I am Mr. Collins

Jane Austen’s novels have been captivating readers for two centuries now (Sense and Sensibility was first published in 1811), and I, like so many before me, am an unabashed Jane Austen addict. So, you can only imagine my excitement when I heard the English department was offering a course on Jane Austen this semester. Of course I signed up, and on an average day, the Jane Austen class is fairly typical, though still extremely enjoyable, but yesterday, the entire class got to attend the English Country Dance lesson we had been promised on the first day of class.

If you’ve ever read one of Austen’s novels, the importance of balls and dance is obvious.  Many of the most important social interactions and connections of her stories either take place or begin at a dance, and a character’s dancing expertise has a tendency to correlate with some aspect of his/her personality.  For example, Mr. Collins’ foolishness in Pride and Prejudice is emphasized by his terrible dancing at the Netherfield Ball, and Mr. Knightley’s chivalry is exhibited at a dance. While reading one of her novels, the reader can sense that dancing was supposed to be second-nature to the people of the time and that to dance poorly was a sign of bad breeding or poor manners.

In several movie adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels, English country dancing is depicted, and the actors always make it look so elegant and easy. This misconception is quickly combated, however, by just a few minutes of dance instruction. As a whole, my classmates and I managed to bumble our way through the dances we were taught, and even made it look like we knew what we were doing a time or two, but the truth of the matter is that though learning the dances was incredibly fun, they are nowhere near as easy as they appear in movies. The basic moves are fairly simple, but putting them all together and remembering which part you are supposed to play in a particular dance gets confusing very quickly.

Learning the basics of the dances that Jane Austen’s characters engage in so frequently gave me a new respect for this apparently simple social activity and since my own attempt at dancing was so atrocious, made me feel a little less judgmental of Mr. Collins’ poor dancing in Pride and Prejudice.