The redemption of Mr. Collins: sympathy for an unloved man

Off Topic: What would a novel about Mr. Collins look like?

The unlovable often start as the unloved

We’re meant to laugh at him, of course. His painful awkwardness and pompous letters, his absurd proposal to Elizabeth Bennet, his blind worship of the detestable Lady Catherine. But there’s something about Mr. William Collins that has always felt unsettling to me, something too painful and too sad for laughter. I know that an unlovable man is usually made so by being unloved at the start.

What if Mr. Collins isn’t just a comic buffoon? Whatever Jane Austen intended with this brilliant characterisation of a particular English type of his class and time, I always found that it shaved a little too close some of the people I’ve met for comfort. Perhaps even to me.

What if we took him out of the comedic context of a Rom-Com? What if he were not simply a caricature, but a real character, a portrait of a real person, in a different kind of novel? What would his “backstory” be? The speculations turn rather darker than the tone of an Austen book when one thinks about what kind of upbringing would create such a broken human soul. Austen describes his background only with a few words; his father was “illiterate and miserly.” But in that brief flash we see a whole childhood of loveless misery for a moderately intelligent, probably naturally bookish and sensitive boy.

William Collins was never destined for greatness. But what we - and Austen - describe as his mediocrity of intellect and accomplishment could have been mitigated by a better character. Had he been a warm man, with some self-awareness and humility, he might have been capable of being useful to others; to a wife, children or congregation. His failure was not because of his lack of brilliance - brilliant men are often equally insufferable - but his lack of what Catholic religious call “human formation”.

Is he malicious? I don’t think so. As Jane Bennett said, he may be stupid but he’s not vicious. (He is a genuinely keen gardener, after all.) But is that only because of his weakness? If he had ever achieved any real power - the social standing he craved so desperately - would he have turned that power to good or evil? His behaviour suggests that he is incapable of true malice because malice requires a level of intentionality and self-awareness he does not seem to possess.

What if, beneath his rigid, foolish, boastful and self-regarding, socially frantic exterior, he’s a deeply lonely man, desperate for affection, intimacy and true connection but utterly unequipped to find it? What if he were, in reality, a truly tragic figure, blocked by his own interior frustrations from ever becoming the man he was intended by God to be? Was there a capacity for kindness, generosity, pastoral care, friendship or even romantic love, equally held back?

So, I’ve always wondered what a story of his redemption would look like. What would it take to save him?

Hidden rage

A smile? Or a grimace of pain?

We all remember David Bamber’s extraordinary portrayal of Mr. Collins in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice adaptation. He brought out a particularly unnerving quality in the character. His physical awkwardness - rigid posture, clipped and overly formal speech, his tight, painfully nervous and discomfiting smiles, suggests a man constantly on the verge of bursting with suppressed anger, or perhaps more tellingly, bursting into tears. His obsequiousness is not really comical but almost seething, as though his endless need for approval masks a deep, unacknowledged rage at its absence. When Elizabeth rejects him, his rigid formality barely conceals a simmering resentment.

In Bamber’s performance, Mr. Collins is not merely ridiculous, he is suffocating; his own discomfort makes everyone else uncomfortable. I couldn't help wondering how he would develop as a person, as a man and husband, as he grew older. Would Charlotte’s equal - though less odious and more pragmatic - selfishness ever help him?

I've always wondered what it would take to rescue a man like that, how could he be helped to be at least a normal man, capable of genuine affection or intimacy. How could he be helped to become a useful clergyman, an authentic pastor of souls?

Understanding Mr. Collins: a mind trapped in rigid walls

Mr. Collins is not, at his core, a wicked man. But he is a man who does harm - not through cruelty, but through a lack of awareness, a lack of capacity, and a desperate hunger for validation that blinds him to the feelings of others. He does not set out to wound, yet he does so all the same, because he cannot conceive of a world where the needs of others matter as much as his own. His mind is a fortress of rigid expectations and desperate needs, built on the belief that if he follows the rules, if he pleases the right people, if he upholds the right decorum, then he will be safe. Then he will be worthy and perhaps even receive the love he craves.

But, to play the psychologist for a moment, it is that very thinking that leads him to be transactional in his relationships. His proposal to Elizabeth is not just self-important; it is lauded by readers as one of Austen’s most insightful examinations of complete emotional incompetence. He assumes she must accept him, not because he loves her, but because he is offering something he has been taught to believe is of the greatest possible value: a secure match, as Charlotte later put it, “a comfortable home” and social and financial stability for life¹. When she refuses, he simply does not hear her. He assumes she is performing some act of feminine modesty, that she will, in time, submit to what is “reasonable.” He simply does not understand that love, respect, and dignity are not things that can be negotiated.

Mr. Collins presents as a man with a rigid, anxious, and socially maladaptive personality. This makes him difficult, even oppressive, but not genuinely evil. In many ways, he is a man starved of genuine human affection and esteem, and having never received it, he does not know how to give it. What Elizabeth and her family take for his stupidity is probably in reality his emotional blindness - his ability to at least competently read and comprehend books (probably much more difficult books than our current crop of university students could manage) was proved by his having graduated from one of the Oxbridge institutions.

His relentless adherence to hierarchy and social convention is a survival mechanism, not a choice, and in many ways makes him more “stupid” than he needs to be. He lacks true empathy, not because he is cruel, but because his emotional development appears stunted.

