Let's Talk About Mr Collins

right so hello and welcome back to books and things and welcome to another jane austen july video and today's video is going to be all about mr collins [Music] so mr collins is one of the characters in jane austen's amazing novel pride and prejudice he is a very famous comic figure from jane austen's work um an incredibly well-known character and an incredibly interesting one so i thought i would dedicate a whole video to talking about mr collins today's video is going to be full of spoilers for pride and prejudice so if you haven't read pride and prejudice please do go away and read it because it's amazing and then come back and watch this video but now let's talk about the amazing mr collins whatever you want to say about mr collins there is no denying that he is an interesting character and an important one within pride and prejudice and i've always found that mr collins is one of those characters that creates a really strong reaction in people when i used to work at the jane austen center in bath many many years ago and i used to have to do like introductory talks about jane austen i would always watch the audience um to see who smiled when i mentioned mr collins and there when you saw them smile you'd know that that was a true often fan however while mr collins is a fantastic comic figure who is hilarious and silly and great fun to read about he also has several other interesting roles in the novel and he's also a character that i find continually interpreted in different ways i know a lot of people who have very different opinions on mr collins every time i review pride and prejudice i find myself having a different interpretation of mr collins and in the pride and prejudice retellings that i have watched or read mr collins is a character who i continually see adapted in completely different ways and in ways that don't always feel to me like the reading that i would take from the book and i think he's one of those characters who you can definitely pull in lots of different directions and there's definitely a lot of valid interpretations of so i wanted to talk today about his role in the novel and what we know about him from the book and how he is adapted on screen and on the page by other writers and what that can tell us about mr collins as a figure because you know who doesn't want a whole video about mr collins i would say that there are sort of three main roles that mr collins has within prime prejudice the first role he has is a comic role he is silly he is bizarre he is an oddity as jane austen says and therefore he is fun to read about and fun to enjoy and to laugh at while you're reading pride and prejudice another role i would say he has in the novel is to kind of show us society and to tell us more about the society this book is set within and one in terms of sort of mr collins opinions but also other people's opinions of him and also mr collins has a important role in showing us the different attitudes and towards matrimony of elizabeth and her friend charlotte mr collins is there in part in the first section of the book to show us um the further kind of eccentricities of the bennett families and their extended family he is another one of the kind of unpolished people that mr darcy somewhat censures when he's looking at elizabeth and her family you know that moment when mr collins at the ball introduces himself to mr darcy is his moment of kind of incredible impropriety and like i said as well mr collins is plot in the first section of the book has this role of showing um elizabeth's character better to the reader and the scene where mr collins proposes to elizabeth and elizabeth refuses him because she doesn't love him doesn't like him doesn't respect him could never be happy and definitely could never make him happy is a really important like character building scene where the reader gets to see at a fairly early on point in the novel what elizabeth is like what her priorities are what her aims are and also what she looks for in marriage and in her future and but also that scene and what follows um shows us how completely differently charlotte lucas views marriage which has really interesting implications and sort of criticisms of and explorations of society at the time when jane austen is writing and the way marriage is often for security and kind of practical reasons rather than for affection and companionship and it's interesting because charlotte's decision is sort of criticized within prime prejudice very much by elizabeth but also when we go to um huntsford and we see mr collins and charlotte's life together and it's not criticized because we see how charlotte has made a life for herself yes she tries to avoid her husband but she seems tolerably happy and she is going to have a future with him she has a household of her own which is what she wanted and so i think in that way jane austen kind of shows us two very different options for women at the time um and two very different ways of thinking about marriage at the time and i think the other kind of um societal role that mr collins has in terms of telling us more about the characters and the society is towards the end of the book where um we see his judgment on lydia after her alone with wickham he writes to the bennetts that it would have been a blessing if instead of running away lydia had died and i think this is a very important letter and to tell us what a lot of society would think of lydia and how severely society would be judging lydia at this time and then i also think mr collins has a important role in the plot as well in terms of the bigger plot the love story between elizabeth and mr darcy it's through mr collins marrying charlotte and elizabeth going to see charlotte that elizabeth gets to rosings and sees mr darcy again and also sees mr darcy in a situation where she is removed from her parents and her younger siblings and which definitely i think impacts mr darcy's decision to propose to her then and then also mr collins has a significant role in the plot much later on in that it's obviously through him and charlotte that there is some suggestion of an understanding between elizabeth and mr darcy that lady catherine hears off you know mr collins writes to mr bennett saying that he has