title: Mr Collins Considered: Approaches to Jane Austen
author:  Ivor Morris 
description: Mr Collins is used as a point of entry into Jane Austen's world, bringing into focus the demands of a formal, materialistic society and the way different people respond to them.
zlib_text: ### Chapter 16
  
  
  As no objection was made to the young people's engagement with their aunt, and
  all Mr. Collins's scruples of leaving Mr. and Mrs. Bennet for a single evening
  during his visit were most steadily resisted, the coach conveyed him and his
  five cousins at a suitable hour to Meryton; and the girls had the pleasure of
  hearing, as they entered the drawing-room, that Mr. Wickham had accepted their
  uncle's invitation, and was then in the house.
  
  
  When this information was given, and they had all taken their seats, Mr.
  Collins was at leisure to look around him and admire, and he was so much
  struck with the size and furniture of the apartment, that he declared he might
  almost have supposed himself in the small summer breakfast parlour at Rosings;
  a comparison that did not at first convey much gratification; but when Mrs.
  Phillips understood from him what Rosings was, and who was its proprietor--
  when she had listened to the description of only one of Lady Catherine's
  drawing-rooms