Jane Austen, Bildungsroman, And Moral Judgment

This thesis tries to discuss Jane Austen's view on femininity and femaleness through a comparison between her novels with her direct source---the novels of her predeccessors (notably, Frances Burney and Ann Radcliffe). Such a comparison is approached from the angle of bildungsroman (formation novels). The term Bildungsroman is coined from eighteenth century Germany. As a genre, it is widely adopted by female novelists (including Burney and Radcliffe) in England to depict their stories of a young heroine's social and psychological growth. Jane Austen draws from the material of her predecessors, but unlike theirs, her novels have an air of subversiveness.The novels of Frances Burney and Ann Radcliffe revolve on the theme of how a young girl who first enters the world, conforms to the social standard and overcomes difficults and ultimately makes a successful marriage. These novels also discuss the feminine ideology of the 18th century, which prescribes women's domestic role and demand that women should possess the quality of femininity. In the novels of Burney and Radcliffe, the heroines'growth are restricted within the domestic role of women and their behavior follows the doctrines of femininity. At the same time, these novels are also romances.Jane Austen's bildungsroman is a deliberate effort to strive against feminine ideology in the 18th century. Instead of marriage and domestic role and becoming a feminine woman, she considers the acquirement of critical and moral judgment as the aim of the heroine's bildung. Thus she denies romance. Her six novels respectively reflect different aspects of the issue of how to achieve moral judgment through the exercise of rationality. The first part of the thesis discusses the bildung theme of eighteenth century female bildungsroman and its relationship with feminine ideology. The second chapter focuses on Jane Austen's subversiveness of feminine role as reflected from her writing and her life experience. The third chapter offers a close analysis of her novels and their themes, relating with moral judgment and rational thinking.