heard that elizabeth and mr darcy might be engaged and the fact that he writes to mr bennett to say that he's heard that suggests that it is through mr collins that lady catherine has heard that rumor and then of course lady catherine having vaguely heard this potential thing from mr collins goes to visit elizabeth um and elizabeth tells her that she is not going to promise not to marry us to darcy which is what makes mr darcy know that he can go to propose to elizabeth again so we have mr collins being surprisingly central in a lot of elements of the plot so those are the roles that mr collins had in the book but the next thing i want to do is talk a bit about his description and what we know of him as a character the first time we hear about him in pride and prejudice is when mr bennett receives a letter from him in chapter 13 and so fairly early on in the book and that tells his family that his cousin mr collins is going to say and he reads mr collins letter so one of the first things we hear about mr collins is his own words and you know from the very first time that you hear anything from mr collins that he is going to be a silly character because his sentences are so long and his writing style is so ridiculous dear sir the disagreements assisting between yourself and my late honoured father always gave me much uneasiness and since i have had the misfortune to lose him i have frequently wished to heal the breach but for some time i was kept backed by my own doubts fearing less it might seem disrespectful to his memory for me to be on good terms with anyone with who it had always pleased him to be at variance my mind however is now made up on the subject and having received alternation at easter i have been so fortunate as to be distinguished by the patronage of the right honourable lady catherine de berg widow officer louis de berg who's bounty and beneficent has referred me to the valuable victory of this paris which will be my earnest endeavor to demean myself with grateful respect towards her ladyship and be ever ready to perform those rights and ceremonies which are instituted by the church of england that's two sentences that's two sentences after having heard this letter elizabeth says he must be an oddity i think i cannot make him out there is something very pompous in his style can he be a sensible man sir and her father replies no my dear i think not i have great hopes of finding him quite the reverse and this is what we learn of mr collins himself when he first appears in the flesh he was a tall heavy looking young man of five and twenty his heir was grave and steady and his manners were very formal we also learned in this chapters that he is terribly opposed to novels thinking they're very immoral and then in the next chapter we're told mr collins was not a sensible man and the deficiency of nature had been but little assisted by education or society the greatest part of his life having been spent under the guidance of an alliterative and miserly father having now a good house and very sufficient income he intended to marry and in seeking a reconciliation with the long-born family he had a wife in view as he meant to choose one of the daughters if he found them as handsome and amiable as they were represented by common report this was his plan of amends of atonement for inheriting their father's instinct and he thought it an excellent one full of eligibility and suitableness and excessively generous and disinterested on his own part we also know that he immediately likes on jane as his future wife but that on the hinting by mrs bennett that um jane might be soon engaged to mr bingley mr collins is very happy to change his mind to elizabeth we're told that mr collins has neither manner nor sense that the strong emotions he professes to elizabeth and then to charlotte are imaginary we constantly see his excessive praise and obsequiousness to lady catherine de berg we see his excessive formality and his deference of rank but also his great pride in himself and his um position in relation to lady catherine de berg and the general impression we get from pride and prejudice i think is of a man who takes himself incredibly seriously but other people see us quite silly and thinks himself more important than he is but also thinks a great deal of those who he thinks are more important than him a man who thinks he is much cleverer than he is and a man who thinks he knows much more about society and about the world than in fact he does he is ignorant but thinks himself wise and silly but thinks himself sensible he may be a figure of ridiculousness and oddity to elizabeth and mr bennett but he takes himself very seriously and he is described as being grave he is not lighthearted he is entirely serious but one of the things i find so interesting about mr collins is that while he is quite a fully formed character in the book he is the character from pride and prejudice who i think i see adapted and interpreted the most differently in so many different forms and in so many different mediums and one thing i do find very very interesting is that mr collins is described as being 25. mr collins is 25 years old and the popular culture image of mr collins is not 25 years old even if you look at like the illustrations in my edition which are from the 19th century that man does not load 25 and so these illustrations by hugh thomas they're not original but they're from the 19th century the late 19th century i think they're from um like the 1890s but it's interesting to see how like even as far back as the 1890s mr collins was interpreted as being older than he is and was being read and coded as older than he is if you look at the actors who have played mr collins in various adaptations in the 1995 prime prejudice the actor playing mr collins colin bamber was 41 years old in the 2005 pride and prejudice film um tom hollander who plays mr collins was 38 years old in the 1980 private prejudice the actor who played mr collins was 33 and so that's a little bit closer but in the 1940 adaptation and the actor playing mr collins was 44. then if we take a few less direct adaptations in pride and prejudice and zombies mr collins was played by matt smith who was 33 at the time um and in lost in austin from 2008 um guy henry