论简奥斯汀的婚姻观(英语论文)

论简奥斯汀的婚姻观摘要每个人都渴望拥有幸福的婚姻，简奥斯汀小说中的爱情与婚姻一直以来被奉为经典。

简奥斯汀认为她那个时代的婚姻是一种经济契约，爱情只是一种机遇。

这种观点在她的小说中体现得非常清楚，“凡是有钱的单身汉必定想娶亲，这是人们普遍认同的事实。

”她的小说描述了一些年轻女性的不同婚姻，表明了爱情是幸福婚姻的基础，但也应以金钱财富为前提。

如果婚姻中既有爱情又有经济保障，那么就能进入完美的婚姻状态。

在简奥斯汀看来，幸福婚姻意味着爱情与财富的统一。

她强烈反对仅仅建立于物质基础上的婚姻，充分强调情感因素对于婚姻的重要性。

[关键词] 简奥斯汀爱情金钱幸福婚姻Jane Austen’s View of MarriageAbstractEveryone wants to have a happy marriage. Jane Austen’s novels about love and marriage is always regarded as a classic. Jane Austen thinks that marriage in her time is a financial contract, where love is strictly a matter of chance. It is clear from her novels: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”Her novels described some different marriages of the young women, which reveals that love is the base for a happy marriage, and also should be based on the money. It is perfect for young women to get love and money at the same time. From Jane Austen’s perspective, a perfect marriage meant having both love and money.She strongly opposes that marriage only based on wealth and places much emphasis on the importance of emotion in a marriage.Key words:Jane Austen Love Money Happy MarriageContentsChapter 1 Introduction (1)Chapter 2 The Background (2)2.1 The Background of the Society (2)2.2The Background of Jane Austen (3)Chapter 3 The main marriages of her works (5)3.1 The marriage in Pride and Prejudice (5)3.2 The marriage in Emma (7)3.3 The marriage in Sense and Sensibility (10)Chapter 4 Jane Austen’s concept about marriage (12)Chapter 5 Conclusion (13)References (14)Acknowledgements (15)Jane Austen’s View of MarriageChapter 1 IntroductionThe topic of happy marriage is of great concern for many people. We all desire to have happy marriage, but few of us can achieve this dream. What we should choose between love and money when we get married, Jane Austen, a novel writer who lived more than two hundred years ago introduced the questions. Jane Austen’s view of marriage expressed the marital status in her time, especially for middle class women.The common criticism of Austen is the emphasis she places in her novels on marriage and money. The aim of every young woman is to marry well. The law of primogeniture effectively excluded woman from inheriting property. The girls in her novels face the choice during the period: marry a wealthy man and live comfortably or do not marry and live in penury. Marriage in reality was not necessarily good news for a woman, despite the happy endings of Austen’s novels. In a marriage all a women’s wealth went to her husband. The only way she could keep her wealth in her own right was by remaining single.Jane Austen had told us that women should insist on independent personality and dignity in their marriages.As far as I am concerned, Aust en’s view of marriage was influenced by her biographical background, her class, her religion, her love and so on. These elements were very important to her marriage concept. As the saying in Pride and Prejudice, “It is wrong to marry for money, but it was silly to marry without it”. Love is the foundation of marriage, while property is the protection of happy marriage. Jane Austen’s novels such as Pride and Prejudice and other famous works expressed a view which always exists in pe ople’s heart. That is a hope to get a happy marriage.Chapter 2 The Background2.1 The Background of the SocietyGeorgian society in Jane Austen's novels is the ever-present background of her work, the world in which all her characters are set. Jane Austen wrote her novel during the first two decades of the 19th century. George III had been on the throne since 1760.He was to reign until 1820, although for the last ten years of his life he was insane so his son was declared Prince Regent. Therefore the period is known as the Regency period. It was a time that witnessed the end of the Agriculture Revolution. It was also a period of the great estates owned by wealthy families, which made up the backdrops to almost all Austen’s novels. Jane Austen's novels deal with such varied subjects as the historical context, the social hierarchies of the time, the role and status of the clergy, gender roles, marriage, or the pastimes of well-off families. Without even the reader noticing, many details are broached, whether of daily life, of forgotten legal aspects, or of surprising customs, thus bringing life and authenticity to the English society of this period.Jane Austen’s England was very class conscious. Indeed the whole social structure was still based on a class system that had been in existence in England for hundreds of years. It was beginning to change as the new middle classes, those who made their wealth in manufacturing and industry, begin to seek a higher social status. But in Austen’s time theirs was a genteel voice. It was a long time before political change began to enfranchise the ordinary man, let alone the ordinary woman. At top of the social class were the royal family. Below them were the people known as ‘the peerage’who were properly addressed as ‘Lord’or ‘Lady’. Some way below these were the knights and baronets whose formal address was ‘Sir’. There were also what have been referred to as the ‘middleclass aristocracy’ or ‘pseudo-gentry’. These were those who had made their money from trade and the professions but who aspired to the lifestyle of the traditional gentry.In an England where propriety was essential, the opportunities for young people of both sexes to meet and be able to talk