To think Charlotte Lucas had the right idea

[GreenPillows]

With marrying Mr Collins?

I reread P&P recently through less romantic/more cynical eyes after a bit of age and life experience. I used to think what she did was awful but now I’ve changed my mind.

AIBU?

I'm not convinced that Charlotte was gay, but this is interesting:

"wiithout thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want".

Charlotte definitely had brothers, I can't remember how many but Mrs Bennet has an argument with one of the younger ones when he says he will drink a bottle of wine a day when he grows up, and she says that he shouldn't, or some such. Mr Collins, I am fairly sure, is 25 so younger than Charlotte and annoyingly for her, probably in excellent health! About the entail, the longborne estate will go to Mr Collins in full, the few hundred pounds that will be settled on the girls comes from Mrs Bennet side of the family iirc, probably from her dowry. Jane Austen was such a clever writer, I am loving this thread!

Yes, the 5 Bennet girls would have £5,000 between them when their parents died.

Agree that it was not lack of money that prevented Lady C from learning the piano. I suspect it was a combination or laziness and a fear that she wouldn't be any good at it. Much safer to assert that you would have been brilliant had you learned, than to learn and risk not being very good!

Ha! This was mil exactly! In fact, now I come to think of it, she did bear an uncanny resemblance to Lady Catherine de Bourgh... (though annoyingly without position or fortune).

Actually I rather feel for Mr Collins. Ok, he was a pompous idiot, but in the book he was young, and might in time have been tamed by Charlotte. Also, as someone upthread observed, marriage in those days involved no slumping on the sofa watching Netflix. You were not expected to be your spouse's friend .

Furthermore it transpired late in my grandmother's life that she had docked two years off her age when she met my grandfather, as it was highly embarrassing to still be hanging around at 27. Definitely on the shelf. And this was in the 1920s.

If Charlotte had been gay, I doubt she would have acknowledged it to herself - I'm not sure that someone of her background would have known about the concept of being gay - she'd probably have interpreted any feelings she had for women in terms of friendship-love rather than sexual desire.

I thought it was Anne, Lady C's daughter, who didn't learn the piano but would have been brilliant at it if she had (according to Lady C). Lady C. attributed it to her poor health, as she did re. her not being presented at court and 'depriving it of one of its finest ornaments' or whatever it was Mr Collins gushed.

I think one of the worst jobs for a woman of a certain class was to end up as a companion. Caught in an awkward position between being in with the family and then again not. And knowing that if you blotted your copybook you were out.

I think it's Greenbanks by Dorothy Whipple in which there is a companion who is desperately resentful and unhappy (in spite of having a kind "employer"), particularly when her efforts to nab the vicar come to nought. It's always the vicar! Those were the days for vicars when they seemed to have had hordes of women pursuing them.

Charlotte is definitely pregnant at the end of P&P.

Shortly before Darcy’s second proposal, Mr Bennet is reading one of Mr Collins letters to Elizabeth:
“The rest of his letter is only about his dear Charlotte’s situation, and his expectation of a young olive branch.”

A “young olive branch” in that context only makes sense if it’s a coded reference to an impending baby.

Screaming did a very good analysis of Mary's character there, and why her and Mr Collins wouldn't have worked. I never thought of that, but yes Charlotte was more intelligent (although Mary thought of herself as the family intellectual) and would have managed him and Lady Catherine far better.

@NewSchoolNewName : oh yes, how could I have forgotten the young olive branch?!

@ScreamingValenta; it was both Lady C and Anne. If Lady C had ever learnt, she "would have been a great proficient. And so would Anne, if her health had allowed her to apply."

Thanks, Fifthtimelucky - I'd forgotten that. Must be time for a re-read (any excuse ).

I think she was probably quite prudent. I think the point made in the book is that Mr Collins is ridiculous but he isn't mean or cruel; if you ever read Tenant of Wildfell Hall that is a good description of domestic abuse in an age before divorce, and I'm sure that happened to a great many women. Charlotte is realistic that she was already a certain age and perhaps not as beautiful as other women locally, with no dowry, so she did what she could, realistically otherwise she could have ended up penniless and starving or in a workhouse after those supporting her had died.

I don't think the workhouse thing would have happened, not for a woman of Charlotte's class, unless there was a major unexpected disaster in the family. Some family member or other would have bailed her out, even if on sufferance.

If you were a middle class respectable person, and it was known you had relatives in the workhouse it would have been shameful and people would have despised you for not helping.

Remember in 'Sense and Sensibility' how when the Dashwood girls and their mother were forced out of their home by the evil DIL Fanny, Mrs Dashwood's cousin Sir John Middleton offers them a cottage on his estate to live in. Even though you get the impression that Mrs D and him hardly know each other. Can't have 'ladies' living on the streets or working for a living, can we? Even though it's obviously fine for the plebs, as I suppose most of our ancestors would have been!

