In Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, and Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens, two proposals, despite their few effective lines, end up being horrendously uneffective. In the first, William Collins proposes to Elizabeth Bennett, and in the latter, Bradley Headstone-his last name, which he will need after he dies from the painful embarrassment of his rejection- proposes to Lizzie Hexam. What makes a marriage proposal successful is a display of commitment, intimacy, and passion- though not too much or too little of any one factor! A lack of one or more of these factors, which both proposals are guilty of, will lead the proposer down the path of one of the main struggles of wooing: rejection. Both men do make one or two seemingly effective statements. In Pride and Prejudice, William claims that it was “the particular advice and recommendation of [a] very noble lady” to marry an …show more content…
Because not only is language important, but so is the emotion and body language present whilst using it. Needless to say, both men showed their true colors in the proposals, which offered a glimpse of what life would be like being married to them, which, without a doubt, deterred the ladies from saying yes. The proposals were imbalanced. William’s, being emotionless, and Bradley’s, being an emotional mess. A proposal is like a recipe, you must use all the ingredients and the correct amount of them, or else the final result will be nothing like the picture in the cookbook. Though, despite both of the proposals being failures in countless ways, one was a tad bit more effective than the other- yet still not effective enough. The more effective one being Bradley’s proposal to Lizzie. He uses a bit of each rhetorical device, while William is severely lacking in pathos. Overall, neither man is getting married anytime