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Mary Bennet and Mr. Collins
In Jane Austen’s novel, Pride and Prejudice, several of the characters make good matches, not just financially, but emotionally and romantically. Elizabeth marries Mr. Darcy, and Jane marries Mr. Bingley. Other matches are more complicated, like Lydia’s marriage to Mr. Wickham, and Charlotte Lucas’ marriage to Mr. Collins. In fact, many readers have wondered if Mary Bennet and Mr. Collins might not have been more suited for each other. Why didn’t Mr. Collins marry Mary Bennet? And if they had married, would it have been a good match?
It’s Jane Austen’s fault that these questions are asked, for she planted seeds for these speculations in the text. At the same time, she clearly demonstrates what led Mr. Collins to choose Charlotte Lucas as his bride rather than turning to Mary Bennet. Let’s look at the sequence of events, as conveyed in the book:
- Mr. Collins proposes to Elizabeth.
- Elizabeth turns down Mr. Collins.
- Mrs. Bennet congratulates Mr. Collins on his engagement to her daughter. He explains that she turned him down, but that he also believes that despite her refusal, Elizabeth actually intends to marry him.
- Mrs. Bennet attempts to convince her husband to force Elizabeth to marry Mr. Collins. When Mr. Bennet refuses to do so, she tries—and fails—to convince Elizabeth on her own.
- Charlotte Lucas comes to visit the Bennets and finds the house in an uproar. Mr. Collins shows Charlotte civility, and she politely pretends not to notice the hubbub about the failed marriage proposal.
- Mr. Collins spends the rest of the day trying to ignore Elizabeth, and spends much of the time talking to Charlotte Lucas: “the assiduous attentions which he had been so sensible of himself were transferred for the rest of the day to Miss Lucas, whose civility in listening to him was a seasonable relief to them all, and especially to her friend.”
- The next day, the Bennets eat dinner with the Lucases, and Charlotte is so kind as to entertain Mr. Collins. (Austen lets us know that Charlotte’s actual “object was nothing less than to secure [Elizabeth] from any return of Mr. Collins’s addresses, by engaging them towards herself.”)
- The next morning—his very last day visiting Meryton—Mr. Collins walks towards Lucas Lodge. Upon seeing him from the window, Charlotte contrives to “accidentally” run into him in the lane. Mr. Collins proposes to Charlotte, and Charlotte accepts.
An 1894 illustration by George Allen of Mr. Collins proposing to Charlotte Lucas with “so much love and eloquence.” (Image in public domain; accessed through Wikimedia Commons)
- That evening, after becoming engaged to Charlotte Lucas, Mr. Collins must say farewell to the Bennets. He does not inform them of his engagement, but he does offer them his gratitude, affections, and wishes of health and happiness, even making a point not to exclude Elizabeth. Then he informs them that he plans to return soon to Longbourn, and the narrator finally tells us how Mary Bennet feels about the whole affair:
With proper civilities, the ladies then withdrew; all of them equally surprised to find that he meditated a quick return. Mrs. Bennet wished to understand by it that he thought of paying his addresses to one of her younger girls, and Mary might have been prevailed on to accept him. She rated his abilities much higher than any of the others: there was a solidity in his reflections which often struck her; and though by no means so clever as herself, she thought that, if encouraged to read and improve himself by such an example as hers, he might become a very agreeable companion. But on the following morning every hope of this kind was done away. Miss Lucas called soon after breakfast, and in a private conference with Elizabeth related the event of the day before.
Poor Mary Bennet.
Unlike her sisters, she actually values Mr. Collins’ abilities—or at least, “rated [them] much higher” than her sisters did. She is often—key word, often—struck by the “solidity in his reflections.” She does not think he is as intelligent or clever as she is, but she sees in him potential. He could read and improve himself. Even if he is not truly agreeable now, “he might become a very agreeable companion.”