who played mr collins was 48 years old no one in their 20s ever plays mr collins um it's always someone older usually someone in their late 30s or early 40s um and obviously like television and film adaptations of jane austen often play around with ages but some of these films are otherwise quite accurate with ages um and i don't think you are likely to find a film where the actor playing mr darcy is older than the actor playing mr collins for example in the 2005 pride and prejudice and kieran knightley playing elizabeth bennett was 20 the age elizabeth bennett is supposed to be matthew mcfadden is 31 playing a 28 year old in the 1995 one um jennifer ehler was i think 26 and colin firth was um 35 playing elizabeth bennett and mr darcy so a little bit older but um not as much older as colin bamba was playing mr collins but i do think it's really interesting that mr collins is never really played as young i haven't seen the 1980 adaptation of pride and prejudice so i can't comment on that and but as far as i've seen all the interpretations of pride and prejudice that i have seen on screen mr collins is coded and is acted as being a man in his late 30s or early 40s with the exception of matt smith's portrayal of mr collins in pride and prejudice and zombies i don't remember much about that film to be honest because it wasn't great and it doesn't need to stick in my memory but i think it's fair to say that mr collins is treated as young in that in a way that he isn't in other adaptations and interpretations of mr collins the image of mr collins that people have in their mind is not of a young man it's not of a 25 year old mr collins is younger than mr darcy mr collins is younger than charlotte lucas mr collins is closer in age to elizabeth than any of the other men who are interested in her mr collins is a young man and i know i've spoken about this before on my channel but i do think that when i think about how young mr collins is i find myself feeling much more forgiving towards him like when i think about mr collins as being someone who's younger than me i feel more sympathy for mr collins and i feel like he just hasn't learned how to be in the world yet in many ways but it's not just the age that i find interesting in terms of how people interpret mr collins because there are a lot of other interesting things that are done with mr collins as well i think mr collins often becomes very silly and sort of extra silly in screen adaptations in the 1995 adaptation of pride and prejudice mr collins is so silly and when you read the description of him in the book of someone who is grave and excessively formal that is not the impression that you get in adaptations of pride and prejudice and i think he's a little bit less silly and takes himself a bit more seriously in the 2005 adaptation of pride and prejudice i much prefer the interpretation of mr collins in that film but i still think he is presented as being quite different from the way he is in the book and then a different interpretation of mr collins altogether which i find really interesting in the tv mini series lost in austin which is a um strange adaptation prior to prejudice where a woman from the present day gets transported back into the story pride and photo doesn't mess anything up but that's not important what's important now is that mr collins in that is creepy he's properly creepy and he is unsettling and creepy and sort of comes across as a bit of a sexual predator towards all of the women who he's interested in which is a different interpretation of mr collins although there is another interpretation altogether in the lizzie bennet diaries which is a modern retelling of pride and prejudice where mr collins is harmless and well-meaning and just a bit intense and that's his only flaw and in jane austen retelling novels i often find quite a sympathetic portrait of mr collins for example in longborne when the servants of the house are quite happy to have mr collins as a future master because he is so full of excessive praises for everything and because he takes pleasure in things that is like you know praising the food and the house and saying how nice everything is and they're you know thinking oh my goodness he likes our work this is brilliant he's going to be a good master and then again into other adaptations which deal a bit more seriously with mr collins the other bennett sister by janice hadlow and charlotte by helen moffitt we have again a more positive interpretation of mr collins in helen moffitt's novel we see that he cares for his children and he values his position as a father that he values his wife and in the other bennett sister and when you see mr collins who has grown up a little bit since pride and prejudice who realizes that people don't take him seriously and who is really sad about that and also who has married a woman who doesn't respect him and doesn't love him and who realizes that and that's incredibly sad even within talking to people i know who've also read pride and prejudice i find that i often have quite a um kind interpretation of mr collins where i think you know he's a bit silly but he's basically harmless he just doesn't know how to behave um but my fiance nick who read pride and prejudice last year hates mr collins with the passion you know the way he read mr collins was as this horrible man who was obseculous who thinks badly of everyone who is vain and you know self-important who just thinks terrible things of everyone else who is incredibly judgmental and i think you can do both of those readings and i don't know which one is right but i think it's interesting that you can have so many different interpretations of mr collins so i think there are sort of three big interpretations you can have of mr collins i think there is like the main middle ground which i think is where a lot of people fall when they read pride and prejudice which is that mr collins is silly and harmless he is a bit intense he is laughable he has a character who you love to find silly who is ridiculous but not evil who is vague and self-important um but only because he just has this inflated sense of ego who's basically just silly and that is his main defining feature and then i think there is a more positive reading you can have of mr