简奥斯汀的婚姻观

Abstract: This paper first explores Jane Austen’s attitude toward marriage in Sense and Sensibility through her description of Elinor and Marianne, two heroines in the novel. It then discusses the contemporary influence of it. In the Regent period, the social status of women was low and the rights were not protected. With the awakening of female consciousness, these situations were improved to a great degree. Austin thinks that marriage requires love, however, in the society at that time, class is the first threshold, and marriage turned into equivalent commodities trading, women are treated as goods to be sold. Love is not quite a consideration when it comes to marriage. Austin abhors the commercial kind of marriage, advocating free and romantic love ,a breakthrough of the traditional view of marriage, maybe it can due to the advocating of the new ideas “liberty, equality, fraternity" .However, Austen is reserve and sensible, discussing how lacking of can affect people’s life. Marianne’s elastic love toward Willoughby can be detrimental to her reputation, and when she is dumped by him, she is completely desperate and broken. Austen shows her sarcastic and contemptuous attitude toward such behaviors. On the contrary, she appreciates Elinor’s character, reasonable while abounding in feelings. The conflicts between sense and sensibility make up the characters’ complex and contradictory personalities, arousing reader's interest and thinking, thus becoming an enduring topic. The ideas put forward by Jane Austen more than two hundred years ago are still instructive today. The contradictions between money and love, sense and sensibility is weakening, since people are paying more attention to the economic foundation and expecting more resonance of taste and emotion. It can hardly be denied that people of different classes will find it growingly difficult to produce this kind of resonance. Therefore, as long as we strike the balance of sense and sensibility, get rid of unrealistic fantasy and the idea of money worship, and build it on the basis of equality and mutual respect, a happy marriage may not be a utopian fantasy.

Key words: sense, sensibility, attitude, marriage

简•奥斯汀的婚姻观——以《理智与情感》为例

摘要: 首先根据《理智与情感》原著，探究作者对埃莉诺与玛丽安两个女主人公感情和婚姻轨迹的描述，分析其背后奥斯汀对于婚姻的态度。接着探讨奥斯汀的婚姻挂在当代具有的现实意义。奥斯汀所处的英国摄政王时期，女性的地位低下，权利也得不到保障，然而，女性意识不断提高，使得这些情况有很大改善。奥斯汀认为，婚姻需要双方的感情，在当时社会，门第阶层是第一门槛，婚姻演变成了对等的商品交易，女性被父母和家族当作商品一样估价而售，爱情似乎是人们最不齿的事情。奥斯汀厌恶这种商业性质的婚姻，崇尚双方自由而浪漫的爱情，突破了英国传统的婚姻观，也许这离不开当时崇尚“自由，平等，博爱”的新思潮。然而，奥斯汀同时又性格沉敛，充满理性，她在书中探讨了缺乏理性的感情的危害，玛丽安对威洛比不知收敛的表达爱意，引来旁人的猜疑，玷污了自己的名誉，同时还遭受了威洛比的抛弃，可以说表现了奥斯汀对盲目感情的讽刺和鄙夷，她认为应像埃莉诺一样，富有感情又充满理性。奥斯汀的作品中，理智与情感互相角逐，彼此冲击，构成了人物复杂又矛盾的个性，引起读者思考，引发学者研究。二百多年前简•奥斯汀所提出的观念到今天仍具有启发意义，爱情与面包，理智与情感的矛盾正在减弱，人们注重财富，同时也寄托于趣味和情感的共鸣，而不得不否认，不同阶层的人很难产生这种共鸣，所以只要平衡好理智与情感，抛开不切实际的臆想，摆脱拜金的理念，婚姻幸福可以不再是乌托邦式的构想。