought into the story because Mr. Collin who thinks the world of her, talks about her all the time you also find out that Lady Catherine is Mr. Darcy’s Aunt towards the end of the story.
I think that many people would have enjoyed 'Pride and Prejudice' because of the different varieties of characters in it. Jane Austen cleverly uses humour when Mr. Collins is in the scene. This make the very strong passionate and powerful comments that may upset some people easier to take in as she has added humour to lighten the mood making the readers enjoy it more. I think they could probably still relate to the characters nowadays as they could in the past. I don’t however think that social standards now and then are the same because in the book many people did things to make people think more highly of them. It was a very close community and many secrets got passed around quickly. Nowadays people keep themselves to themselves more so although people care what others think about them it is not as important as it was then.
