Sure, the two Pride and Prejudice characters don't have the all-consuming, uncompromising passion of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy—but how many couples do?
Pride and Prejudice is 200 years old this week, and that means Austen fans have an excuse to reread and celebrate one of the great literary romances in history: that between Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins.
That's a joke, of course, not just because Charlotte is not the hero of the book, but because her romance is...well, not much of a romance. The Reverend Mr. Collins is, as Elizabeth says, a "conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man." He has no love for Charlotte, nor, indeed, for anybody—he simply wants a wife since a wife is what clergymen are supposed to have. He proposes to our heroine Elizabeth Bennet first, and when she turns him down, he takes a couple of days off and then lights on Charlotte, who is there and available. Charlotte accepts with open eyes. As Austen says:
Mr. Collins, to be sure, was neither sensible nor agreeable; his society was irksome, and his attachment to her must be imaginary. But still he would be her husband. Without thinking highly either of men or matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want. This preservative she had now obtained; and at the age of twenty-seven, without having ever been handsome, she felt all the good luck of it.
Elizabeth is horrified, and her esteem for Charlotte, and their close friendship, are both seriously damaged. Elizabeth cannot believe that Charlotte will be happy with her foolish, embarrassing husband. And yet, when she visits the couple, Charlotte doesn't seem to be managing so badly. She encourages her husband's gardening as the best way to get him out of the house, ignores him with fair success the rest of the time, and, in general she does, "not seem to ask for compassion."