Alas, Mary admits her feelings to herself to late to act on them. And even if she had admitted her feelings for Mr. Collins earlier, she would be unlikely to actively and swiftly pursue him, as Charlotte Lucas does. It is Charlotte’s willingness to converse with Mr. Collins, and then her direct pursuit of him, that leads to their marriage.
In one of my favorite card games, Marrying Mr. Darcy, Charlotte Lucas starts the game with a score of three cunning, which is rather fitting. (In the game, none of other characters start with any cunning, though they can acquire it throughout the game.)
In Melissa Leilani Larsen’s fabulous stage version of Pride and Prejudice, Mary actually makes Mr. Collins a pudding, which she is about to give him when she is cast out of the room by her mother so that he can propose to Elizabeth. I saw a Zoom production of the play in early 2021, and the way Mary said “But he hasn’t tried my pudding” almost brought me to tears. In this adaptation, Mary’s realization of her feelings for Mr. Collins comes earlier, but still too late.
Now let’s dive into the text of Pride and Prejudice to consider seven arguments for why Mr. Collins should have married Mary Bennet, and seven arguments on why that would have been a bad idea.
Arguments for a happy union between Mr. Collins and Mary Bennet, aka, why he should have married her
- Mary is interested in Mr. Collins, sees his positive qualities, and believes he could become an agreeable companion—and is not interest a base upon which something more substantial can be built?
- Mr. Collins doesn’t really care which sister he marries. He transfers his interest easily from Jane to Elizabeth upon a gentle nudge from Mrs. Bennet. Mary is also a Bennet sister! Could he not shift his interest to her?
“Mr. Collins meant to choose one of the daughters.” A humorous 1894 illustration of the five sisters, one of whom Mrs. Bennet has marked as unavailable, by Hugh Thomson. (Source: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons license.)
- They have similar speaking habits: Mr. Collins like to wax eloquently about any subject, and Mary likes to make profound statements on life. Neither individual is as clever, intelligent, or witty as they think themselves.
During a dinner conversation, Mr. Collins mentions that he frequently compliments Lady Catherine de Bourgh and her daughter.
Mr. Bennet says:
“It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?”
Mr. Collins replies with one of the best lines from the novel:
“They arise chiefly from what is passing at the time; and though I sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant compliments as may be adapted to ordinary occasions, I always wish to give them as unstudied an air as possible.”
Both Mr. Bennet and Elizabeth find his reply pleasingly absurd.
Earlier in the novel, after the Meryton assembly, Elizabeth is complaining of Mr. Darcy’s behavior to her sisters and Charlotte Lucas. Elizabeth says,
“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”
Mary immediately gives a long speech on pride, which, while it contains some insights, does not truly add to the conversation:
“Pride,” observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, “is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
No one acknowledges Mary’s statement, nor does it shift anyone’s views on the subject at hand.
- Neither Mr. Collins nor Mary completely fit into society. Both have trouble understanding and behaving appropriately in social situations, such as when Mr. Collins introduces himself to Mr. Darcy at the ball, and, at the very same ball, Mr. Bennet must stop Mary from performing on the pianoforte. Mary seems to have an innate social awkwardness and lack of awareness, and Mr. Collins’ deficits are caused, at least in part, by his upbringing and education.
- Mary is bookish, and Mr. Collins likes reading religious tracts and books.
- Mr. Collins is a clergyman, and Mary cares deeply about moral values.
- They are both judgmental. After Lydia runs away with Wickham, Mary declares,
“Loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable, that one false step involves her in endless ruin, that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful, and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex.”
And in a letter, Mr. Collins writes,
“The death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison of this.”
Ouch. That’s harsh.
As we consider these seven reasons, we find ourselves asking:
What better foundation for marriage is there than social ineptitude, bookishness, and a healthy dose of self-righteousness?
Mary and Mr. Collins do share some fundamental values, and both relate to people in a distinctive way. And this could be enough to argue that they would be well suited.
