Essay — Comedy in Pride and Prejudice (A)

Write a critical commentary on the following passage, relating it to the presentation of comic moments, here and elsewhere in the novel. [A Levels 2022] In this passage replete with comic moments, Mr Collins requests a “private audience” with Elizabeth before proposing to her via a verbose monologue. Austen, by turning Collins (and to a lesser extent Mrs Bennet) into a target for ridicule, constructs comedy out of multiple layers of incongruity: between characters’ outward professions and inward feelings, between their inappropriate attitudes and socially-expected courtesy, and between their fixed understandings and the reality of the situation. In this manner, Austen presents comic moments as opportunities to highlight the follies and deficits of characters, notably their lack of sincerity, tact, and above all, discernment. Austen first foregrounds the humorous disparity between the words and feelings of characters, revealing how maladroit pretences that characters put up can often engender comic moments. This incongruity surfaces most prominently between the aloof formality of Collins’ language and his professed love for Elizabeth. From the beginning, Collins embarked on the proposal in a “very orderly manner”, with “all the observances… part of the business”. His formal diction (“orderly”, “observances”, “business”) belongs to the official, professional sphere rather than the domain of love and romance, with the highly impersonal nature of his planned proposal emphasised by the use of intensifiers (“very”) and absolutes (“all”). This unexpected emotionlessness in a typically heartfelt proposal creates a comic effect for the reader, with the humour drawing attention to Collins’ evident lack of earnestness. Collins’ stilted formality shines through in his monologue: he begins by listing his “reasons for marrying” with methodical signposting (“firstly”, “secondly”, “thirdly”) as if he were making a logical argument rather than professing his love, creating a humorous disjunct between his manner of speech and the subject matter of romance that emphasises his lack of true affection for Elizabeth. This comic inconsistency is further highlighted when Collins dramatically discusses the purported depth of his feelings: he claims that he wishes to express “in the most animated language… the violence of [his] affection”. The hyperbolic diction (“violence”), coupled with the exaggerated use of the superlative “most”, highlights the comic irony underlying this declaration: as established earlier, Collins’ formal language has been far from “animated” and his superficial affections far from “violen[t]”. Similarly, Elizabeth almost laughs at the stark contrast between Collins’ claim to be “run away with by [his] feelings” and “all his solemn composure”: even though he asserts that his love for Elizabeth is so intense that it makes him lose his reason, this is comically incongruous with his excessively formal, restrained manner (“solemn composure”) underscore