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Research on the Feminism in Sense and Sensibility
A paper submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for literature class
to the College of Foreign Languages
Hebei United University
October 2011
A BSTRACT
Jane Austen was a quite renowned English writer in the 19th Century, who is also the representative of English romanticism. Her writing focused on middle-classe life with humor and understanding. Austen was in many ways a realist, and the England she depicted was one in which social mobility was limited and class-consciousness was strong. Many of her works were very influential to the world, especially to the academy world. Sense and Sensibility is the one of her famous works, although it was the first work of Jane Austen, its writing skill was quite good. And from the time
it was published, people have begun to research on it. They make the research on different themes embodied in it: the author’s attitude on marriage, the symbolism writing skill, the femininism in the novel. This paper mainly will discuss the femininism in the novel, and probe into the femininism contained in the two main characters, as well the femininism displayed by the symbolism.
KEY WORDS:Femininism Symbolism Jane Austen Sense and Sensibility
摘要
简·奥斯汀是英国十九世纪杰出的作家，是英国浪漫主义小说创作的代表。她的小说以中产阶级的生活为主要题材，在对主人公生活描写反应当时社会状态和人们对婚姻的态度。其多部作品耐人寻味，对世界产生了很大影响，托·巴·麦考莱评价她“作家当中其手法最接近于（莎士比亚）这位大师的，无疑就要数简·奥斯汀了，这位女性堪称是英国之骄傲”。《理智与情感》是简·奥斯汀小说创作的第一部作品，其娴熟的写作手法，巧妙的故事情节安排，自其出版之日期就在英国乃至世界产生了很大的反响。在对简·奥斯汀及其作品的研究中，学者们多从作者对婚姻的观念，作品创作中象征主义手法和作品中女性主义等方面入手。本论文主要研究《理智与情感》中体现的女性主义，谈谈小说中两位主人公在大胆追求幸福过程中体现的女性主义。
关键词：女性主义象征主义简·奥斯汀《理智与情感》
1.Introduction
Jane Austen was one of the most influential writers in the 19th century English, and as the prier of English romanticism, her works demonstrated new flavor to the academy world, and also the whole world, she was thus honored forever by the world. Sense and Sensibility as one of his representative works, since the publication of it, it has aroused the readers’great interest, for the multi themes displayed in it , and the writer’s unique writing skill. Until now, people from all over the world have been making research on it., which showed the lasting reading value of the works.
1.1Jane Austen
Writing in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, Jane Austen appears historically, both in her social attitudes and formally in her art, as a kind of connecting link or hinge. Her attitude to society was still an eighteenth-century one, but in her attitude to the individual she looks forward to the later nineteenth century. She was born in Steventon, Hampshire, on 16 December 1775. Her mother was Cassandra Leigh Austen and her father was George Austen, rector of Steven. They belonged to the class known as ‘lesser gentry’, a rank some way below that of most of her fictional heroiness. At the age of seven Jane, along with her sister Cassandra, was plucked from her home enviroment and sent away to boarding school run by a Mrs Crawley, first in Oxford and then later in Southampton. By all accounts it was not a happy exerpience.
Pride and Prejudice went begging, as we have sold for sixteen years; and Northanger Abbey(1798) was sold for a trivial sum to a publisher, who laid it aside and forgot it, until the appearance and moderate success of Sense and Sensibility in 1811. An anonymous article in the Quarterly Review,following the appearance of Emma in 1815, full of generous appreciation of the charm of the new writer, was the beginning of Jane Austen’s fame. She died, quietly as she had lived, at the Winchester, in 1817, and was buried in the cathedral. She was a bright, attractive little woman, whose sunny qualites are unconsciously reflected in all her books.
1.2Jane Austen’s Works
Her artistic apprenticeship lasted from her teenage years until she was about 35 years old. During this period, she experimented with various literary forms, including the epistolary novel which she tried then abandoned, and wrote and extensively revised three major novels and began a fourth. From 1811 until 1816, with the release of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began a third, which was eventually titled Sanditon, but died before completing it.
