The ridiculousness of Collins's self-absorption is pushed to the limit as he approaches Darcy, failing to notice the contempt with which Darcy responds to his introduction. Disdain and rejection do not have a place in Mr. Collins's perception of himself, by which his connection to Lady Catherine guarantees him a lofty place in society.
The arrival of Collins immediately precedes the first appearance of Wickham, one of the only male characters described by Austen as being extremely good-looking. The clergyman's foolishness contrasts with Wickham's ability to charm whose appeal exists only on the surface, however attractive. This superficial appeal is crucial because it makes his story about Darcy's mistreatment of him believable, at least to Elizabeth.
Darcy’s character is multi-layered, challenging the reader to comprehend his complexity. The reader must read further on into the book in order to read further on into his character. The character of Darcy, although at first mysterious reveals itself to be made up of opposite traits: selfishness and generosity, snobbery and empathy or cynicism and candidness for example.
Austen portrayed Mr Collins’s character as devoid of mystery. The reader knows at once what he is all about; even in his absence by his letter one can tell that he uses a wide range of vocabulary in the wrong context making malapropisms, that he is sycophantic, pedantic, or “odious”. Collins’s profile remains static, seeming to be only there for comical reasons.
Darcy is very different to Collins. The reader can feel his presence; because of his laconic mystery, the reader has scope to lend Darcy’s character a variety of feelings, faults and qualities, whereas the reader’s imagination is not stimulated by Mr Collins.
It is difficult to expand on Darcy’s character because he is so reluctant to reveal his true self in the story; this indicates fragility and sensitivity.
Elizabeth's prejudice against Darcy remains despite Miss Bingley's interference. However one can hardly blame Elizabeth for not seeing the truth as Austen produces a whole web of misleading connections between her characters.
Mr Collins’s behaviour in proposing to Lizzie illustrates his obtuseness yet is given similarity to that of Darcy’s during his proposal. Austen tends to describe proposals in full only when they meet with rejection, primarily because rejections have so many comic and dramatic possibilities. Elizabeth's later rebuff of Darcy constitutes a thrilling moment in the story; here, Mr. Collins's lengthy speech is an opportunity for Austen to make him seem completely ridiculous. His refusal to accept "no" as an answer is, of course, unsurprising given his conceited disposition. His selfishness blinds him to any answer other than “yes” and it is this that makes Collins’s proposal so dissimilar to that of Darcy’s. Yet, both men take Lizzie’s acceptance for granted, never having considered the possibility of a refusal beforehand.
Mr. Collins's subsequent proposal to Charlotte Lucas, on the other hand, is far from comical because Charlotte accepts. Readers might argue that Pride and Prejudice and the rest of Austen's novels are unrealistic in their frequent portrayals of happy marriages. Charlotte's marriage to Collins puts a grim note into the romantic happiness that Elizabeth will later find. Indeed, one can interpret Charlotte's fate as a component of Austen's criticism of a male-dominated society that leaves unmarried women without a future. Whereas Elizabeth is an idealist who will not marry solely for money, to either a fool (Collins) or a man she dislikes (Darcy, at first), Charlotte is a pragmatist and will marry for the sole reason of money if it will benefit her financial difficulty, even if it means marrying a selfish fool.
In chapters thirty-three to thirty-five, Darcy makes a dramatic appearance and the focus of the storyline is on him. Alone at the parsonage, Elizabeth is still mulling over information given to her when Darcy enters and abruptly declares his love for her. The timing of Darcy’s proposal is far from ideal as Elizabeth had recently re-read the letters from Jane and was dwelling on the new information given to her by Fitzwilliam. His proposal of marriage dwells at length upon her “social inferiority,” as he does not consider it an insult to her but an expression of how much she means to him despite her “degrading relations,” and Elizabeth's initially polite rejection turns into an angry accusation. She demands to know if he sabotaged Jane's romance with Bingley; he admits that he did. She then repeats Wickham's accusations and declares that she thinks Darcy to be proud and selfish and that marriage to him is utterly unthinkable. Darcy grimly departs.
Like Mr Collins, Darcy has no anticipation of rejection and so leaves feeling discarded and mostly humiliated after his passionate speech. As the first line in the novel depicts, it is rare for a man of good fortune to be rejected by a woman of smaller fortune.
