《曼斯菲尔德庄园》中的功利主义_英语论文

Utilitarianism in Mansfield Park

摘要

作为一个有名的女性小说作家，简奥斯汀有很多部小说都很受欢迎，特别是例如，《傲慢与偏见》、《理智与情感》、《劝导》等都是非常受欢迎的。这些小说都有很多学者研究过了，相较而言对于《曼斯菲尔德庄园》的研究就相对较少了。但这并不意味着，这本小说不好。相反，这部简奥斯汀后期的作品有着相当成熟的写作技巧以及表现方式。本文通过分析作者通过精湛的写作艺术塑造出的人物形象来讨论这些人物形象如何体现出功利主义。在本文中所分析到的角色都为了达到自己想要的结果，不顾及方法，不顾道德。亨利为了获得女子的青睐，不顾玛利亚已婚的身份，与其私奔；玛丽为了同时满足自己对财富以及和与自己爱的人，即埃德蒙，结婚这两个要求，竟然听到埃德蒙德的哥哥病危的消息，感到十分高兴，并期望他不会好转，这样埃德蒙就可以继承所有财产；姨母诺里斯为了保持法妮和他表妹之间的不同，不断压制法妮；而通过对法妮的角色分析，反衬出之前的角色是多么的功利主义。

关键词：功利主义、小说、人物

Abstract    

As a very well-known woman writer of novels, Jane Austen’s novels are quite popular. Especially, for example, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Persuasion. These novels have been studied by many scholars. Comparatively， Mansfield Park is not so much touched by scholars. However, it doesn’t mean that it is not well written. In fact, this novel, written in her later period, is quite mature in skills and ways of expressing. This thesis discusses how utilitarianism is reflected in the novel by the writers’ wonderful skills of presenting different characters. Those characters which are analyzed in this thesis all aim at getting what they want without considering whether their ways of getting those things are right or not, and even without taking morality into consideration. In order to make a girl love him, Henry elopes with Maria regardless of her having got married with another man; in order to meet her desire that she can marry the one she loves, namely Edmund, and also can enjoy a rich life, Mary is very happy and hopes Edmund’s brother can never recover on hearing that his brother is seriously ill because Edmund can thus inherit all the property; in order to maintain a difference between Fanny and her cousins, Aunt Norris presses Fanny very hard; through analyzing Fanny, in contrast, we can know how utilitarian the former three characters are.

Key words: utilitarianism, novel, character creation

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Utilitarianism Reflected in Henry Crawford 2

3 Utilitarianism Reflected in Mary 6

4 Utilitarianism Reflected in Mrs Norris 9

5 A Contrastive Analysis of Fanny 11

6 Conclusion 13

Bibliography 1