privately were rare. It was balls, rare as they were, with the attraction of music and the exercise afforded by dancing, that madesocial relationships possible. Even though the physical contact permitted by the country dance or later the quadrille were very limited, the possibility of having a regular partner who reserved several dances during the ball was an indispensable prelude to an engagement. For a girl to be allowed to go to a ball, however, her parents had to consider her old enough to come out, that is, make her debut into adult society. Her first steps in the world thus marked a stage in her life, the stage when she could hope to get engaged and be married.19th century England had serious social problems from the Royalty and Nobility. One of the most significant of these was the tendency to marry for money. A person sought a partner based on the economical foundation and their status. This process went both ways: a beautiful woman might be able to marry a rich husband, or a charring and handsome man could take a rich wife. In these marriages, money was the only consideration. Love was left out, with the thought that it would develop as the years went by.2.2 The Background of Jane AustenJane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived her entire life as part of a close-knit family located on the lower fringes of the English gentry. She was educated primarily by her father and older brothers as well as through her own reading. The steadfast support of her family was critical to her development as a professional writer. Her artistic apprenticeship lasted from her teenage years until she was about 35 years old. During this period, she experimented with various literary forms, including the epistolary novel which she tried then abandoned, and wrote and extensively revised three major novels and began a fourth. Although her novels focused on courtship and marriage, Jane Austen never married and never entered a formal school and well educated by her family at home with her sisters. She did a fair amount of reading and passed her life very quietly,cheerfully. Her lifelong companion and bosom friend Was her older and only sister, Cassandra．Both women never married，but their dozens of relatives and friends widened Austen’s social experiences beyond her immediate family．The Austen’s frequently staged theatrical amateur and they were devoted readers of novels. They also provided a delighted au dience for Jane’s youthful comic pieces, and later for her novels. She began to write at the age of 19 or 20.Her first novel, Sense and Sensibility, appeared in (1811). Her next novel Pride and Prejudice, which she described as her “own darling child” rece ived highly favorable reviews in (1813). Mansfield Park was published in (1814), then Emma in (1816), Northanger Abbey (1818), and Persuasion (1818).Her last work titled Sanditon, but she died before completing it. Jane died in Cassandra's arms in Winchester at the age of 41 on July 18, 1817 at Winchester Jane Austen's works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century realism. Her plots, though fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security. Her works, though usually popular, were first published anonymously and brought her little personal fame and only a few positive reviews during her lifetime, but the publication in 1869 of her nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced her to a wider public, and by the 1940s she had become widely accepted in academia as a great English writer. The second half of the 20th century saw a proliferation of Austen scholarship and the Janeite fan culture.Since the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the 18th century, the English social structure underwent rapid changes. The industrial capitalists began to control not only the economic but also the political power and thus the struggle between the workers and capitalists also became more and more sharp. Under such a social and literary environment, Jane Austen exerted her transitional role in English literature. Austen focused on middle-class provincial life with humor and understanding. She depicted minor landed gentry, country clergymen and their families, in which marriage mainly determined women's social status. She was well connected with the middling-rich landed gentry that she portrayed in her novels..Chapter 3 The main marriages of her works3.1 The marriage in Pride and PrejudiceIn Pride and Prejudice, her heroines are ultimately married. In the marriage market, they always place in a desperate situation of marrying young and rich landlords or clergymen. During Austen’s time, marriage was an only way for women to live better for her later life and obtained social recognition. Thus money had been taken much more seriously when it comes to marriage. In the novel, money in love and marriage is presented openly or indirectly, which shows that Austen has sharp insight into the aristocratic and bourgeois English society of her time. Critics accuse Jane Austen of being obsessed with money and rich relation. But both money and rich relations were a necessity in the society to which she belonged.Through five types of marriage, Austen depicts a clear picture of the relation between marriage and money and she puts forward quite advanced views on marriage: property, social status and love are interconnected. Marriage can not only depend on property and social status. She objects to marriage only