His good intentions were betrayed by his hasty presentation which came across to Lizzie as insulting. He is emotionally and physically overwhelmed with such intense feelings which, I suspect he has rarely, if ever, had before. Darcy acts as if he was cursed with these feelings for Lizzie and seems to treat them like a burden. Starting his proposal with “In vein I have struggled,” is not the standard form of expressing love, as if he had fought it with all his willpower. He entered feeling determined yet frustrated, and left with his pride deeply wounded. Unlike Mr Collins, Darcy understood and reluctantly accepted this rejection, promptly departing. This leads the reader to believe that the extent of his pain is proportional to a sudden appreciation of Lizzie’s feelings and individuality. Far from being depleted, Darcy left the scene in shock, enriched with a new found dimension: his realisation of her feelings and a sense of his own respect towards them. When Collins departs… he is none the wiser.
Darcy's proposal is the turning point of Pride and Prejudice. Until he asks her to marry him, Lizzie's main preoccupation with Darcy centres around dislike; after the proposal, the novel chronicles the slow, steady growth of her love. I find it interesting how the intensity of dislike, perhaps hatred, is as similar to the feeling of pure love; this similarity is so well portrayed in Lizzie’s self-conflict. At this point of the book, however, Lizzie's attitude toward Darcy corresponds to the judgments she has already made about him. She refuses him because she thinks that he is too arrogant, part of her first impression of him and because of the role she believes he played in disinheriting Wickham and his admitted role in disrupting the romance between her sister Jane and Mr Bingley.
Just as Elizabeth yields to her prejudices (she had not yet heard Darcy's side of the story at this moment in the book) Darcy allows his pride to guide him. In his proposal to Elizabeth, he spends more time emphasizing Elizabeth's lower rank than actually asking her to marry him.
Darcy, as a person, is very different to Mr Collins however their proposals are relatively the same. Socially, Mr Collins and Lizzie are similar whereas Lizzie and Darcy are miles apart. Her family, in Darcy’s point of view is degrading and socially unvalued, he quotes moments when each family member has acted foolishly, or improperly, for example Lizzie’s hyperactive sister Lydia, being “out in community,” is interested in soldiers and clearly acts the antithesis of proper behaviour of their time. In proposing, Darcy emits an atmosphere of tension and passion as he truly feels what he is saying whereas Collins has no, or little, feelings towards Elizabeth. In a way they are both using Elizabeth because they are both sure that she is going to accept the proposal given to her.
Mr Collins’s mistake in proposing to Lizzie is, unlike Mr Darcy, what he says, not how he words it. Mr Collins depicts his reasons for marrying Lizzie and none of them include her feelings: He mentions the death of her father and the benefits of it. Also he says that he “should have said this at first,” that Lady Catherine de Bourgh told him he should marry someone from that level in society. Lizzie’s reaction to this is laughter as they are obviously an incompatible pair. He won’t seek to make her happy, he is arrogant, would only marry her to “set a good example as a clergyman,” and mentions no other offer other than to save her from a fate of poverty! Lizzie’s reaction to Darcy’s proposal is one of mixed feelings. She is angry, shocked and confused as to how he can propose to her after all he has done to make her and her relations’ time in his presence a misery. She is so mixed with emotions that she doesn’t know where to place herself; she sits down and cries. I think at this point in the story, Lizzie is unconsciously in love with him however she doesn’t want to be.
There is great difference between the rejections of Mr Collins and Mr Darcy. When Lizzie is proposed to by Collins, she is rejecting him and who he is. She is aware of what Mr Collins is like and she knows from the start that there is no possibility of marrying him. With Darcy however, Lizzie is not so much rejecting him, but a misconception of his character. She believes Darcy to be someone she loathes and it is that very misunderstanding which is the reason why she rejects him. The source of Lizzie’s erroneous beliefs is based on previous encounters and information given to her by other people about Mr Darcy. This shows the reader how important first impressions were in pre-1900. This effect was achieved well by Austen and it allows the reader to appreciate the social setting and cultural context of her time.
Overall, both proposals are clumsily presented and their origins are of a selfish nature: Collins’s motive for society’s acceptance and Darcy’s to put an end to his emotional misery.
Nowadays we don’t believe in formalities and class discrimination. I believe that despite this, the impact of first impressions is still as influential now as it was then.
We are lead to believe, when reading Jane Austen’s novel, that true love always triumphs. This point of view is romantic and places ideals and aspirations above pragmatism and common sense.
The big difference between these two proposals is that Darcy has passion for Lizzie and Collins has none. As we know, the ultimate result will play in Darcy’s favour.
