Assignment 5

The humor in Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine de Bourgh is that they are the quintessential sort of Orange County housewives of their day. They are incredibly rich, snobby, judgemental people who believe anyone lower than them in the social class is unworthy of their precious time. I think what Jane Austen was trying to get to is that these people, who think they are just the bee’s knees, are actually an embarrassment to themselves and to the overall appearance of the upper class. Jane Austen manages to make it funny by making these two characters as ridiculous as they can be. Mr. Collins and especially Lady Catherine de Bourgh view themselves as very distinguished, precocious people, who in a way are, but they display the bad side to it all. Mr. Collins is more of a simple-minded man who loves to show off everything and talk his head off. He absolutely adores Lady Catherine and seems to be almost obsessed with her. Lady Catherine on the other hand is I think fairly smarter than Mr. Collins, but has her head so far up her own butt that she isn’t able to pull off any acts of kindness or sympathy whatsoever.