In Jack Caldwell’s novel The Companion of His Future Life, Mr. Collins does marry Mary Bennet. While the novel still focuses on the stories of Elizabeth and Jane, we see a fair bit of Mary, and both she and Mr. Collins seem quite satisfied with their choice. As a result of their marriage, Mary grows in new ways. She does not let Lady Catherine de Bourgh control her life, and goes behind her back to become close friends with Anne de Bourgh.
Arguments against a happy union between Mr. Collins and Mary Bennet, aka, why it’s a good thing he married Charlotte Lucas
- Being similar does not actually mean you are suited. Were they to marry, their similarities could cause them trouble in the future, particularly since they both struggle in social situations.
- Mr. Collins is actually a lot less bookish than Mary. He’s not as well read, and even Mary, with her inability to see how to apply her knowledge, can see that he is lacking in this area:
Though by no means so clever as herself, she thought that, if encouraged to read and improve himself by such an example as hers, he might become a very agreeable companion.
- Mr. Collins needs someone to manage him. He already follows Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s every suggestion. After his marriage to Charlotte, she helps him restrain some of his less-desirable tendencies in ways that make her life better:
To work in his garden was one of his most respectable pleasures; and Elizabeth admired the command of countenance with which Charlotte talked of the healthfulness of the exercise, and owned she encouraged it as much as possible.
Would Mary be able to do this in the same subtle yet effective manner? It is likely that she’d choose a different, more direct tact. Yet some of the reason Charlotte and Mr. Collins’ marriage works is because he does not feel any friction. At the end of Elizabeth’s six-week visit, Mr. Collins says:
“Only let me assure you, my dear Miss Elizabeth, that I can from my heart most cordially wish you equal felicity in marriage. My dear Charlotte and I have but one mind and one way of thinking. There is in everything a most remarkable resemblance of character and ideas between us. We seem to have been designed for each other.”
Unlike Charlotte, Mary is not strategic in being tactful, and Mary would likely directly tell Mr. Collins if she disagreed with him. This would create a very different marriage, one with the potential for conflict.
- Even after his marriage, Lady Catherine is the most important person in Mr. Collins’ life. Charlotte is willing to praise Lady Catherine, be quiet during large portions of meals with her, and ignore any difficulties she causes in her life.
While it’s possible Mary could do the same (and in Caldwell’s novel, she not only does that, but also manages to subtly influence Lady Catherine in ways that help her meet her own goals), it’s just as possible that Mary would follow the path of Elizabeth and state her mind to Lady Catherine. When Elizabeth speaks up to Lady Catherine, it causes great consternation on the part of Mr. Collins, and he would likely be even more upset if it were his wife disagreeing with her.
- Mary wants Mr. Collins to change (“to read and improve himself”). Could Mr. Collins change in a way that would suit Mary?
In her novels, Jane Austen is open to the idea of people changing, but this change generally happens before marriage. For instance, inspired by Elizabeth’s critique, Mr. Darcy lets go of his pride:
“I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit….Such I was, from eight to eight-and-twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you!”
- A large part of Charlotte and Mr. Collins’ marital harmony is due to Charlotte’s ability to ignore that which she doesn’t like in her husband. When Elizabeth visits, she watches their interactions:
When Mr. Collins said anything of which his wife might reasonably be ashamed, which certainly was not seldom, she involuntarily turned her eye on Charlotte. Once or twice she could discern a faint blush; but in general Charlotte wisely did not hear.
Being able to largely ignore the little bothers in each other is of great service to other relationships as well (Mr. Bennet must do the same for Mrs. Bennet). This is something Mary would need to learn.
- Mary’s interests thus far have been to devote as much time to her studies and the piano as possible. She seems ill-prepared to manage a household, while Charlotte is ready and willing to do so. Mary would need to develop those skills and, by necessity of not having many servants, would need to take time from her books and devote herself to running a house. This is something she would need to learn if she ever marries anyone. But because it is something Charlotte already has mastered, and that she finds intrinsic value in, this is a source of joy for her.