His exaggerated servility toward Lady Catherine de Bourgh and his fixation on the material aspects of status indicate that he views relationships primarily in transactional terms. His rigid, rehearsed manner of speaking indicates he does not engage with others with any spontaneous or sincere emotional exchange, instead literally preparing scripts to deliver a pretence of social exchange.

His character does not fall into true narcissism or sadism, as he does not manipulate others with intent to harm. but his inability to recognize personal boundaries and emotional autonomy and needs in others makes him a functionally oppressive personality. His suffocating nature is not due to cruelty but due to his own emotional starvation. He has likely never experienced unconditional affection, and as a result, he does not know how to give it.

A Man Starved for Affection

The more I think about Mr. Collins, the sadder he becomes. He’s a man who has built his entire identity on external approval and social status; Lady Catherine’s notice, the appearance of propriety, the rules of social hierarchy. But where is his real self? Has he ever had the chance to develop one? His fixation on trivial things - shelves in closets, the number of windows and staircases and exact measurements of fireplaces in a house - feels like a stand-in for something deeper. Fixating on these details is safe; they don’t require vulnerability or emotional risk. People, however, do.

It’s no surprise, then, that he struggles in relationships. His proposal to Elizabeth isn’t just clewless - it’s terrifyingly transactional. He assumes she must want him because, to an accountant, the match makes sense, as it seemed to Charlotte Lucas’s calculation.

For him, Elizabeth’s rejection isn’t just a personal slight; it’s a fundamental challenge to the way he understands himself. And the way he reacts - insisting she’ll change her mind, trying to reason her into love - suggests someone who has never been allowed to engage with his own emotions, let alone those of another person.

What Would It Take for Him to Change?

If Mr. Collins were to have a redemption arc, it wouldn’t be a quick or easy one. Change would require him to break free from the rigid framework that has defined his existence, but it would have to be a catastrophic one, an erasure or collapse of the social structures he uses to support his sense of self. It would demand a moment of crisis - some external event that forces him to confront the emptiness of his life. Maybe Lady Catherine discards him, showing him just how conditional and meaningless her favour really was. Maybe Charlotte, ever patient and pragmatic, leaves him widowed and alone, forcing him to fend for himself in a world where social standing no longer shields him.

But I think it would take something much larger. Maybe the complete collapse of the social milieu he lives in. Maybe if Napoleon had conquered England - the early 19th century “What if” alternate history, the equivalent to the English character of a zombie apocalypse. Had he somehow been stripped of these external markers of worth, he would have had to turn inward to find out if any true strength was there.

Maybe he’d find himself in a place where status doesn’t matter - working in a remote rural parish where no one is impressed by his connections, or living among people who value kindness over rank. Maybe he’d finally meet someone, make a friend, who sees past his bluster and challenges him, gently but firmly, to be better.

In short, he’d have to unlearn his entire way of being, to let go of the idea that value comes from pleasing those above him. He’d need to develop actual relationships, out of necessity at first, but built on mutual respect rather than performance.

Could He Ever Be a True Pastor?

There is, of course, the issue of his vocation - if we take Anglican orders with any seriousness². Mr. Collins is ostensibly a clergyman, yet nothing in his behaviour suggests genuine spiritual wisdom or pastoral concern. His faith seems performative, his sermons likely full of the same empty rhetoric as his conversation. But could this, too, change?

For Mr. Collins to become a true shepherd of souls, he would have to rediscover the actual heart of Christianity - a faith not of hierarchy and social climbing, or scholarly erudition, but of humility, love, self-sacrifice and service, centred on the person of Christ, love incarnate. This might require experiencing his own profound suffering, the loss of his status, the collapse of his illusions, before he could understand what it truly means to care for others.

Perhaps, through hardship, he might discover a simpler, truer way of living, one in which he learns to listen, to comfort, to offer something more than self-serving moralizing. A Mr. Collins who has been humbled, who has been forced to confront his own failings and repented of them, might yet turn to Christ, and grow into a man who can lead with gentleness rather than pomposity, and guide with wisdom rather than rigid rules.

More Than a Punchline

We tend to remember Mr. Collins as a joke, a caricature of social absurdity. But maybe that’s because we only see him at his worst, when he’s most desperate to prove himself. In the novel, he is not agreeable at all - he is rigidly obsessed with getting his own way, indifferent to the needs of others, and unable to engage in any true give-and-take, and his suppressed anger at his incapacities generates moments of genuine cruelty.

And yet, I can’t help but wonder what he might have been if he’d ever been given a chance - a real chance - to be something more than a footnote in other people’s lives.

Maybe, with the right push, or a genuine friend, he could have been someone worth knowing. Maybe he could have even been a real pastor of souls.

1. As many have pointed out, Charlotte and Mr. Collins’ pragmatism - echoed by Elizabeth’s mother - was a genuine concern in the post-Christian England of no “social safety net” and hellish workhouses for the poor.

2. The fact that most of Austen’s clergymen are either nonentities, failed gentlemen or vaguely villainous tells us that even in her time, Anglican orders meant almost nothing on the spiritual level. It shouldn’t be a wonder reading her that in our time the English have on the whole abandoned religion, as completely irrelevant.