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Persuasions #11, 1989 Page 18-19 Report
on Persuasions
Competition 1989 In Persuasions No. 10, readers were invited to comment whether they agreed with the serious criticisms of Charlotte Lucas’ decision to marry Mr. Collins which were quoted from the work of a modern author. A number of responses were received, all supporting Charlotte’s decision. The judges of the competition were Joan N. Brantz and Cheryl McNiece. The identity of the persons responding was not known to the judges until their evaluations were reached. The winner of the competition is Esther Schieldel of Lincoln, NE. The runner-up is Margaret J. Larkin of Buffalo, NY. The
winning response is: Charlotte’s Choice The
“modern
writer” who feels that Charlotte Lucas violates her moral integrity in
marrying Mr. Collins seems a bit severe to me.
Charlotte is dealing with her life in a way that makes sense to
her.
Mr. Collins was not a wicked man, and I therefore doubt if
“contemptible” is the word Charlotte would use for him, nor would she
feel
it wrong to marry a man because he was merely foolish. Charlotte
accepts the traditional view of marriage – an arrangement between
families on
a basis of birth and income without consideration of personal feelings.
She is a foil for Elizabeth and Jane Bennet, champions of a
newer point
of view. They believe that love,
respect, and companionship are also required in marriage.1
Perhaps their observation of their own unharmonious parents had
advanced
their thinking. Certainly
Jane Austen presents Charlotte’s marriage as unfortunate, and her
acceptance
of Mr. Collins makes her a less attractive person than the novel’s
protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet. At
the same time Charlotte’s action is made understandable and Charlotte
herself
earns a certain admiration. Let us
see
what forces shaped Charlotte’s decision.
How could she marry Mr. Collins? Charlotte
had been brought up in a home where status “had perhaps been felt too
strongly.2 Her
father’s elevation to knighthood had revolutionized the family’s style
of
life and created a mold for the values of Sir William’s children.
Mr. Collins’ adulation of Lady Catherine de Bourgh could not
have
seemed half so offensive to Charlotte as it did to Elizabeth. Charlotte
could
live with some ease under the aegis of Lady Catherine, because she had
been
brought up to revere rank. There is
none of Elizabeth’s bristling reaction to that overbearing lady. When
explaining her sudden engagement to Mr. Collins, Charlotte confides to
Elizabeth, “I am not romantic you know. I
never was. I ask only a comfortable
home;…I am convinced that my
chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on
entering the
married state.”3 Mr.
Collins
offered what to Charlotte was a reasonable chance for a satisfying life.
And since she did not expect to find a lover or a kindred spirit
in a
husband, it would be hard to expect her to wait for someone who, as far
as she
was concerned, did not exist. Furthermore
she won the blessing of her family, who would have been eager for her
to marry
any man with Mr. Collins’ respectability and prospects.
She knew her brothers would be happy to escape supporting her as
a
spinster. This
brings
us to our final and perhaps irrefutable defense of Charlotte.
The ugly alternative to marriage was spinsterhood, a state which
promised
to the average gentlewoman a life of penury and humiliation. For example, had Elizabeth not married, she
would have had to
depend on the benevolence of male relatives.
Mr. Gardiner, perhaps? Ironically,
she might well have become dependent on the good will of the despised
Mr.
Collins, or she might have had to earn her livelihood as companion to
some
counterpart of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Charlotte,
who was twenty-seven years old to Lizzie’s twenty, was already over the
hill.
There was little chance of Charlotte’s finding any husband.
The prospect of an oppressive, unproductive life was closing in
upon her. And so,
given Charlotte’s need and desire to have a position in life, given her
pragmatic view of marriage, given the golden aura of family approval
which
attended her alliance, and given the bleak alternative to accepting his
which
attended her alliance, and given the bleak alternative to accepting his
offer,
how could Charlotte not marry Mr. Collins?
1 Barbara W. Swords, “Women's Place in Jane Austen's England,”Persuasions 10 (1988), pp. 76-82. 2 Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltdl, 1972), p. 65 3 Austen, p. 165. |
