Art of Irony in Pride and PrejudiceYi YanSchool of Foreign Language, CWNU, Nanchong, China, 637002 AbstractPride 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 statusⅠ.IntroductionPride 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 timeⅡ. The Background of Austin and Her Pride and PrejudiceA. 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 PrejudiceIn 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. Theincome of family female teacher was very low, and the status was low as well. It was very difficult for them to change or swap out of this status. No one would like to be a maid forever, therefore, in terms of young women, especially those who don't have enough properties to get married. It was the only way for them to gain respect, stability and social status.Austin fully critiqued some bad phenomenon in her work pride and prejudice, taking some perfect points about marriage and love to demonstrate her own view on love and marriage.Ⅲ.The Irony about Love and Marriage in Pride and PrejudiceA. The Marriage Based on Vanity and CarelessnessLydia is impulsive, credulous and blindly following. She is pursuing love and thinking about how to get love from a male. She is stiffened with the style of an officer called Wickham. She elopes with him because of an impulse. They spend money without restraint, and they are unable to make ends meet. For sake of Elizabeth, Darcy gave them a sum of money to let them get out of difficulties. At the same time, this swindler prepares to climb another woman for a sum of money. Bennet couple is another example for this kind of marriage. Mr. Bennet covets the youth and beauty and is attracted and gets married with a narrow-minded young and beautiful woman lacking intelligence. Not long after the marriage, he puts an end to his love and affection, the mutual respect and trust between the couple has gone. The expectation to have a harmonious and well-being family has evaporated. Clearly, this couple’s marriage is unfortunate caused by rashness and vanity.B. The Marriage Based on Money or BenefitAlthough Mrs. Bennet has been described as a comedy character in the work gaining a lot of sarcasm and derision, her universally acknowledged truth－all the wealthy bachelors want to marry a lady, which has been proved another fact that it's the wealth and the number of the wealth that decides the fate of life and marriage.Charlotte knows that the marriage without property would eventually move towarddisappointment and suffering. Even if the couple loves each other deeply at first, when Collins, known as a social climber, is rejected by Elizabeth, he immediately turns to fall in love with Miss Charlotte. Although Collins is an inborn fool, his love could not move the heart of a woman. Charlotte accepts him because her purpose is to get married. Almost all the girls born in a poor family without good education always regard marriage as the only decent way. Although marriage might not be necessary bring happiness to the, she manages to arrange one of the most reliable way by marriage, thus she would not be exposed to the cold temperatures and suffer hunger in the future. She now gets a storage room.Charlotte is like a rodman catching a fairly plump fish－Collins. But if he doesn’t meet a setback from Elizabeth, and the encouragement of Charlotte, I am afraid that he would not be so willing to propose marriage to Charlotte. The man like Bentley who has fairly numerable money need a beautiful wife, the poor man needs a wife with a huge wealth, like Wickham; It was lucky for Charlotte that she could gain the marriage with Collins although their marriage is not happy at all.In these marriages, it was quite interesting that the women without property really get married with those rich bachelors. However, the happiness brought by marriage to them has not accompanied the husband. In marriage, money is very important. Austin objects such marriage simply based on money. Collins is the heir of Bonnet family; he doesn’t know what love is. He would state some of the inappropriate remarks at any time. Charlotte gets married for money. Eventually she gets nothing more than a rich man, though she has economic security. She doesn’t care about her husband's accompanying and love. She encourages him to clean up the garden more. She sets his living-room in the small house absent of even a small number of sunshine. When her husband makes gaffe in front of their friends, she ignores and turns a deaf ear. Such arrangement for the story is a perfect irony for” the truth universally acknowledged” at the beginning of the novel. The author expresses great sympathy to the tragic fate of the women at that time and those who had to marry because of economic restraints by the description of the marriage of charlotteAustin understands completely that the social environment makes man obey not only in material but in psychology, which improved that Austin is a rational author that she prefers true love to survival.Miss Bingley also extremely objects the marriage between her brother and Bennet’s eldest daughter Jane. She hopes her brother to marry Darcy’s sister Miss Geovgiana in order to make herself to have the same status.