When Elizabeth leaves after her six week visit, she reflects:
Poor Charlotte! it was melancholy to leave her to such society! But she had chosen it with her eyes open; and though evidently regretting that her visitors were to go, she did not seem to ask for compassion. Her home and her housekeeping, her parish and her poultry, and all their dependent concerns, had not yet lost their charms.
One of my favorite novels which explores Charlotte’s perspective, with its joys and struggles, is The Clergyman’s Wife. Even for Charlotte, even with her need for security, it is not an easy path.
In looking at these seven reasons, Mary seems ill-suited for Mr. Collins. Charlotte already has the perspective and the skills to make matrimony to Mr. Collins be as smooth as possible, while if Mary were to marry Mr. Collins, their path would be bumpy, at least at the start.
Reflections on Marriage: What we can learn from the marriages that did and did not occur
Any marriage requires give and take, and if the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet is a good indication, there are plenty of workable marriages in which the two individuals are not particularly suited for each other. Whether or not the pros outweigh the cons, or the cons outweigh the pros, ultimately Mary Bennet and Mr. Collins could have had a tolerable, successful, or perhaps even joyful marriage.
Regardless of whether they would have been suited for each other, Charlotte took the initiative and as a result, married Mr. Collins. From a story standpoint, this is powerful, because while Elizabeth doesn’t think highly of Mary’s life philosophies, Charlotte Lucas is her close friend. Charlotte and Mr. Collins’ engagement shakes Elizabeth.
When speaking to her sister Jane of Charlotte’s impending marriage, Elizabeth declares:
“It is unaccountable! in every view it is unaccountable!”
“My dear Lizzy, do not give way to such feelings as these. They will ruin your happiness. You do not make allowance enough for difference of situation and temper. Consider Mr. Collins’s respectability, and Charlotte’s prudent, steady character. Remember that she is one of a large family; that as to fortune it is a most eligible match; and be ready to believe, for everybody’s sake, that she may feel something like regard and esteem for our cousin.”
“To oblige you, I would try to believe almost anything, but no one else could be benefited by such a belief as this; for were I persuaded that Charlotte had any regard for him, I should only think worse of her understanding than I now do of her heart. My dear Jane, Mr. Collins is a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man: you know he is, as well as I do; and you must feel, as well as I do, that the woman who marries him cannot have a proper way of thinking. You shall not defend her, though it is Charlotte Lucas. You shall not, for the sake of one individual, change the meaning of principle and integrity, nor endeavour to persuade yourself or me, that selfishness is prudence, and insensibility of danger security for happiness.”
Later, when Elizabeth visits Charlotte and Mr. Collins, she comes to accept—perhaps even understand—Charlotte’s choice, despite knowing that she would never have been able to make such a choice herself. She thinks, “Poor Charlotte!,” but her anger for her friend’s choice has been replaced by melancholy.
Elizabeth does not adopt Charlotte’s outlook on life—if she had, she would have accepted Mr. Darcy’s first proposal, despite her dislike of him.
Mr. Collins and Charlotte’s marriage acts as a foil to Elizabeth’s ultimate decision to marry Mr. Darcy. Yet it also influences Elizabeth, and helps her have a more expansive perspective on life.
If Mary had married Mr. Collins, it would have been less likely to change Elizabeth in any significant way.
My Personal Stance
While I can understand the opposing perspective, personally, I don’t think that Mr. Collins and Mary would be particularly happy together. When I wrote my own continuation of Mary’s story, a trilogy which begins with The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet, I didn’t give Mary a romance in the first book, because I didn’t think she was ready for marriage. I felt like she needed to grow and develop, and figure out herself first, before she would be ready for a relationship. However, in the very first chapter, she does reflect on the fact that she did not have the opportunity to marry Mr. Collins: this is an event that has stuck with her and continues to influence her.
What do you think? Do you side with Jack Caldwell and others who see great potential in a Mary-Mr. Collins relationship? Or do you think that it would have been a bad choice for one or both of them? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
Note: sometimes I used affiliate links to Amazon and other websites. When that occurs, I may receive a small commission, but at no additional cost to you.
