He then tries to tell her that by marrying him she will still have the estate when her father dies; Mr.Collins then says that he is not interested in the money or estate and then speaks of their future together ‘when we are married’. She tells him that she is not interested in marriage but instead of discouraging him he feels it’s a part of convention and that she is playing hard to get. Mr. Collins reckons its all part of getting the girl and tries harder to get her to say yes. She starts getting angry and tells him yet again that she is not interested. All of this time Mr.Collins thinks he is following convention and is going by the ‘manual’.
Mr. Darcy is an extremely wealthy aristocrat; Darcy is proud, haughty and extremely conscious of class differences at the beginning of the novel. He does, however, have a strong sense of honour and virtue. Though Darcy is intelligent and honest, his excess of pride causes him to look down on his social inferiors. Over the course of the novel, he tempers his class-consciousness and learns to admire and love Elizabeth for her strong character. While Elizabeth is at home alone, the door bell rings and she thinks that it might be Colonel Fitzwilliam. To her surprise, however, it is Mr. Darcy. After he inquires about her health, he paces around the room for a few minutes and then makes a declaration of love for her. While he speaks ‘eloquently’ about his admiration for her, he also clearly expresses the inferiority of her connections and the family obstacles that prevented him from proposing sooner. Elizabeth turns down his proposal rather harshly, and he is both surprised and resentful. Elizabeth explains her reasons for turning him down. These reasons are, first, the arrogant manner of his proposal; second, his actions to separate Bingley and Jane; and third, his actions toward Wickham. Darcy replies angrily that her calculation of his faults are indeed heavy, but that she might have overlooked them if he had not been honest about the fact that her family connections had made him try to avoid becoming attached to her. She simply states that his manner of proposal had no influence on her other than to "spare me the concern of refusing you, had you acted in a more gentlemanlike manner." After she finishes speaking he quickly leaves the room. By proposing to Elizabeth he is breaking convention because of social differences and Elizabeth is breaking convention by refusing!
By ‘convention’ of sonnets both Shakespeare and Drayton’s sonnets comply with the rules of sonnet writing. These rules include having 14 lines, a rhyming scheme and having 10 syllables per line.
However Drayton’s sonnet is very traditional in content and speaks about love ‘and each returnes unto his love at night’. He also has a flattering comparison between his love and nature ‘that every creature to his kind doost call’. His sonnet is about how the nighttime is a time when lovers should be together but he feels the ‘night, abuse me onely thus’. He says he ‘wish it would be ever day’ so he can always be with his lover. This poem does conform to the ‘convention’ of sonnets.
On the other hand, Shakespeare degrades his partner ‘If snow be white, why then her breasts be dun’. This is not a ‘conventional’ sonnet but a parody of sonnets. We know this because all the technicalities comply with sonnets but the content is abusive towards the girl ‘That in the breath that from my mistress reeks’. Shakespeare’s sonnet deviates from the ‘conventional’ way of sonnet writing.
‘Trainspotting’ is set in a modern society and is based in Edinburgh. The story is focused around a group of drug addicts. Mark Renton and his friends go out to a disco. Heroin had robbed Renton of his sex-drive but now it returns with a vengeance. His post-junk libido, fuelled by alcohol and amphetamine, taunts him remorselessly but then he sees Diane as she is leaving the club and he follows her outside, where she is waiting for a taxi. After a brief conversation with Diane, Renton tries his pick up line ‘I’ll come back if you like but I’m not promising anything’. This does not impress Diane and she steps into the taxi. Just as Renton is about to turn around and leave Diane asks if he is coming or not. In this scene both characters play with and sometimes reverse convention. This reverses convention in the way that in the modern day people pick their own partners and that women can now take the lead in relationships. Also that sex on a first date is not unusual these days.
I conclude that while both Drayton and Mr. Collins’ texts are both very conventional (Mr. Collins thinks he is following convention), Mr. Darcy, Shakespeare and ‘Trainspotting’ oppose convention. Mr Darcy does this by marrying below his class; Shakespeare does this by making a parody of convention of sonnets and ‘Trainspotting does this by reversing convention when the girl leaves the male to decide. The sonnets were written in the 16th Century and were seen as formal. Sonnets were a way of worshipping a loved one from afar. The “Pride and Prejudice” pieces were written in the 18th Century in a time when girls could not inherit property and so found it difficult to marry. Both Darcy and Collins show that property and status is important and that Elizabeth has a lack of it. Elizabeth should be grateful but breaks convention when she refuses them.