Rene

Yeah I think in her case it would've been living on charity of one of her brothers. She's actually in a better position than the Bennetts in that respect, although I suppose worst case scenario the Gardeners would've topped them up a bit. Mrs B is supposed to come from a bit of money: earned money, but still.

I think the point made in the book is that Mr Collins is ridiculous but he isn't mean or cruel - yes, definitely, and nor is he likely to run up gaming debts or get into duels.

If something happened to Mr Collins, I'm fairly sure Lady Catherine would look after Charlotte and any children, as long as Charlotte was prepared to submit to doing everything her way.

Fair enough maybe things wouldn't have got so bad for her if her brother was charitable or extended family stepped in but I guess she took the view of a bird in the hand... I think I would have done the same thing.

Agree that Mary would have made a dreadful wife for Mr Collins, she is far too fond of her own opinion and has no sense whatsoever. Lady Catherine would never tolerate her company. Mr Collins was truly blessed with Charlotte.

On the subject of women's working in the 19th century, even as late as the 1890s, the daughters of middle-class-and-above just did not have jobs. To have one's daughter actually soil her hands for filthy lucre was a sign of an inadequate pater familias. (Though I understand that running a hat shop was seen as "such fun" by some of the more outgoing of aristocratic girls). My grandmother and her sisters, true birds in gilded cages, used to sit in their private sitting room with the newspaper, longingly looking at jobs advertised for girls. Great Aunt Lily, a talented artist, was denied the opportunity to go to art school. The girls were destined from birth to remain single and to be companions to their parents in their old age. In return, gt grandfather set up an extremely generous trust fund for them on the parents' demise. Only my granny, despite her father's extreme disapproval, insisted on her own life. As with so many young women of the era, WWI offered opportunities for independence, and enlistment as a VAD nurse was one such. She served for 4 years in Britain and Malta, meeting her handsome ANZAC sheep farmer on his evacuation from Gallipoli. She told me that success in marriage depended not on "love" but on "esteeming each other". They had a brilliantly successful 46 year partnership until Grandpa eventually died, largely of his war wounds. Her sisters never forgave her for "abandoning" them, and lived barren, though financially comfortable lives.Such waste of youth and talent.

Goodness that's a sad story Polly. What a waste, like you say. Fancy expecting your daughters to remain single to support you in old age. Didn't Queen Victoria try that with her youngest daughter? Your great grandparents sound selfish, sorry.

Good for your granny though! The whole thing would make a great plot for a novel, will you have a go at it?

Polly that's fascinating, and v sad for the sisters. But your granny sounds amazing.

I love threads like this.

This thread has put me in mind a little bit of the threads by comfortable middle class women bemoaning the fact there are so few school hours jobs..no there aren't many but women who need to work just do. I know it was different In the 19th century in terms of stable work and protection but still, I guess at least Charlotte had the luxury of choice in a way.
Although in many ways you were probably less constricted if you were a woman who was part of a large fishing/farming/ artisan family, as you would have always worked in the family industry and so if you didn't marry you were still valuable. Also you would have no social status to worry about!
I need to dig the book out again now-not read it for years! Maybe also an excuse to re watch the 90s series...mmm wet shirt....

Actually I think some of you are right - Mary and Mr Collins wouldn’t have worked.

I think the book Eligible did a job with setting P&P in the present. My main criticism though was that turning Elizabeth and Darcy’s connection into sexual chemistry meant something was lost?

Yes new olive branch is a child. I think it's a reference to psalm 127 - something like, "Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine, Thy children like the olive branches round about thy table"

I agree about being in some ways better off lower down the social scale - dressmakers, for example, could support themselves better. Things hadn't changed that much 100 years later - slightly different social class but Irene feels she has no choice but to marry Soames in the Forsyte Saga. Obviously much less happy outcome in that case.

Also the Mr Collins in the BBC version is awful - unattractive, red shiny face, older, sickeningly annoying, almost unbearable. In the book Mr Collins is not that bad! He is boring and embarrassing, but he is in his mid 20s and I don't think physically unattractive. The keira knightly version has him as awkward and droning on, but physically fairly average.

I love how funny the BBC Mr Collins is, but making him unbearable doesn't show how risky and reckless Lizzie's choice to reject him was. When her father died, the five sisters and their mother would have been at the mercy of their uncle's charity. And whilst he was lovely, taking on up to six dependent adults for life would have been expensive!

Miss Bates in the novel Emma is a good example of the ‘genteel poverty’ Charlotte could have ended up in had she remained unmarried - an object of general pity and charity, dependant on others for pretty much everything.

It’s not just the financial aspect, it’s the comparative lack of respect that older single women had in society.

The exception to this - as Emma herself says - is when a single woman is rich: ‘A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable, old maid! the proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.’