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: An Unlikely Missionary
   
  A sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice  
   
  2nd edition
   
   
  by Skylar Hamilton Burris
  © Copyright 2017
  
   
  Chapter One
   
   
  My husband sat cowering before his austere benefactress. His eyes
  were averted from her majestic person, and for what must have been the
  first time in his adult life, he had nary a word to say. The teacup shuddered
  in his hand, and its delicate porcelain made a most indelicate clanging as it
  tottered against the saucer below.  Her pronouncement appeared to have
  fallen as a mighty blow to him, and if the thrust of her words failed to make
  me flinch, it was only because I had been steadied by a long habit of
  resignation, a practice I had first begun to adopt the hour I learned I was not
  pretty.
  Lady Catherine stated her suggestion as if it were a command, and
  she did not seem to doubt that it would be obeyed. What could I expect my
  husband to say? Mr. Collins was a man whose opinions quickly yielded to
  the influence of superior persons.
  