Study On Images Of Naval Officers In Mansfield Park And Persuasion

Jane Austen was an important female writer in the history of English literature from the end of 18th to the early 19^th centuries.The critics at home and abroad usually focus their researches on the subjects of female status and marriage in Jane Austen’s novels but they pay less attention to the images of the naval officers in her novels.In her six novels,Austen has created the images of many naval officers,especially in her later two writings,Mansfield Park and Persuasion in which naval officers play an important role.This thesis takes the naval officers in Austen’s later two novels as the research object and classifies them into two groups from the perspective of social ethics.In these two novels,the images of naval officer created by Austen is different from those in her previous novels.Based on close reading,this thesis uses a combination of research methods such as social historical criticism and moral criticism to analyze the motivation of Austen’s creation from the angles of these naval officers’views on career,love and marriage,and women position.This thesis is divided into four chapters.The first chapter analyzes Austen’s life and novels,the current status of research on Jane Austen at home and abroad and the significance of this thesis.In Chapter Two,the texts of Mansfield Park and Persuasion are analyzed and the images of naval officers are classified into two groups,namely,the new-style naval officers and the old-style naval officers from the perspective of social ethics.Meanwhile,the analysis of the degraded moral image of the old-style naval officers and the process of Austen’s shaping of the images of the new-style naval officers are presented from the angles of family ethics,social ethics and social gender,which demonstrates Austen’s recognition of the participation of the British Navy in the colonial expansion.Chapter Three analyzes the gains and losses of the old and new-style naval officers in the two novels in terms of their personal,professional and family pursuits.Through the combination of Austen’s criticism and praise for the old and new-style naval officers and the background information of her family and the times,this chapter reveals the underlying causes of Austen’s trying to create a type of positive images of the new-style naval officers so as to expose Austen’s recognition of British colonial expansion.The fourth chapter summarizes the thesis,that is,Austen’s attitude towards the images of naval officers in the two novels reflects her awareness of the British political situation at that time and her attempts to shape a group of positive new-style naval officers to represent the image of Britain in the 18^th and 19^th centuries when overseas trade and colonial expansion flourished.