collins which is the reading that i sometimes take though i vary and the reading which i think the other benefits and to a certain extent charlotte takes mr collins is 25 years old he is young and awkward and he doesn't know how to behave in society partly because his father has brought him up badly in a similar way to sort of marry lydia and kitty don't know how to behave in society that well partly because their parents have brought them up badly he is awkward and proud and humble all at once and he's sort of confused by his own like class and rank position in society because he is a clergyman who doesn't have a giant living you know he's not incredibly wealthy but he is also due to inherit this state of longborn which would elevate him in rank quite a bit but at the same time he also lives next door to lady catherine who is of so higher class that he could never get close to that um and so we have this sort of odd class position where he knows that his class at some point will be higher than it is now but it isn't yet and also he knows it will never be as high as lady catherine's but also he feels really honored to know lady catherine and to be in her company so much so he just doesn't really know where he stands in society and the kind view of his ill-advised proposal to elizabeth who he barely knows and definitely isn't in love with is that he knows that he is due to inherit this estate and that his five female cousins are not going to have anywhere to live after the death of their father and he thinks well i could do the decent thing and decide to marry one of them and then they'll all have somewhere to live and they can stay in their home yes mr collins feels quite proud of himself for having thought of that idea and yes mr collins enjoys his own sense of generosity but actually what he aims to do is something fundamentally good and you know there are problems with that view of marriage and what marriage is for especially from a modern perspective but actually what mr collins does coming to longboard is he proposes to elizabeth partly because he thinks she is quite pretty and quite nice but also out of a sense of duty and a sense of trying to look after his family and if you take that reading you can read that his immediate um proposal to charlotte lucas is basically sort of done out of rejection and hurt pride but also because having been rejected by elizabeth and suddenly finding charlotte listening to him and being attentive to him and trying to show that she likes him as indeed she does and we know that she does on purpose and she wants to bring him to the point of a proposal mr collins then thinks while elizabeth bennett doesn't want me i will take a woman who does and i think if you take that reading of mr collins um then yes he is silly but he means well and yes he is ridiculous but he is harmless and yes he is vain and silly and doesn't know how to behave in society but that is because he is young he's been badly educated and his father was not the best of fathers and he's just in general feels quite confused about his position within the world he is awkward that is one way to read mr collins but then i also think that you can take a much more negative reading of mr collins and which is what my partner nick definitely has taken um which is that mr collins is a horrible unpleasant vain selfish man who is incredibly judgmental and also thinks women are stupid there are two scenes in the book where i think you see mr collins at his worst one is the proposal he makes to elizabeth and the way he reacts to her when she says no elizabeth says you are too hasty sir you forget that i have made no answer let me do it without further loss of time accept my thanks for the compliments you are paying me i am very sensible of the honor of your proposal but it is impossible for me to do otherwise and decline them i am not allowed to learn reply mr collins with a formal wave of the hand that it is usual with young ladies to reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept when he first applies for their favor and that sometimes the refusal is repeated a second or even a third time i am therefore by no means discouraged by what you have said and shall hope to lead you to the altar along upon my word sir cried elizabeth your hope is rather an extraordinary one after my declaration i do assure you that i am not one of those young ladies if such young ladies there are who are so daring as to risk their happiness on the chance of being asked a second time i am perfectly serious in my refusal you could not make me happy and i'm convinced that i'm the last woman in the world who would make you so you must leave me to judge for myself and pay me the compliment of believing what i say i wish you very happy and very rich by refusing your hand do all of my power to prevent your being otherwise but yet again mr collins goes on when i do myself the honor of speaking to you next on this subject i shall hope to receive a more favorable answer than you have given me now though i'm far from accusing you of cruelty at the present because i know it to be the established customer of your sex to reject a man on first application and perhaps you have even now said as much to encourage my suit as would be consistent with true delicacy of the female character really mr collins cried elizabeth with some warmth to puzzle me exceedingly if what i have said hitherto can appear to you in the form of encouragement i know not how to express my refusal in such a way as may convince you of a being one and mr collins goes on for another page or two refusing to believe that elizabeth doesn't want to marry him and just saying no of course i know i don't mean it for the whole chapter and i think this chapter is where the lost in austin gets his creepy mr comments from because elizabeth stands there and says i do not want to marry you about 10 times and mr collins stands there and says no of course you do don't be so stupid and i think you can read that scene as mr collins being awkward i think you can read that scene as mr collins not really knowing how to behave but you can also read that scene as mr collins being a misogynist who thinks that women are stupid and that elizabeth couldn't possibly know her own mind who believes that