A Comparison of Feminist Consciousness in Romeo and Juliet and The Peony Pavilion

ABSTRACT
Romeo and Juliet and The Peony Pavilion are masterpieces of Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu respectively. Tang Xianzu is known as the “Oriental Shakespeare”. The societies they lived at that time had similar political, economic, and ideological background, making both had similar tendency of literary thoughts. They created many vivid images of women, playing a leading role in drama works, promoting the development of the whole story. These women have strong marriage independent consciousness, which was unusual in the society at that time.
The body of this thesis consists of three parts, following the pattern of “introduction-body-conclusion”. In the first part of this thesis, the author briefly introduces the two world famous masterpieces, Romeo and Juliet and The Peony Pavilion, and the playwrights, and points out the significance and aim of the comparisons based on previous studies. The middle part of this thesis is composed of three chapters. The first chapter is the comparative analysis of personality of the two heroines. The second one presents a comparative study of the two female characters in terms of love view. The third chapter provides a detailed comparison of feminist consciousness based on the former analyses. In the last part, the author summarises all the detailed comparisons of the two heroines and draws a conclusion.
Keywords: female characters, personality, love view, feminist consciousness
Contents
Acknowledgements    i
摘要    ii
Abstract    iii
1. Introduction.    1
    1.1 A Brief Introduction of Romeo and Juliet and The Peony Pavilion.    1
        1.1.1 William Shakespeare and Romeo and Juliet.    1
        1.1.2 Tang Xianzu and The Peony Pavilion    2
    1.2 Literature Review.    2
    1.3 The Significance of the Thesis.    3
    1.4 The Organisation of the Thesis.    4
2. Analysis of Personality Traits of Two Heroines    5
    2.1 The Personality of Juliet    5
        2.1.1 Growth Environment-Feudal Capulet Family.    5
        2.1.2 Juliet’s Personality Traits.    6
    2.2 The Personality of Du Liniang.    7
3. Analysis of Love Views of Two Heroines.    9
    3.1Love View of Juliet.    9
    3.2 Love View of Du Liniang.    10
4. Comparative Analysis of Feminist Consciousness.    12
5. Conclusion    14
Bibliography    15