Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet? In defence of Charlotte Collins.

    In his book Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet?: Further Puzzles in Classic Fiction, Professor John Sutherland raised the question of how the rumour of Elizabeth Bennet's imminent engagement to Mr Darcy could have reached the ears of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, prompting her to make her bossy and interfering call on Elizabeth at Longbourn in volume 3 of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. 

    I love this sort of criticism, which used to be referred to as the "How many children had Lady Macbeth?" school. Now desperately unfashionable, it treats characters in novels as real people who exist beyond the parameters of the written narrative and can thus be followed and investigated outside the boundaries of the text. It makes an interesting game, and it is certainly far less absurd than many of the currently fashionable schools of criticism. Professor Sutherland is right, that if we cannot provide any reasonable explanation of how and why this rumour travelled from Hertfordshire to Kent in such a short space of time, it does amount to a flaw in the story, something he contemplates with horror. Surely Jane Austen could not have got it wrong?!! 

    

    Austen makes it clear that there is a network of women in Meryton who thrive on gossip, and Mrs Bennet is one of them, along with her sister Mrs Phillips. But Mrs Bennet, delighted though she is at the engagement of Jane to Bingley, after her cruel disappointment the previous winter, would never in a hundred years start to imagine that a second proposal, that of Darcy to Elizabeth, would follow. She still dislikes Darcy very much, makes this clear when he visits, and later on is genuinely astonished when the truth is revealed. Mrs Bennet, moreover, does not regard Elizabeth as particularly attractive or likely to marry. She urged her to accept Mr Collins as her only likely option. She always believed that Jane would attract an eligible suitor but has no such expectations for her second daughter, whose lesser beauty and greater wit do not make her valued by her mother. 

So it is not Mrs Bennet or her friends in Meryton who start this rumour.

    Professor Sutherland rightly speculates that the most probable line of communication between Hertfordfordshire and Kent is the Lucas family. Charlotte Lucas is married to Mr Collins, and surely corresponds regularly with her mother, since they are, as Elizabeth argues to Darcy, not at a close or convenient distance for family visits. Lady Lucas must be very concerned about Charlotte's pregnancy. And the Lucases are among the first to learn of Jane's engagement. Without a doubt Mrs Bennet hastens to Lucas Lodge to announce her triumph, and vindicate all her predictions of the previous year. She has all the more reason to do so, as she has been so mortified by Charlotte's marriage to the man who will inherit Longbourn, the man who can and will turn her out of her home whenever Mr Bennet dies. Then she was a loser. Now she is a winner. With a rich son-in-law, she knows she will never be homeless.

    So Sutherland speculates that Lady Lucas passes on the news to Charlotte, who guessed during the previous summer that Darcy was in love with Elizabeth. After all, she does say after Darcy's call at the vicarage, "My dear Eliza, he must be in love with you, or he would never have called on us in this familiar way." 

    Later when Elizabeth tours Derbyshire, it is quite possible that she mentions in a letter to Charlotte that she has met Mr Darcy again and that her opinion of him has changed.

    So when Charlotte reads in a letter from her mother Lady Lucas that both Bingley and Darcy have been dining in a cosy way at Longbourn she starts to wonder whether Darcy has similar intentions to Bingley's. Is he also going to marry a Bennet sister? So far, so good. 

    However, I am not convinced by Sutherland's conclusion. 

    He suggests that Charlotte, now Mrs Collins, indiscreetly tells this news to Lady Catherine, despite the fact that Charlotte, an intelligent woman, must know that such an idea would displease her Ladyship mightily. He looks for a motive for Charlotte's doing this, and suggests that as Charlotte has sometimes been, in the past, slighted by Mrs Bennet, she holds a grudge against the Bennet family - a grudge so ferocious that it tempts her to scupper Elizabeth's chances of marriage. Sutherland even calls Charlotte "embittered". 

    No, that idea is not convincing. 

    Charlotte is a sincere friend of Elizabeth. Why would she have invited Elizabeth to stay with her for six weeks during the summer if she was "embittered"? Why would she have endured six weeks of hypocritical pretended friendship? She does not sound "embittered" when she makes her candid observation about Mr Darcy being in love with Elizabeth. Who would say such a thing to a person they hated with bitterness?