for money and as well as marriage without consideration for the same background. She stresses the importance of emotional factors and advocates love and economic foundation are the basis of a happy marriage, while love should play the leading role. Her views bear progressive color for in Victorian Britain, money and social status were still the decisive elements in marriage selection In Pride and Prejudice, the first marriage is the main theme of the works. That is D arcy and Elizabeth’s marriage, with both love and money. The reader sees the unfolding plot and the other characters mostly from her viewpoint. Elizabeth is the second of the Bennet daughters at twenty years old, she is intelligent, lively, attractive, and witty, but with a tendency to judge on first impressions and perhaps to be a little selective of the evidence upon which she bases her judgments. Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy is Twenty-eight years old and unmarried, Darcy is the wealthy owner of the famous family estate of Pemberley in Derbyshire. Handsome, tall, and intelligent, but not convivial, his aloof decorum and moral rectitude are seen by many as an excessivepride and concern for social status. He makes a poor impression on strangers, such as the gentry of Meryton, but is valued by those who know him well. At the beginning, Elizabeth rejects the pursuer-Darcy, because she does not like him, even looks down upon him though Darcy loves her very much. In Elizabeth’s eyes, he is arrogant and unreasonable because he is rich and has high social status. Realizing that, Darcy begins to get rid of those bad habits quietly to crate her taste and get good impression and love of her. Because of Darcy’s perfect behavior and good education, Elizabeth gradually eliminates the bias on Darcy. Then they spontaneously fall in love. So when Darcy’s second suitor is sent to Elizabeth, Elizabeth readily agree with, and they get married and have happy family lives.The second marriage is of the eldest daughter Jane and Mr. Bingley. Bingley is a friend of Darcy.Charles Bingley’s wealth was recent, and he is seeking a permanent home. He rents the Netherfield estate near Longbourn when the novel opens. Twenty-two years old at the start of the novel, handsome, good-natured, and wealthy, he is contrasted with his friend Darcy as being less intelligent but kinder and more charming and hence more popular in Meryton. He lacks resolve and is easily influenced by others.Jane Bennet is the eldest sister,who is 22 years old, she is considered the most beautiful young lady in the neighborhood. Her character is contrasted with Elizabeth's as sweeter, shyer, and equally sensible, but not as clever; her most notable trait is a desire to see only the good in others. The marriage of the able man- Bingley and the beautiful girl-Jane is ideal in most people’s eyes. At last, the lovers get married as the problems between Elizabeth and Darcy has been solved.The third part is the marriage of Charlotte and Collins, their marriage is lucky and natural. They get married without any expectation. Charlotte is William Lucas’s daughter, who is the neighbor of the Bennets. She has not got married even until she is 26 years old. William Collins is Mr. Bennet's clergyman cousin and, as Mr. Bennet has no son, heir to his estate. Austen described him as "not a sensible man, and the deficiency of nature had been but little assisted by education or society." Informed that the eldest daughter Jane has a boyfriend, he aims at the second daughter Elizabeth Bennet in spit e for his aunt’s interesting sake, and Elizabeth has been tired of him.Eventually, she refuses him with sharp tongue. But Collins quickly finds comfort from Charlotte who desires to get love from a male and believes marriage is the elegant way for a girl with some education, and then they get married as quickly as the lightning. Such marriage without love is too practical, so it is a kind of superficial marriage without happiness.The fourth marriage is between Bennet’s third daughter Lydia and Wickham, th e son of the housekeeper. Lydia’s Marriage—with Neither Love or Money, Lydia is foolish and flirtatious, she lacks any sense of virtue, propriety or good-judgment, as seen in her elopement with Wickham, She is deceived by Wick ham’s appe arance of goodness and virtue. He marries Lydia just because Darcy pays his debts of honor, purchases his commission, gives Lydia another thousand pounds. In this marriage, money plays the most important role. Austen does not appreciate their marriage. She expresses her feelings towards them through the heroine Elizabeth how Wickham and Lydia were to be supported in tolerable independence, she could not image.3.2 The marriage in EmmaEmma,by Jane Austen, is a novel about youthful hubris and the perils of misconstrued romance. The novel was first published in December 1815. