Burke, L and Chapman, H.K (2022) 'Casting Mr Collins; or how a zombie film returned us to the novel.' In: Sinanan, K, Bautz, A and Cook, D, eds. Austen after 200: new reading spaces. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, pp. 187-207. ISBN 9783031083716
Abstract
Mr William Collins, perhaps the most misunderstood character in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, is a character of contradictions. He thinks of himself as serious but is dismissed as silly, is at once obsessively formal but completely inappropriate, obsequious but constantly offending. It is fitting that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a screen adaptation we initially overlooked, would leave us wondering what would happen if we took Mr Collins as seriously as he takes himself. What would that say about the entailment, Elizabeth’s refusal, and Charlotte’s decision to marry him? To answer this question, we watched every English language screen adaptation of Pride and Prejudice available (76 years’ worth of Mr Collins) and brushed up on our eighteenth-century moral theory. Focusing on six on-screen characterisations of Mr Collins, we examined the shorthand used by filmmakers to support Elizabeth’s rejection. We analysed how Austen satirised eighteenth-century moral theory and what these texts tell us about Mr Collins and his romantic rivals. We looked closely at the money (who has it, who wants it, who will get it) and how it impacts the character’s moral conduct and motivations to marry. In reviewing how Mr Collins is portrayed on screen and investigating the ways Austen invites comparison in the text, we confirmed that, indeed, he is pretty desirable in terms of eligibility. We discovered that money is the most significant moral motivator in Pride and Prejudice and that there is no better character to track the movement of money than Mr Collins. It is this understanding that allows us to recognise what Mr Collins has to offer, why a rejection from Elizabeth Bennet was so radical, and, to appreciate Charlotte Lucas as more than a desperate woman on the verge of spinsterhood.
| Item Type: | Book Chapter or Section |
|---|---|
| Divisions: | School of Writing, Publishing and the Humanities |
| Related URLs: | |
| Date Deposited: | 05 Feb 2025 09:28 |
| Last Modified: | 05 Feb 2025 09:28 |
| URI / Page ID: | https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/16859 |
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