Art of Irony in Pride and Prejudice
Yi Yan
School of Foreign Language, CWNU, Nanchong, China, 637002 Abstract
Pride and prejudice is Austin’s great work. Through the discussion of the different marriages and love, the writer demonstrates her concept about love and marriage: love and marriage is closely associated with property and society, however, love and marriage can not only be decided by the property and social status. An ideal marriage should be based on mutual affection and respect. She rejects the marriage based on wealth and stresses the element of emotion in a marriage.
Key Words: Love; marriage; property; social status
Ⅰ.Introduction
Pride and prejudice the book about commonplace things and ordinary people, is one of Jane Austen’s famous book, being the representative of realistic literature. It portrays, with special sensitive characteristic of female writers, the life and ideas of middle class who live in countryside. This novel makes an analysis of human nature and then stick up readers to think over social relations.
This novel takes young people’s marriage as the thread and it covers the inheritance of fortune, women’s social status, ethics and customs. Being the masterpiece of Jane Austen, it comes to the extensive favor of literary lovers and experts at the same time. This paper makes an analysis of four marriages in pride and prejudice and discusses the deep outlook for their love and marriage in the light of social back ground at th e time
Ⅱ. The Background of Austin and Her Pride and Prejudice
A. The Background of Austin
“Jane Austen (1775-1817) was born in Hampshire, a country priest family located in Hants, the village of Kingston, Sidemen in north England. She was a beautiful, talented middle class woman with extraordinary temperament and good cultivation. Her six novels－Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, Manshifeierde Manor, Emma, Persuasion all describe more than marriage.”. (Wang Shouren, P64, 2005)
However, her marriage is like a blank paper in her 42 years real lifetime. Going through the finest time, but eventually without meeting a comfortable partner, she gives up her love. Going through the sweet and bitter feeling which helps her to write the great work pride and prejudice.
B. The Background of Pride and Prejudice
In this great book, the author amply demonstrates her point about love and marriage. Therefore, in order to analyze these points of views, we should firstly start from her great work.
“At that time, according to the social conditions in Britain, a good marriage for a young woman was critical. This phenomenon was closely associated with the British society and the status of women in the society. In the 19th century, women were not well respected compared with the ones in the present society. There was no equality between woman and man. Women were considered to be inferior to men in terms of intelligence and capacity. The central life of women was forced to stay at home, their roles were to deal with the family affairs, such as taking care of the children and serving for the husban d.”.(Zhu Hong,P34,1995)
People naturally thought that women should be submissive to their husbands. The virtues of women were patient and deferent. They must recognize their inherent inferiority to men, so they must restrict their abilities without conditions. Although the status of women was slow, few of them expressed dissatisfaction about their own destiny. At that time, many middle-class young women had three solutions: getting married; staying at home as old maids or working as the family female teachers. The