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian-Regency England; she also creates a lively comedy of manners among her characters. Emma Woodhouse, aged 20 at the start of the novel, is a young, beautiful, witty, and privileged woman in Regency England. She lives on the fictional estate of Hartfield in Surrey in the village of Highbury with her elderly widowed father, who is excessively concerned for his health and that of his loved ones. Emma's friend and only critic is the gentlemanly George Knightley, her neighbor from the adjacent estate of Donwell, and the brother of her elder sister Isabella's husband, John. As the novel opens, Emma has just attended the wedding of Miss Taylor, her best friend and former governess. Having introduced Miss Taylor to her future husband, Mr. Weston, Emma takes credit for their marriage, and decides that she rather likes matchmaking.As we can see, marriage is the main theme in Emma, and the marriages in the novel are not the duplicate of each other. The novel begins with a marriage, that of the Weston’s. The Elton’s marriage is kind of trade, with the husband marrying for money and the wife for upgrading social status; Miss Bates offers a sad example of an unmarried woman; the John Knight leys have a marriage which based on mutual tolerance instead of mutual respect. The two matches, that of Emma- Mr. Knightly and Frank –Jane Fairfax’s, which stand at the central of the novel, will be discussed in more details in this article. In Jane Austen’s point of view, the choice of a marriage partner is perhaps the most important and serious decision that an individual undertakes. She explores the social and economic as well as the psychological basis of marriage in her time. At Austen’s time, the educated single woman had two professions open to her—the stage and teaching. The former offered few opportunities and enormous risks; the latter was arduous, and little respected. There was also, of course, literature but writing, since journalism was not yet open to women, did not offer a stable livelihood. Unless, like Emma Woodhouse, a woman had a private income, happy matrimony was the only way of life in which middle-and upper-class women could hope to find they satisfied and secure. Economically, women were therefore a dependent class: if they married, they were supported by their husbands; if they were single, they remained dependent in their family.Marriage is also an important factor for the change of social status. The characters in the novel can be divided into two groups: those whose social status is fixed, and those who are mobile. In the first group are Mr. Woodhouse and Mr. Knightly. The second group are Harriet Smith, Jane Fairfax and Augusta Hawkins The second group belongs to the younger generation, also they are unmarried. Emma, herself, of course belongs to the second group, but she has no need to marry to secure financial security and social status. Harriet doesn’t have any “fortune”, but her great point interest for Emma is that her family origins are unknown. Emma chooses to believe that Harriet is the illegitimate daughter of someone high in the social scale--a princess turned into a goose-girl. But in the end, she turns out to be ‘the daughter of a tradesman’ which puts Emma’s romantic notion that Harriet had “theblood of gentility” firmly in its place. Emma plans to marry off Harriet to a husband beyond her social expectations-- first to Mr. Elton, then to Churchill. Eventually, Harriet’s union with Robert Martin has nothing startling, but is suitable in every way, fitting into Jane Austen’s standard of Marriage, which is “aesthetically right, morally and humanly balanced, and financially sound.”Jane Fairfax succeeds in making a marriage that raises her in the social scale: in her case, the Cinderella story comes true. She has neither wealth nor family to support her, and would have become an ill-paid and low-positioned governess, yet marries the handsome young man, Frank Churchill, who is the heir of a great family with large estates. However, she deserves it for she is pretty talented, superior to Emma in her moral scale. She genuinely loves Frank, and is indeed better than he deserves.Emma and Mr. Knightly union is not achieved by opportunism but by their moral choice. At Box Hill, Emma’s cutting insult on Miss Bates is similar to Frank’s sneer at Jane; and Mr. Knightly rebuke is parallel to Jane’s ironic critic on Frank, wounding Emma’s pride and strong sense of self-respect. Moreover, Emma is so hurt at losing Mr. Knightly good opinion. For the kind of stitching painful feeling which she has never known before, she genuinely wants to change, and she really does so. Later the union of Emma and Mr. Knightly is based on the mutual respect and moral appreciation of each other, which embraces dignity and integrity. In the modern point of view, one may feel the happy endings are a kind of escapist,In other words, Jane Austen is a conservative novelist, in spite of her powerful criticism of many aspects of society. In Emma, the heroine has to learn to deserve her social status by treating other people with respect to become a ‘lady’ as Mr. Knightly is a gentleman. However, her social position is not questioned: there is never a real possibility that Harriet will cross social boundaries, by marrying Mr. Knightly or even Mr. Elton. In Jane Austen’s point of view, marriage matters greatly, preserving the fabric of society. Appropriate and happy marriage should be based on mature love, genuine understanding, financial security and social suitability. Elton’s mar riage is kind of trade, with the husband marrying for money and the wife for social status.3.3 The marriage in Sense and SensibilitySense and Sensibility is a work of romantic fiction, better known as a comedy of manners. It is set in southwest England, London and Kent between 1792 and 1797 and portrays the life and loves of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. The novel follows the young ladies to their new home, a meagre cottage