简•奥斯汀《爱玛》婚姻女权主义观(2)
2.2 The Development of the Theory 5
3 Jane Austen’s Marriage Ideas 7
3.1 Jane Austen’s Views of Women’ s Marriage 7
3.2 Jane Austen’s Concern for Women’s Intellectual Power 9
4 Analysis of Emma 12
4.1 A Women with Strong Judgment 12
4.2 A Women with Perfect Self-awareness 14
5 Conclusion 16
Bibliography17
1 Introduction
In 19th century, women’s status was low and women’s fate was miserable. Women had no opportunity to go out and have good jobs in society, not to mention, they had rights to pursue their own marriage happiness and love. In that times, women’s fate was closely connected to their family’s status and their husband their family chosen for them. However, nowadays, women are playing increasingly important roles in society. In many countries, more and more women are acting as workers, farmers, scientists, and even leaders. So, almost all jobs which men can do in the past are done successfully by women now. Women no longer looked down upon by society.
In addition, women also have their own rights to pursue their love and happiness and they can decide the man who they are willing to marry. With the changes in social role, women’s positions in family have been improved as well. Husband and wife are now equal in the family. They deal with problems of daily life together and share happiness with each other. In today’s families, women are not usually the ones who are busy with preparing dinner and washing clothes and so on. Just like an famous English writer Jane Austen’s novel Emma, whose heroine called Emma, she has the same priority like today’s women such as her courage to pursue love and decide freely to marry the man who she falls deeply in love with and she also makes decisions for her big family. Therefore the paper will introduce Jane Austen and one of her masterpieces Emma.
Jane Austen (1775-1817) was one of the most outstanding realistic female novelists in Britain. She devoted herself to uncover the status of women at her times. She was good at describing the small world surrounding her with her nuanced observation and humorous writing style. In almost all of her works, the theme of love and marriage are of great significance. She was always concerned about how an adult female from the middle class could find an ideal husband. She did well in creating characters with distinguished images in an ordinary context. Due to her contribution to English literature, Jane Austen was often regarded by literary critics and literary historians in the twentieth century praised as a really great English novelist. During her short lifetime (42 years), she completed a total of six novels.