Austen August: A Pride and Prejudice Read-A-Long discussion

It's everyone's favourite visitor you guys- Mr Collins.

Oh dear- here we go. Are we ready to play a drinking game every time he mentions Lady Catherine??

Right, anyway.

So the chapter opens with Mr Bennet announcing that they will be having a guest that evening at dinner- a Mr Collins, who is his cousin. His cousin who is set to inherit the house and property of Longbourn from Mr Bennet, in lieu of a male heir, which means that the Bennet women all need to be very nice to Collins in the hopes that he will not kick them out as soon as he takes over. Cheerful, eh?

Mr Bennet reads Collins' letter aloud to the family and Lizzie is shocked by his deference to Lady Catherine (here we go~). Mr Collins arrives, and is described as being 25 years old, of a grave and stately appearance with very formal manners.

Mr Collins spends the dinner basically congratulation Mrs Bennet on her five beautiful daughters...a lot. The daughters in question are uncomfortable with this praise, but as you can imagine, Mrs Bennet is smug and over the moon at every word. He says “I am cautious of appearing forward and precipitate. But I can assure the young ladies that I come prepared to admire them”. (Uh huh, we know exactly what you come planning to do, Mr Collins).

Mr Collins spends the rest of the evening admiring, very vocally, the entire house, the walls, the shelves- and spends 15 minutes apologising to Mrs Bennet after asking which of her daughters cooked the meal, only to find out that none of them did.

If ever a strange man comes to my home saying he comes prepared to admire me, I will be running in the opposite direction. Mr. Collins seems like such a shifty man without the decency of being covert.

haha he really does. he is such a creeper