Pride and Prejudice is a novel about men and women who feel they have to marry to be happy, successful and accepted. The author illustrates characters that are so worried about marriage, that they accept the first proposal for fear of shame if never porsed to again. Yet, Austen also shows the reader characters that do not worry about society's pressures and go through so much to find themselves thus leading to marriage for all the right reasons. In Pride and Prejudice, Austen shows the reader which relationships she finds acceptable and also the relationships that she does not. Through the marriage of Mr. Collins and Charlotte Lucas along with Mr. and Mrs. Bennet's marriage, the author clearly depicts which attributes make a marriage unsuccessful. However, through Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet"s marriage, she reveals which qualities make a marriage successful. .
A prime example of a marriage without love in the novel, is the marriage of Mr. Collins and Charlotte Lucas. Austen takes a realistic and down to earth approach about love, using the characters of Charlotte Lucas, who marries the insensible Mr. Collins for his money, to demonstrate that the heart does not always have any say in accepting a marriage proposal. Mr. Collins is at first seen as a respectable clergyman who is to inherit the Bennet estate. Later however, it is illustrated that he is nothing but overly polite and obsessed with the aristocracy. He constantly brags about his wealthy patroness and aristocratic connections. As the novel states, " Mr. Collins was not a sensible man, and the deficiency of nature had been but little assisted by education or society having now a good house and very sufficient income, [he] intended to marry" (60-1). This quote states that along with being an outcast because of his behavior, he is such a wannabe that he steps over the line of decency by listening to every single thing that Lady Catherine de Bourgh advises him to do.
