Pride and Prejudice's Two Failed Proposals: What Darcy's and Mr Collins's Have in Common

Elizabeth Bennet turns down two proposals of marriage between one November and the following April. One of them is the funniest scene in the novel and one of them is the most painful, and Austen built them to be read against each other. Both men make the same mistake. Only one of them notices.

• ✅Both open with a list. Collins itemises his reasons for marrying; Darcy itemises his reasons for not.
• ✅Both assume the answer.One has his patroness's approval, the other has ten thousand a year, and neither has asked.
• ✅Both mention her money. Collins tells her what she is worth; Darcy tells her what her family costs him.
• ✅One of them listens. That difference is the plot of the second half of the book.

This is a piece about how the two scenes rhyme. Darcy's own words in that proposal, and the letter he writes the next morning, have an essay of their own and are not re-explained here; what this post quotes is Elizabeth's side of both scenes. If you would rather sit through one of them, the playable Pride and Prejudice gives you the Collins proposal as a scene you have to get out of.

💍 The short answer: the book pairs them on purpose

Austen puts fifteen chapters between them, the first the morning after the Netherfield ball on 26 November and the second at Hunsford the following April, and gives them the same shape. Each man arrives certain, speaks at length about himself, mentions Elizabeth's financial position out loud, and is astonished to be refused. Each then blames her for the refusal rather than his own performance. Reading them together turns a comic set piece into a diagnosis of something the novel takes seriously.

There is a third proposal, which succeeds. Darcy asks again in chapter fifty-eight, after the letter, after Pemberley and after Lydia, and this time he says almost nothing about himself. Three proposals, one acceptance, and the acceptance goes to the only man who came back with different material.

The playable version puts you in the Longbourn parlour with the door shut: refuse Mr. Collins politely and watch him not hear it, refuse him plainly enough that he does, or let your mother answer for you and find out what that costs. Role-play Pride and Prejudice →

🎩 Mr. Collins proposes by not listening

Chapter nineteen opens with Mr. Collins asking Mrs. Bennet for a private audience with her daughter, which she grants on the spot and then tries to enforce; Elizabeth attempts to leave the room and is ordered to stay and hear him. The proposal that follows is famous for being a monologue, and the specific joke is that it is a monologue with an agenda.

“Almost as soon as I entered the house I singled you out as the companion of my future life. But before I am run away with by my feelings on this subject, perhaps it will be advisable for me to state my reasons for marrying.”

The reasons arrive in his own order and the order is the comedy. First, that a clergyman in easy circumstances ought to set the example of matrimony in his parish. Second, that he is convinced it will add greatly to his happiness. Third, which he says perhaps he ought to have mentioned earlier, that his patroness told him to. Lady Catherine's instruction is then quoted at length, including her advice that he choose a gentlewoman “able to make a small income go a good way.”

He also tells Elizabeth exactly what she is worth: one thousand pounds in the four per cents, which will not be hers until her mother dies. He raises it to promise he will never mention it again. And when she refuses, he explains that she cannot mean it, because refusing the first proposal is the usual practice of elegant females. Being told no is not information to him; it is a stage in a procedure.

What happens next in the house is the other half of the joke. Mrs. Bennet runs to the library demanding that her husband make Lizzy accept, and Mr. Bennet, who has been reading, delivers the sentence that ends the matter.

“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.”

The postscript is the sharpest part. Three days later he is engaged to Charlotte Lucas, having made two offers of marriage inside seventy-two hours. His feelings, as advertised, survived the disappointment comfortably.

🕯️ Darcy makes the same mistake, played straight

Fifteen chapters later, at the Hunsford parsonage, Darcy walks in and does it again in a different register. He opens with feeling and then spends the bulk of the speech on the obstacles, which is to say on Elizabeth's family, her connections and her position relative to his. Austen's narrator names the register without flinching: his sense of her inferiority, of its being a degradation.

The next sentence is the one that makes the two scenes twins. He spoke of apprehension and anxiety, but his countenance expressed real security. Like Mr. Collins, he has already decided what the answer will be, and like Mr. Collins he has arrived with a list, the only difference being that his list is better written and aimed at people Elizabeth loves rather than at her bank balance.

Elizabeth's reply begins with a piece of ice that has become one of the most quoted lines in Austen, and it is worth being clear about who receives it, because it is often misattributed to the Collins scene.

“In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however unequally they may be returned.”

She is telling him that there is an etiquette for this, that she knows it, and that she is choosing not to perform it. It is the same refusal she gave Mr. Collins, translated into his own idiom. Then the scene turns and she says the thing she cannot take back, naming him “the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”

🎭 Why one is a joke and the other lands

Because of what happens in the twenty-four hours afterwards. Mr. Collins goes downstairs, reports that Elizabeth was being coy, and proposes to somebody else. Darcy goes away, sits up half the night, and writes out the answer to every accusation she made, including the ones that were true. The essay on that letter is here, and it is the hinge of the whole novel.

Austen's point is not that Darcy's proposal was better. On the page it is arguably worse, because Collins is merely absurd and Darcy is insulting on purpose about people Elizabeth loves. The difference is entirely in the response to being refused. One man treats the refusal as a script he already knows. The other treats it as evidence.

By chapter fifty-eight he has learned the lesson well enough to make the third proposal almost unbearably short. He asks whether her feelings have changed, tells her one word will silence him for ever, and then listens. Everything the book has been arguing about is in the fact that the successful proposal is the one with the least talking in it.

Chapters nineteen, thirty-four and fifty-eight are free at Project Gutenberg and every line above was checked against them. The woman who accepted the proposal Elizabeth refused has a much better case than Elizabeth allows, and if the question is whether Darcy deserved either answer, that argument is here.