Instead of having the emotional reaction that my poor student had, and just saying, “Priest! Gross! Ick!” hopefully your son or daughter will understand that the real gross/ick thing here, as far as Austen and her substitute Lizzy are concerned, is the idea that one can marry someone who is far less intelligent, sensitive, and kind than you are, to the general applause of your family and your social circle. Austen, in other words, is against marriages of convenience; and Lizzy’s reaction to Mr. Collins’s rhetoric is rooted in the fact that he is proposing precisely that sort of marriage.
Here, then, is how that freshman class should have
gone. The students laugh at the
proposal, find it funny, but find Mr. Collins a little icky, obnoxious,
etc. They have, in other words, roughly
the same emotional reactions to him as Lizzy has. Once they realize that fact, they have to ask
why. Once they ask why, and can identify
the difference of belief between Mr. Collins and Lizzy (pro/anti marriage of
convenience) they can then have at least four really interesting discussions:
(a) Why,
historically, did marriage of convenience make sense and why did European
society drift away from it?
(b) If
Mr. Collins really wanted to persuade Lizzy to marry him—but could not change
his own fundamental traits or character—what sort of rhetorical argument would
he have to make to her that might have a chance of getting her to take his
proposal seriously?
(c) Speaking
universally, are marriages of convenience moral, immoral, or amoral?
(d) What
role does this introduction of the marriage of convenience have in the novel’s
overall plot as a piece of literature?
Four big questions, one philosophical, one rhetorical,
one historical, and one literary. Each
enough, really, for a senior thesis—and most students struggled to find enough
in the scene to write an interesting two page paper. And that was, at least partly, my
fault—because I didn’t know how to show them how to look.
I think I have a better idea now.
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