he is so much above her and the world he offers her is so generous of him that she couldn't possibly turn him down and the women especially young women have no credibility and that their opinion should not be listened to indeed the only time when he really begins to take elizabeth's rejection seriously is when he hears it from her parents rather than from herself and the other time i think we see mr collins at his worst is the letter he writes to and mr bennett after lydia has run away with wickham my dear sir i feel myself called upon by our relationship and my situation in life to condole with you on the grievous affliction you are now suffering under of which we were yesterday informed by a letter from hertfordshire be assured my dear sir that mrs collins and myself sincerely sympathize with you and be all your respectable family in your present distress which must be of the bitterest kind because proceeding from a cause which no time can remove no argument should be wanting on my part that can alleviate social fear and misfortune or that may comfort you under a circumstance that must be of all others most afflicting to a parent's mind the death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison to this and it is more to be lamented because there is reason to suppose as my dear charlotte informs me that this licentiousness of behavior in your daughter has proceeded from a faulty degree of indulgence though at the same time for the consolation of yourself and mrs bennett i'm inclined to think that her own disposition must be naturally bad or how could she be guilty of such an enormity as so early in age however that may be you are grievously to be pitied in which opinion i am not only joined by mrs collins but likewise by lady catherine and her daughter to whom i have related the affair they agree with me in apprehending that this whole step in one daughter will be injurious to the fortunes of all others for who as lady catherine herself condescendingly says will connect themselves to such a family and this consideration leads me moreover to reflect with augmented satisfaction on a certain event last november for had it been otherwise i must have been involved in all your sorrow and disgrace let me advise you then my dear sir to console yourself as much as possible to throw off your unworthy child from your affection forever and to leave her to reap the fruits of her own heinous offense so that is quite a letter um there are many things of interest in this letter which i think showed mr collins at his worst one is that immediately hearing of what's happened he decides to tell lady catherine and her daughter and to expose the bennett family further to rumor and gossip also that he says that it would be a blessing if lydia had died rather than eloped and also that mr collins decided this is a good moment to tell mr bennett that he's been a really bad father and that's why lydia's run away which too far is kind of true but you know it's not really something that's very nice to tell someone it's pretty horrible letter when you think about it um and i think the image i have in my head of mr collins as this awkward bumbling trying to take himself seriously but isn't very good at the world and doesn't really understand things that character and that interpretation of mr collins the more positive interpretation that i often have of him i think falls slightly short at that letter it's really hard to still view mr collins in that more positive light when you read that letter um but at the same time i do think that that letter would have appeared less appalling from a readency perspective there's definitely another point in another jane austen novel where a much more likable character suggests that um death might be preferable to terrible scandal the idea of sort of women's reputation being so important that um better to die than lose a reputation is not a new idea or even at this point in history necessarily so shocking an idea as it would be today but also we still kind of hate him for writing the letter but also i still kind of feel sorry for the bumbling fool that mr collins is for a lot of it um but also he doesn't take elizabeth's no for an answer for a really long time but also i think it's important to remember that mr collins is by naming the only man he proposes to elizabeth in this book completely assured that he is going to have a positive um and has quite a bad reaction when he has a negative and also i think the whole thing when mr collins says that some women refuse and then and say yes next time it's sort of a little in joke with anyone who's rereading it because obviously elizabeth is going to later in the book refuse someone who she then later accepts so maybe that's not true of mr collins but is like joke two that and basically i'm tying myself in knots and i don't know what i think of mr collins i don't know i have no conclusion to draw here except that i really vary between feeling that mr collins is just silly and feeling that mr collins is misguided but meaning well and feeling that mr collins is misguided and means badly and i just don't know and i vary a lot and i don't know what to think of him and that is all i have to say please let me know down in the comments what you think of mr collins how do you interpret him what do you think of him and in what way do you judge his character do you like him do you hate him do you think him silly like what do you think of mr collins i'm really interested to know and i think that is all for now thank you for listening to me by my bannister collins for an unnecessarily long amount of time and that is all thank you very much for watching and i'll be back very soon with another bookish video

Channel: Books and Things

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Keywords: booktube, books, literature, reading, currently reading, book review, book reviews, review, reviews, classics community, new books, literary, book love, bookish video, booktuber, jane austen, jane austin, pride and prejudice, mr collins, elizabeth bennet, lizzy bennet, mr darcy, jane austen july, jane austen july 2020, jane austen video, pride and prejudice review

Id: Owk-G91W1qA

Length: 28min 40sec (1720 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 28 2020