Ⅴ.Irony and dramatic upsurge in the novel to be sublimatedJudging from the conversation of those novels, often recognizing the complexity of human nature in Pride and Prejudice a book a dialogue of the dramatic irony in the main story of turning in the rest with these terrific played a role. We expect to change the view of Elizabeth to Darcy, and Elizabeth recognized Darcy for her a new light. As a result her feelings for him changed. A preview of this upsurge is main through our analysis of the controlled use of vague ways. For example, Elizabeth said “Mr. Darcy is too polite”or said he was “dignified courtesy, which have a number of implications. Darcy was very polite in Pember Lee Manor courtesy. And Elizabeth finally admitted that her family behavior defects are a big reason.These meticulous inks in the novel’s climax achieve effects that Darcy had written at that time why he is as right as Bingley, Jane, and Wickham. Elizabeth is reconsidering its own letter. Elizabeth’s the process of considering the letter write in strange and humorous ways. Nothing is a review article. Darcy has done his first assumptions the prima view, and then directed the various possible explanations. After weighting the prima evidence between the two sides, He reached a reasonable theory of conclusion. Jane Austen did not want to believe that Elizabeth is the discovery of the real Darcy. They do not need a complex of character we thought the overall look easy to understand. Yet it paradoxically hints buried in the dialogue and comments. Darcy has been gradually implied interest on the Elizabeth. Mr. Darcy’s modest, he repeated the problem. Because of his hospitality as well as his puzzled eyes, the positive side to the explanation increases warm feelings. Elizabeth’s offensive words and arrogant questions changes in terms of Darcy’s feelings, but it producedinteresting role in the content, which contained far more extensive than she thought .So surprising, instead, they add a love of Darcy’s heart. She accused him of deliberately contempt for the people who led to his most pleasing answer, but she was lovely and playful attitude to make him never feel be fascinated too .Clever answers are not only from this area but also some other negative points from their own fun, which lead them to facilitate the meeting of the Pember feelings changed completely .From a social sense, the realities of society, as Elizabeth did not give the property, there is no middle-class women in their means of livelihood and opportunities .Her concept of romantic love is always brutal realism, and the principles of survive are contradictory . It reveals the complex paradoxical character that works are too deep thoughts and feelings. Through the romantic irony, Austen depicts such an idea contrary to the hostess of emotion and intellect laborers are living in an inverse phenomenon and the social realities of the art of irony in the image .As the class significance of economic reasons, Elizabeth suffered a variety of social forces in the derogatory environment and gradually became aware of myself. Being a woman is to have relative depression. Finally, Elizabeth, with the wisdom of the proud aristocratic bearing with dignity, defends her own dignity. Elizabeth and Darcy gain marriages.Ⅵ．ConclusionThe novel vividly describes a conservative and isolated state of the British town life from the18th century to the early 19th century. What’s more, true human feeling has been exposed to readers. By employing the tone of sarcasm and comedy techniques, dialogue and witty humor punch the line which can be seen everywhere through the story. The style of writing is very humorous, and the novel has become a glittering comedy masterpiece of realism.Pride and Prejudice The reason why the work is so successful is that Tie-Cheng Miao gold pen makes the ordinary people and things simple, besides, he described the true feeling of realistic life. It achieved a unique success.Works Cites[1] 常耀信. 英国文学简史[M]. 南开大学出版社, 2000.[2] 简?奥斯汀，傲慢与偏见[M]，内蒙古：内蒙古人民出版社，2002[3] 李银河，女性权力的崛起[M]，北京：中国社会科学出版社，1997.[4] 王守仁. 英国文学选读[M] 北京：高等教育出版社2005[5] 张中载. 当代英国文学论文集[M]. 辽宁：外语教学与研究出版社，1996.[6]简·奥斯汀. 傲慢与偏见[M] 王科一译，上海译文出版社,1981.6。