on a distant relative's property, where they experience love, romance and heartbreak. The philosophical resolution of the novel is ambiguous: the reader must decide whether sense and sensibility have truly merged.Like all Austen novels, Sense and Sensibility ends in the marriage of the heroine. Yet marriage in this novel dose not seem a necessarily desirable state. As Rachel points out, the presentations of more established marriages in the novel are fairly dark. There is the selfishness of John and Fanny Dashwood as well as the unsuitability of the Middletons and Palmers, whose relashionshio causes Elinor to reflect upon the ‘strange unsuitableness which often existed between husband and wife.’The happy ending would also seem to be neither quite as happy nor as straightforward as we might expect. As is Austen’s custom, the marriages themselves at the end of the novel take place outside the narrative. Of Elinor’s wedding we are told only that ‘the ceremony took place in Barton Church early in the autumn’. Marianne’s marriage is not related, we are merely told:she found herself at nineteen, submitting to new attachments. Certainly the marriage of Marianne to a man 20 years her senior and to whom she has exchanged hardly a word throughout the course of the novel leaves the reader with a sense that such a marriage is a tidy ending but not necessarily a convincing one.The marriage always establishes close contact with wage, house and poverty. So we should not object the love in the situation which has not economic base. It’s not so easy to have main good communication between two young hearts. These have been reflected in the two heroines’ marriage views.While romantic Marianne of Sense and Sensibility is sensible and clever, but eager in everything; she is generous, amiable and interesting; she is doing everythingperfectly but lack of prudent. When she meets Willoughby, she can’t help falling in love with Willoughby at the first sight who is a handsome man. When he comes, many people, including Marianne pay much attention to him. She believes in first sight and passionate love, a meeting of tastes and minds; she trusts her feelings to guide her conduct. When she knows that Willoughby will part from her, she is deep in sorrow. Later the social and psychological dangers of showing feelings are excruciatingly dramatized as Marianne insists on claiming intimacy with Willoughby in a crowded ballroom. Marianne doesn’t believe Willoughby will cheat her.Marianne Dash wood romantically insists on an ideal of perfect self-fulfillment in a love based on mutual feeling and shared tastes, Marianne likes to make friends with this kind of people with charming appearance and perfect personality. While Brandon is much older than Marianne. He is not active or passionate. After cheated by Willoughby, Marian ne’s attitude towards love has changed a lot. Looked after by Brandon, Marianne realizes that Brandon is a good person. He has the ability to take care of her and bring her happiness. Marianne’s views on love have changed from sensibility to sense.Sense and Sensibility begins with money and ends with love. At the later of the 18 the century, man has the power while woman is obedient to them. If the women don’t have enough trousseaus, then they will not be happy. When they got married, the money they have will be occupied by their husbands. Many men often choose wealthy women. Just as Eli nor said “we must admit that we can’t live a happy life without enough money.Chapter 4 Jane Austen’s concept about marriageJane Austin expressed her marital outlook that marriage should be on the basis of love but at the same time should take wealth and equal social status into account. Jane Austen’s view of marriage consists of a very important notion which is unique among her contemporaries .She insists that equality between a husband and a wife is the key to a happy marriage. In a time when women are taught to be inferior to men, even in the domestic sphere, the proposition for women’s equal role in matrimonial relationship is truly daring and subversive. Although Jane Austen had a realistic attitude towards marriage, her belief on mutual deep love as the foundation of a marriage has never changed. In her opinion, it is a big mistake for a woman to go into marriage without love .For example, Emma is obviously aware of the importance role of love to a successful marriage and she tells Harriet that she should be a fool to get married without love.In the modern society, her thought about marriage and love not only was considered as the feminine textbook at that time, but also has the practical significance to today’s society. Although from the past until now, the feminism’s basic idea is on the change of the women’s social status, and on giving the women freedom to obtain the maximum enhancement. As for women’s marria ge, they advocate the love, and the female must be independent and cannot take the male as the center in the marriage. This is also Jane Austen’s marriage views which have the actual feasibility in the reality. In her opinion, as a female, if she is not special, she should accept the social mainstream of thought; keep a clear mind to choose her own love and the marital object. When they are young, they are lack of reason, and easily hurt both in heart and in body. So they should have the ability to know, to judge and controlling sentiment with the mind of reason in order to get the happy marriage.。