简·奥斯丁在《傲慢与偏见》中的婚姻观——爱情与财产（英文）.pdf

内容摘要简奥斯丁(1775-1817)是十九世纪英国文学史上最伟大的现实主 义小说家之一.在短暂的四十二年的人生中，奥斯丁共创作了六部小说:理智与情感(1811),傲慢与偏见(1813),曼斯菲尔德庄园(1814),爱玛(1816),诺桑觉寺(1818)和劝导(1818).奥斯丁有限 的生活经历使她文学作品的创作范围狭小.爱情与婚姻是她所有作品的 主要主题。她只关心一个问题，即适婚的中产阶级女子如何找到如意郎 君。作为一位现实主义作家，她的作品真实的反映了社会历史，经济现 实以及她所处时代女性的社会地位.作为一名专注于爱情与婚姻的女性 作家，奥斯丁在其作品中描写了不同的婚姻类型并且提出了自己的婚姻 观。傲慢与偏见于1813年问世，是一部享誉世界的著名小说。奥斯 丁将小说故事情节置于十九世纪初.十九世纪的英国，婚姻是女性获得 社会地位和社会认知的唯一途径。小说傲慢与偏见中的五种婚姻类 型都以金钱为主线进行描述，金钱是那个时代的女性结婚的主要动机.奥斯丁充分表达了自身的婚姻观：财产、门第和爱情是婚姻中必不可少 的三个因素.为了金钱而结婚是错误的，然而缺少金钱的婚姻也是不明 智的；婚姻不能由财产、门第来决定，但不考虑财产和门第也是愚蠢的.拥有爱情的婚姻才是理想幸福的婚姻。奥斯丁的婚姻观强调爱情和经济 条件，但是爱情起着重要的作用。这一点在奥斯丁所处时代是有重要意 义的。作为一名女性作家，从女性主义角度来看，她所倡导的婚姻观具 有进步的色彩.奥斯丁反对女性和男性不平等。在傲慢与偏见中，她运用不同的人物来说明女性的智慧和能力，强调男性和女性在社会生 活中各个方面的平等。奥斯丁无情地批评了当时社会的婚姻观。她的婚 姻观对于当今社会也同样有着重要的现实意义。关键词：傲慢与偏见婚姻观财产现实意义ABSTRACTJane Austen(17751817)was one of the distinguished realistic novelists in the nineteenth-century-English literature.During the forty-two years of her short life time,Austen completed six novels:Sense and sensibility(1811),Pride and Prejudice(1813),Mansfield Park(1814),Emma(1816),Northanger Abbey(1818)and Persuasion(1818).Her limited life experiences result in her nanow,small circle of literary creation.In her works,the dominant theme is love and marriage.Her only concern is how a marriageable woman of the gentry could find a Well husband.As a realistic novelist,her novels actually reflect the social history,the economic realities as well as womens social status of her time.As a woman writer focusing on love and marriage,Austen describes different types of marriage and puts forward her own views on marriage in all her novels.Pride and Prejudice is a world wide popular novel published in 1813.Austen set the story in the first decade of the nineteenth century.At that time,marriage was the only way for women to gain social status and recognition.In Pride and Prejudice,five marriages depicted are all centered on money which is a leading motive for women to marry.Austen fully expresses her original views on marriage:property,social status and love are three indispensable elements in a marriage.It is wrong to marry for money,but it is unwise to marry without money;marriage is not determined by property and social status,but it is foolish not to considering them;marriage with love is ideal and happy.Austen?s views on marriage emphasize love and economic condition but love plays the significant role,which is the predominant aspect at Austens time.As a woman writer,her views on marriage,from a feminist point of view,bear progressive color.Austen objects to inequality between women and men.In Pride and Prejudice,she uses different characters tovldemonstrate womens intelligence and capability,and advocates the equality of the sexes in all aspects of life.Austen mercilessly criticizes the views on marriage of her time.Her views on marriage have great realistic significance to the modem society.KEY WORDS:Pride and Prejudice views on marriage property realistic significanceACKNOWLEDGEMENTSMany people contributed to this thesis,and I would like to thank them here.The first debt I would like to acknowledgement is that to my supervisor,Professor Wang Youming,for his expert advice and constant support.I am grateful to professors,including Professor Sun Jiancheng,Professor Wen Xiuying,Professor Zhang Liqun,Professor Liang Jiamin,Professor Li Fengjie,and Professor Zhang Huiying,in the Foreign Languages Department of Tianjin University of Finance and Economics for their constructive suggestions and valuable ideas.Thanks are also due to my parents for sincere love,enthusiastic encouragement and continued support.IntroductionJane Austen was one of the distinguished English novelists of the nineteenth century.She was bom on December 16,1775,in the village of Steventon,Hampshire,England.As a daughter of a country clergyman,Austen never entered a formal school,but she was well educated by her family.She received education in the practical arts,such as drawing,sewing and piano playing,that were considered the most important skills to women at the time.Besides that,she read a lot of books in her fathers library both the serious and the popular literature of the day,which had great influences on her.At the age of about twelve,Austen began to write.She wrote and completed six novels and three minor writings in her life time.She was obviously a fruitful novelist and engaged in writing for all her life,but never moved in literary circles.At Austens time,British novels seemed to be a primitive and clumsy performance,and family reading became more and more unpopular.It was Jane Austen that she transformed the eighteenth-century novel into a work of art.She was a very important writer in the history of English literature.She is said to have the equal name as Sir Walter Scottw(Duckworth,1971:23),who was an early admirer of Austen and praised her:That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I now going;but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment,is denied to me.What a pity such a gifted creature died so early!