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Originally Posted by doubleshuffle
Because it might be funny as a story in itself, but it's a lot funnier if you already know the character's from Austen's novel. Although I didn't find Pride and Prejudice and Zombies all that great anyway.
But think of something like Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next novels. They wouldn't make any sense at all if they couldn't use fictional characters that everybody knows. There are so many allusions and jokes that wouldn't work. Or, also mentioned before, Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. The whole play lives from the use of Shakespeare's characters.
Or think of how much modernist literature lives from incorporating quotes from older works.
Or take Bob Dylan: For over twenty years, basically everything he has written has been stitched together from quotes taken from everybody: from Ovid to Time magazine, and digging into the sources can give the writing new dimensions. (Of course Dylan is rich enough to blithely ignore copyright; he just goes ahead and uses anything, and if somebody sues, he settles with them. Not an MO everybody can afford, but the way he works with other texts should be open to every writer at least for PD stuff.)
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Nothing you've stated is a compelling reason for society to steal the works of authors. If authors didn't have public domain works to incorporate into their stories, they'd draw inspiration from elsewhere. There's no reason why stories have to incorporate characters the public is already familiar with.
The human imagination is not limited.