"He writes long-winded letters in which he overestimates his importance and displays comically exaggerated politesse; he is awed by the local noblewoman, whose insulting attentions he haplessly mistakes for kindnesses; he is so puffed up that when Elizabeth first declines to marry him, he is certain she cannot mean it. 'You are not serious in your rejection of me,' he informs her. 'I shall choose to attribute it to your wish of increasing my love by suspense, according to the usual practice of elegant females.' If Mr. Collins deserves basic respect—safety from torture, the means to live in comfort, and all the other amenities of modern liberalism—he also merits derision. 'For what do we live,' as Elizabeth's father asks her, 'but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?' For what do we read Jane Austen novels but to enjoy her sharp appraisals of the pretentious and the priggish?" Becca Rothfield