(Liu,2004:372)Austen spent a peaceful life of forty-two years at her native place and in the small towns nearby,paying only occasional visits to London.Because of her limited personal experiences,the subject of her novels is often limited to a narrow and small world of life she lived in Regency England from the late 1790s until 1815,the everyday life of small towns,country houses,occupied by landed gentry and their relations,which she knew so deeply and thoroughly.Her self-contained life is often reflected in her novels,in which she depicted clerical families,eligible country squires,and husband-hunting women.Austens novels are highly praised for their humor,wit,inspiration and depiction of contemporary English country life.In A Portrait of Jane Austen,David Cecil described her work as“a realistic picture of social and domestic life,seen from a womans point of view and treated in a spirit of comedy,(Cecil,1979:144).1During her life,the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars broke out.Nevertheless,“The most striking thing about Jane Austen and her novels is her obliviousness to the big social and political upheavals in the outside world of her time,.w(Chen,2003:145).She still depicted the everyday life of middle-class in the village families which she was so familiar with.Although she does not touch upon these great events in her time,Jane Austen has been loved and enjoyed great popularity among academic scholars and common readers for almost two hundred years.Janeite,a new word,was created to express an enthusiastic admirer of Jane Austens writings.Austen was a great writer focusing on courtship and marriage,but she remained single for whole her life.The heroes and heroines of all her novels are without wonderful adventures;the theme is not broad in fact,mainly concerned about romantic love stories of gentlemen and ladies in her time;the main plot always centers on how a single young woman hunting fbr a right husband.Her own understanding of love and insights into marriage patterns are incoqx)rated into her novels.In October,1796,at the age of twenty-one,Austen started writing the novel First Impressions.She read it aloud to her family and it impressed her father so much.The next year her father George Austen attempted to have it published,so he wrote to a London publisher,Thomas Cadell and William Davies,and sent the manuscript.But the manuscript was refused by the publisher even without looking at.And then Austen rewrote the book thoroughly-一turned it form of an exchange of letter into the version we know today and was first published under the title Pride and Prejudice in 1813.When it was first published,it did not cause a great sensation.The first edition of it was only printed up to 1500 copies.Until now,Pride and Prejudice remains Austen*s most popular novel.Like her other novels,Pride and Prejudice focuses on five families in the town.Morrison mentioned that“courtship is the foremost interest and marriage the highest ambition”(2005:11)of Jane Austen.This is also the common acknowledgement to the theme of Austens works.The main characters are the ladies from the genteel class.In the novel,all the female characters,from the heroine,Elizabeth Bennet to the minor character,Lady Catherine de Bourgh,have their own vivid personalities,much meaningful and profound than those of the male characters.Their friends,relatives and neighbors are mostly those with big or small land and with some money,but generally without titles.These characters always chat away about marriage and fortune.Austen uses characters as literary devices to show the relationship between married for love and married for 2alternative reasons.Marriage was thought to be the single possible fulfillment for a woman at the time when Austen wrote the novel.Marriage played an important role in womens life.Austen set the story in the country of Hertfordshire,about fifty miles outside London.The Bennet family has five daughters:Jane,Elizabeth,Mary,Kitty,and Lydia.Without a male heir,Mrs.Bennet and her five daughters will be forced off their small estate in the event of the death of Mr.Bennet.According to the entail law,Mr.Bennets property has been entailed to his nearest male relative,the Reverend William Collins.The arrangement has made Mrs.Bennet increasingly anxious to find proper husbands for her five daughters.The heroines are genteel ladies,but without a handsome dowry or social rank.In the marriage market,they always place in a desperate situation of marrying young and rich landlords or clergymen.During Austens time,marriage was an only way for women to live better for her later life and obtained social recognition.Thus money had been taken much more seriously when it comes to marriage.In the novel,money in love and marriage is presented openly or indirectly,which shows that