Duplicitous Voice In Jane Austen's Novels

Jane Austen is a distinguished female novelist at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She is renowned for her six novels, which exhibit a tendency of subversion of male discourse and construction of female discourse. She tells female experience from a feminine perspective and attempts to expose the oppression and suppression of women in a patriarchal society, thus changing women's absent and muted state in literary history. Her works contribute much to the formation of a female literary tradition.Austen's subversion of male discourse can be well traced in her six novels. This subversion is reflected in the following three aspects: her challenge of phallocentrism, her subversion of sexual stereotypes, and her dualistic attitude to the didactic tradition. However, Austen does not and cannot become a destroyer of her age due to the limitation of her time; instead, she shows an open submission and hidden resistance to the patriarchal system. She utters a duplicitous voice in her texts.This thesis aims to analyze the reflection and causes of Austen's contradictory attitude towards the patriarchal society in her six novels through textual analysis, and to reveal her special strategy of text hidden behind this contradictory attitude.The introductory part serves as a general review of Austen research at home and abroad and of feminist criticism. Meanwhile, the aim and significance of this thesis and the significance of Austen's works are shown.In the following three parts, the main body of the thesis, Austen's contradictory attitude towards patriarchal system is under detailed discussion in three aspects, namely, her attitude to phallocentrism, sexual stereotypes and the didactic tradition.The second part analyzes the reflection of phallocentrism and antiphallocentrism in Austen's novels. She narrates the story from a feminineperspective, and puts women in the center of her texts, through which she describes women's living condition in her time—their oppression in education and economy and their repression of feelings in a patriarchal society, thus disclosing the causes of women's "other" status. However, Austen does not break away from the limitation of her time; her heroines still locate themselves in the roles designated by a male-dominated society. Accordingly, Austen employs a unique narrative technique: a combined use of omniscient third-person point of view and limited third-person point of view.The third part illustrates the relationship between Austen and the didactic tradition. Austen's contradictory attitude towards the didactic tradition is mainly embodied in her adoption of a strategy of duplicity in telling her stories. On the surface, her novels follow the traditional model of the novel of manners in the eighteenth century. This kind of novel generally tells how a young innocent woman, confronted with series of ordeals, becomes mature under the influence of a male supervisor, and succeeds in finding her proper position in the society, marrying the hero. However, beneath this surface plot underlies Austen's destruction of the myth of the heroine's happy marriage. The deep plot reveals to the reader that Austen's heroines are oppressed in sex, class and economy by a hidden force, which originates from the patriarchal society. These women are always marginalized in such social realms as economic field, job hunting and marriage market; under such pressure, they have to change from independent young girls to "mature" women—docile, self-suppressed and totally dependent women. Although all Austen's heroines obtain "perfect" marriage in the end owing to the heroines' persistence in code of morality, Austen destroys the ideal of the heroines' happy marriage by implying the falseness of the happy ending.The fourth part gives an analysis of Austen's rebellion against sexual stereotypes. Austen challenges sexual stereotypes by creating female characters with the traits of both femininity and masculinity. However, the so-called femininity and masculinity Austen's heroines possess are imposed by a male-dominated culture;...