On Female Predicaments In Pride And Prejudice

Jane Austen was a major English novelist, whose brilliantly witty, elegantly structured satirical fictions marked the transition in English literature from eighteenth century neo-classicism to nineteenth century romanticism. As one of the most outstanding professional women writer in the English literary history, Jane Austen paid much attention to women problems in her circumstances and showed female consciousness in her novels. Her concern about women’s fragile economic situations could be found throughout her six novels, especially Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen had complex feelings about the prevailing discrimination against women and expressed her great sympathy to single young women.Many research studies have been carried out on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, but I have chosen here to examine the issue of female predicaments in the novel. This thesis consists of three parts:In the introduction, some foreign and domestic researches with great influence on the studies of Pride and Prejudice in different perspectives are reviewed.Chapter one is the analysis of awkwardness in women’s economic and social status in Austen’s time. Women’s economic status is determined by their disadvantages in the property law and inheritance system, and the impossibility for women to get access to professions of that time. And there is much difference in social positions of married and unmarried women.Chapter two is the analysis of women’s appeal in marriage, which includes the eighteenth century traditional and contemporary views about marriage, and the women characters’appeal in different types of marriages, such as Charlotte Lucas’practical appeal, Lydia Bennet’s sexual appeal, Jane Bennet’s traditional appeal and Elizabeth Bennet’s ideal appeal.Chapter three is the analysis of predicaments in women’s appeal and Austen’s female consciousness. Women in Pride and Prejudice have difficulties and dilemmas in their appeal. And some problems in Jane Austen’s female consciousness can be found through the images of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Bennet.Based on the above analysis, the conclusion can be drawn as the last part of the thesis. It points out the predicaments of women’s lives in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and problems existing in Jane Austen’s female consciousness in Pride and Prejudice.