Austen has sharp insight into the aristocratic and bourgeois English society of her time.Critics accuse Jane Austen of being obsessed with money and rich relation.But both money and rich relations were a necessity in the society to which she belonged.Through five types of marriage,Austen depicts a clear picture of the relation between marriage and money and she puts forward quite advanced views on marriage:property,social status and love are interconnected.Marriage can not only depend on property and social status.She objects to marriage only for money and as well as marriage without consideration for the same background.She stresses the importance of emotional factors and advocates love and economic foundation are the basis of a happy marriage,while love should play the leading role.Her views bear progressive color fbr in Victorian Britain,money and social status were still the decisive elements in marriage selection.As a realistic novelist,Jane Austens views on marriage expressed in her works are a true picture of the marital status in her time,especially of women of the gentry.Sociohistorical literary criticism first appeared in Italy,but became popular in France.It emphasizes the relationship between literary and social activities.It is thought that literary represents the life and forms in a certain social and historical environment.So the main literary value lies in its understanding of the social function and historical significance.The principle of it is that analyzing,understanding and evaluation of a literary work will be taken into consideration of the works social and historical background and the writers life and other experiences.Social criticism stems from Viss study of the Homefs epic in the eighteenth century.His research reveals the social environment which Greek poets lived in.However,the establishment of sociohistorical approach owes to French scholar Taine and Germany philosopher Marx.Taine puts forward three elements:race,environment and times.His famous quote is that literature is the produce of age,race and social environment.From the standpoint of dialectical materialism and historical materialism,Marx thinks social existence determines social consciousness;any literary phenomenon comes from its social and historical conditions.Therefore,the analysis of literature must be started from the social and historical situation.This theory brought forward by Marx in the nineteenth century makes Marxist criticism,a particular sect of social criticism,develop quickly.Various ideologies criticism,such as feminism,new historicism,post-colonialism,and so on,in the context of post-modern,could see the shadow of the social and historical criticism.Sociohistorical approach has four main characteristics:1.Analyzing literary works through specific social and historical context.Each literary work belongs to its age and its people,each has its own special environment.It needs to be placed in the times it has been created.2.lb regard works as a cognitive model to deep understanding of the community.Social and historical criticism tries to analyze works social background so as to deeply understand society.3.lb view the degree of reflecting the reality as an important criterion to judge the work.Social and historical criticism requires the writers to reflect real life,and to advocate creation of“typical images”,that is to see the universality from specificity in order to reflect the reality of real life.4.When explaining a literary work,society,class and political factors are always in first place so as to explore works social,class and political value.Social and historical criticism has the significance of the original criticisms/,as literature is always a product of social history.Using historical perspective to search for the spiritual relations between literary and social history,and combine the reality of society and historical continuity,in order that given due attention to the complex diversity of literary and social history.That is just the essence of social and historical criticism.Pride and Prejudice is Jane Austens most famous work.In western countries,the 4enthusiasm on studies of Austens works has never been stopped.Literary criticism has been made from different perspectives,among which there are morality,irony,comic,feminism and etc.As a result,many papers and books are published.Marilyn Bulter is the first scholar to put Jane Austen in a historical context.In 1975,she published a convincing monograph named uJane Austen and the War of Ideas”，in which she puts Austens works into the ideological debate triggered by the French Revolution,focusing on the relationship between characterization and political attitude.This book marked the emergence of climax of the study of Austens works on political perspective.Elizabeth,even if not wholly victorious,is Jane Austens revolutionary heroine.Unlike Bage and Maria Edgeworth further develop the element of social cr