How and Why I Track My Writing Time (Using Toggl)
Since 2013, I have been tracking the time I spend writing. This has resulted in my glorious end of year posts, filled with charts on the number of hours I’ve spent, and calculations on exactly how long I spend on each stage of writing a book.
Every single time I post about the results of my time tracking, I get questions on how I track my time. So question no more: I’m about to tell you the hows and the whys of tracking my writing time.
First, Why I Track My Writing Time
I spent years not really writing consistently. While some writers can quite effectively write a couple times a month or year, for me this resulted in me writing 2-5 chapters of a number of stories and never finishing any of them.
Then a few things happened: I read the book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, which helped me think about turning writing into a habit, I attended a book signing by Shannon Hale, where she recommended that writers write regularly, and I read a blog post by Susan Dennard on keeping a writing journal. Feeling all-around inspired, I began tracking my writing time.
In doing so I discovered:
- Writing new words is only one small aspect of my writing process. Research, outlining, revisions—these are all essential to my writing process.
- All the other writing-related things I work on help me as a writer and count as writing too. If I read a book on writing, attend a writing conference, or critique someone else’s writing, it builds my skills as a writer.
- I am a slow writer. While I still sometimes do it, tracking daily word counts can be discouraging, while tracking my writing time helps me see my progress.
- Tracking my writing time holds me accountable. I’m less likely to waste time browsing social media or procrastinating writing when I’m going to log my time.
How I Track My Writing Time
From 2014 to 2017, I tracked my writing time using a notebook/writing journal. Every day I would write down what I did and how much time I spent on it. Or, if I didn’t do anything, I had to write that down.
It was really motivating. And it also resulted in a lot of manual math at the end of each year to figure out how much time I spent writing.
Then in the summer of 2017, I moved, and during the move I lost that year’s writing journal. I also stopped tracking time and almost gave up writing. As one does. (Did I really want to be a writer? Do I really have what it takes to be a writer? Don’t we all stand in front of the mirror and ask that on occasion?)
But then I kept writing.
In 2018 I decided to take the plunge and use a digital option to track my time: Toggl Track. And I’ve absolutely loved it.
Toggl Track
Toggl Track is a time tracking app that you can use in a web browser and as an app. What I love about it is how much it allows you to customize in terms of categories, projects, and tags, and how you can easily generate reports. The basic plan (which I use) is free, though with the paid version you can do extra types of reports, save reports, do more with teams, etc.
While I personally love Toggl, there are lots of other good time tracking apps out there. However, regardless of what you decide to use, the conceptual approach I took to customizing Toggl may be useful to you.
The Big Picture Categories
Toggl’s structure uses big-picture categories which you can subdivide into smaller task.
For Toggl, the big picture category is called a Client.
I use clients to for the big-picture categories of how I spend my time:
- Development
- Marketing
- Personal Writing
- Submissions
- Each novel that I write becomes a big picture category (for example, “Mary Bennet,” “Mary Bennet Book 2,” “Mary Bennet book 3,” etc.)
While “client” is very much a business-oriented approach to looking at these bigger categories, it reminds me that I need to put time into each of these things. Developing my writing, doing personal writing, submissions—these are each things I can feed by putting time into them.
Depending on the year, I spend more or less on each category. For example, when I was searching for an agent, the “Submissions” category needed a lot more hours. Now it only takes a handful of hours, for the few short stories I submit to publishers each year.
Breaking Your Big Picture Categories into Projects
Big picture categories help me to focus on my big picture writing goals—the larger areas of how I spend my time. But to be really useful, I need to create individual projects for each larger category.
In Toggl, each client can be given as many “projects” as needed.
This is a pretty standard list of projects for one of my novels:
Each draft is a separate project. Research is a project. Outlining is a project. And apparently I accidentally created two separate newspaper research projects.
Here are the projects I created for my Development category:
These are each things that help me develop myself as a writer, or help me assist other writers on their own journeys.