    Sutherland is resorting to a prejudice about women never having any true friendships or loyalty between them, and all secretly being ready to stab each other in the back. I don't think it is true in general, and it's certainly not plausible in this case. Jane Austen loves to portray warm and close friendships between women. Surely Elizabeth could not be so deceived in her best friend? Charlotte is a decent person who, far from holding a grudge against the Bennets, feels remorseful about the impact on the females of the family of the entail and eventual inheritance by Mr Collins. She cannot help it, it's just the way things are. By inviting Elizabeth to stay with her in Kent, she is trying to help her to find a husband, and even possibly implying that she would be welcome to stay on at Longbourn when at some time in the future Charlotte Collins becomes its mistress. 

    So how does the idea about a possible engagement between Darcy and Elizabeth reach Lady Catherine? I would suggest it does so via Mr Collins. Charlotte has nobody to talk to apart from her husband, so it is natural that she mentions the idea to him. She says, perhaps with a laugh, that her mother is imagining that now Jane is engaged to Mr Bingley, Darcy may continue to pursue Elizabeth. She also mentions that the engagement of Jane to Bingley has now removed the principal objection Elizabeth, her close friend, had to Darcy's character. Her prejudice can now be set aside. What will ensue?

    If we don't want to believe that Charlotte confides in him, we can perhaps imagine Mr Collins reading the letter that she gets from her mother, Lady Lucas.

    How would Mr Collins react to this? If anybody holds even the tiniest grudge in Pride and Prejudice, it is surely Mr Collins. He has not forgotten that the previous year he proposed to Elizabeth in complete certainty of being accepted, and was turned down. He offered her what he thought was a very fine prospect in life, likely to be the only chance of marriage she would ever have, and she firmly rejected him. His pride was hurt at the time, and his speedy, impulsive proposal to Charlotte Lucas, whom he met in the lane, was his way of salving his wounded feelings and teaching the Bennet family a good lesson.

    Mr Collins' odd willingness to have Elizabeth to stay at his vicarage as the guest of his new bride can only be explained by the idea that he wants to display to her all the advantages and benefits that she has missed. Yes, he holds a grudge to some degree. It would really annoy him if the woman who once spurned his offer ended up in a far higher social position.

    And he also, of course, considers the approval of Lady Catherine de Bourgh to be the most important thing in the world. He has never noticed Darcy's inclination for the company of Elizabeth - to whom Mr Collins proposed without any awareness of her attractions, only of the benefits he was offering to confer. But he has certainly heard all about Lady Catherine's determination to pair Darcy with her own daughter, and he knows the idea of her nephew marrying a woman from a family she considers so inferior will enrage her. Anybody who helps her to prevent such an outcome will win even more of her favour and eternal gratitude, 

    So it is very plausible that Mr Collins, having learned the rumour from Charlotte about Mr Darcy visiting Longbourn, and her opinion that he is in love with Elizabeth, deliberately passes it on to Lady Catherine, In fact, he goes further and exaggerates it. He goes so far as to say that an engagement exists. He knows that if he says this, Lady Catherine is likely to intervene, and stop the marriage or do her best to prevent it. So he tells her, and she then makes her high-handed visit to Longbourn, supreme comedy as her determination to prevent the match in fact precipitates it. She passes on to Darcy the news that Elizabeth refused to say that she would never marry him, which is just the encouragement he needs.

    When Mr Collins writes to Mr Bennet warning Elizabeth that she should not rush to accept any proposal from Darcy, he is posing as benevolent, warning the Bennet family about the adverse reaction of Darcy's aunt. Behind his letter lies a lot of hypocrisy and a lurking grudge. Of course he would not want Elizabeth to marry above him, and no longer need to be the object of his condescension and hospitality. 

   If Lady Lucas also mentioned, in her letters, Lydia Bennet's marriage to Mr Wickham, Mr Collins could have got wind of it, which would explain Lady Catherine's uncharitable reflection, "Your sister's marriage was a patched-up affair."

    This to my mind is the most satisfactory solution to the mystery, and if anybody has a better one, I would be curious to read it. 

Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet?: Further Puzzles in Classic Fiction. 
John Sutherland, ‎Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature (Oxford World's Classics, 1999).