Key Quote
“"Your portion is unhappily so small that it will in all likelihood undo the effects of your loveliness and amiable qualifications"”
Mr Collins · Chapter 19
Focus: “undo the effects of your loveliness”
Collins tells Elizabeth she should accept him because her poverty makes her undesirable to anyone else — framing a devastating insult as a kindness. The cruelty is amplified by his total unawareness of how offensive he is being.
Technique 1 — BACKHANDED COMPLIMENT
Collins constructs a backhanded compliment (a remark that seems to praise but actually insults): Elizabeth has 'loveliness and amiable qualifications' BUT these are negated by her small fortune. The verb 'undo' is devastating — it means her personal qualities are literally cancelled by her poverty. Beauty and character count for nothing without money.
The word 'unhappily' pretends to sympathise while delivering a financial verdict. The formal diction — 'portion', 'in all likelihood', 'qualifications' — gives the insult the tone of a legal assessment. Collins speaks like a valuer (a person who assesses worth) rather than a suitor, calculating Elizabeth's market value with cold precision.
Key Words
RAD — STAGNATE
Collins cannot perceive that he is being insulting because he operates entirely within an economic logic of marriage — to him, telling Elizabeth her fortune is too small is simply stating a fact, like informing someone the weather is bad. He lacks the emotional intelligence to understand that reducing a person to their financial worth is dehumanising.
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Technique 2 — AUSTEN'S SATIRICAL LENS
Austen positions the reader to see what Collins cannot: that his 'generosity' in proposing despite Elizabeth's poverty is itself an insult. The satire operates through perspectival irony — Collins's perspective (I am doing her a favour) is completely at odds with the reader's (he is being appalling). Elizabeth's rejection is thus simultaneously a personal decision and a moral correction of his entire worldview.
The passage also satirises the marriage market itself: Collins is not wrong that Elizabeth's small portion reduces her options. His cruelty lies not in the observation but in its delivery — he transforms a systemic injustice into a personal selling point. He exploits the very system that disadvantages Elizabeth.
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Context (AO3)
DOWRIES & PORTIONS
A woman's 'portion' was her dowry — the money she brought to a marriage. The Bennet girls have only £1,000 each (about £50 per year in interest), which was modest by genteel standards. Collins's assessment is financially accurate but morally repugnant: he treats Elizabeth's worth as a sum to be calculated.
THE ECONOMICS OF REFUSAL
Elizabeth's refusal of Collins is socially radical: she rejects financial security in favour of personal integrity. Charlotte Lucas's subsequent acceptance of Collins shows how limited women's choices were — Charlotte marries without love because the alternative (permanent dependence on her family) is worse.
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WOW — OBJECTIFICATION (Nussbaum)
Martha Nussbaum identifies seven forms of objectification — treating a person as a thing. Collins's proposal commits at least three: instrumentality (treating Elizabeth as a tool for his purposes), fungibility (treating her as interchangeable with other possible wives), and denial of subjectivity (ignoring her feelings and perspective). His financial assessment of Elizabeth is objectification in its purest form: he literally calculates her monetary value and finds it wanting. Austen's satire is devastating because Collins doesn't know he's objectifying Elizabeth — he believes he's being helpful.
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