In condemning Mr Collins, let us remember why some people dislike, even hate him so much. He but is as he was moulded. His job within Jane Austen's story web was to appear as an uncharitable, weak-headed fool with an almost witch-finder-general attitude to Lydia's "sin". J.A created him as a man of the cloth and he therefore had no choice but to observe a church-ruled fire and brimstone discipline in his views towards sex out of wedlock, not those of a butcher, baker or candle-stick maker. Being a parson's daughter herself, she must have well known this. His mean-spiritedness in such matters was a factor of his calling as much as his character,which was hardly strong enough to be positive about much. Granted, a more sensible man may have been more Christian in attitude, but the stain would remain nevertheless. The church, particularly in that era when even holding hands was a society no-no, was puritanical in its views on such "sins" as Lydia's folly..In this there will be a massive difference of view between the religious and the non-believers. If general society was condemnational, the church was decidedly more so.
Mr Collins also had no idea, at the time of his writing, how things would end up, thus he was made to look even more foolish when Mr Darcy's money saved the day ( a factor he knew nothing of) He was also shown as a man incapable of real love and affection, but in a world where such things took second place to security, was he any worse than any man or woman who put bank balances ahead of romance? ( ie almost the whole of society). His own wife, for instance? If Lady Catherine hadn't "ordered" him to marry, would he have even bothered to travel to Longbourn at all? Charlotte is classed as hard-done by in having such a man as a husband, ignores him, mocks him and yet went out of her way to ensnare him in the first place because he represented security. I find Mr Collins somewhat more to be pitied than scorned.