Next, let’s look at the current projects in my Marketing category:
These projects are flexible—you can easily add new projects in a category or archive ones you no longer need. I need to retire the Book Reviews project, because I’m not using that at the moment. And “Twitter Outreach” needs to be combined with “Social Media,” because that’s how I’ve been logging it. (Note: I don’t log just any time I spend on Twitter and social media—that would be a slippery slope to doing more writing. Rather, I log things like creating book-related posts, participating in Twitter events like #momswritersclub, etc.)
Side Note: I haven’t done this, but with a paid subscription to Toggl you can get more granular and create Sub-Projects (projects within each of these projects, which are called Tasks).
Logging the Time: Descriptions and Tags
Once I have my big picture categories (clients) and projects set up to my satisfaction, I’m ready to time track.
On a web browser, this is what the Track view looks like.
I select the Project (with its client) that I am working on, I type in a description of what I’m doing, and then I press the start button.
Editing and Adding Missed Entries
There are plenty of times when I forget to press either the start or the stop button, or forgot to track my writing time entirely. But it’s really easy to fix. I click the + button to add a missed entry or I click on an entry’s attributes to edit them.
Tracking Word Count
There are a lot of dedicated word count trackers out there, and if you put a big focus on tracking your word count, you may want to use one of them.
Word count is not my focus, but I do track it when I’m writing a first draft. I just do this in Toggl. I write my total number of words written in the description, and then I add a tag for word count, to make it easy to sort for word count later in the reports.
I pulled up the word count tag for the first draft of my third Mary Bennet novel, The Lady’s Guide to Death and Deception, and you can see different amounts written on different chapters (and if you click on an entry, you can get more detailed information, like the date):
Other Views and Reports
One of my favorite parts of tracking my time is looking at the Week View. This helps me to see my progress over the course of the week, and what I’ve been working on.
In addition to sorting by project, you can also sort by your clients/big picture categories.
One of my other favorite reports is the Month View:
I like the month view for looking at my big-picture progress for the month. Over fifty hours on my current novel meant that I made lots of progress on the book. It also means that I didn’t let all my other types of writing tasks become more important than what I had selected as that month’s big goal.
Sorting for a Particular Client or Category (or for a Selection of Clients or Categories):
One of the most useful things about digital tracking is the ability to see more specific details about the time spent on just one segment of my writing time.
For example, I went to reports and set it for the year 2021. Then I selected three clients or big picture categories, “Mary Bennet,” “Mary Bennet Book 2,” and “Mary Bennet Book 3” so I could see the time spent that year on my entire Mary Bennet spy series.
I spent only 20 minutes on the first book in the series, 29 hours on the second book in the series, and 386 hours on the third book in the series.
However, this isn’t a full look at what I did on the series. The first Mary Bennet book was released in 2021, and I want to add in the time I spent related to marketing the book.
I leave the existing filters for the three Mary Bennet books, and then, under projects, I also select Mary Bennet Marketing:
This now gives me the full look at the time I spent both writing—and marketing—my Mary Bennet spy series during 2021.
As you can see, the time went up from 416 hours to 538 hours, because I spent 122 hours on marketing related tasks.
Moving Forward, One Hour at a Time
There’s so much that you can’t control about writing. You can’t control if your book will sell, or if it sells, if it will do well. There are ideas that have to be abandoned, periods of time where the creative well is dry and the muse has fled.
You can’t always even control how much time and energy you have to put towards writing. Life circumstances and other obligations can have a huge impact on what time you have to put toward writing. If this year continues in the way that I expect, I will likely have less time to spend writing this year than I spent writing in 2022.
But what I like about time tracking is that it helps me recognize how I’m spending the writing time that I have. Every hour I put towards my writing is a step forward—it’s a recognition is that I’m bringing my stories and dreams to life.
Have you tried tracking time or word count? Does it work for you? Do you a similar method, or do you use a different method? I would love to hear in the comments!