Abstract

Marriage in Pride and Prejudice is a very important and frequently discussed topic, and in literature to date there are a number of approaches to the study of this topic. This thesis mainly from the view of females attempts to evaluate several marriage constraints. The thesis groups these marriage constraints into four parts: fortune and social status, appearance and personality, true love and knowledge. This thesis analyzes these constraints through examples. Through compare and contrast, this thesis concludes that money is the fundamental constraint in marriage and that all these marriage constraints work together like a pyramid with fortune and social status lying at the bottom. Only when the bottom needs are met, are the other marriage constraints then taken into consideration.

KEYWORDS:marriage constraints; Pride and Prejudice; Jane Austen.

摘要

对于《傲慢与偏见》这部爱情小说来说，婚姻是无可避免会涉及的话题。迄今为止，关于这一话题，已有许多的研究。这篇论文，主要从女性的角度出发，试着分析制约婚姻的几个主要因素。本论文将婚姻的制约因素分成四组进行分析：财产和社会地位，外貌和品质，真爱以及学士教养。通过举例论证，对比和比较，文章认为金钱是婚姻的决定性因素，婚姻的制约因素就像金字塔，财产和社会地位位于最底层，只有当最底层的需要得到满足了，其他因素才会提上议程。

关键字:婚姻的制约因素；简•奥斯丁；傲慢与偏见

1.1 Jane Austen
Jane Austen (1775-- 1817) was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the gentry, honored 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. Her father was so kind that he let Jane Austen enter into his library, and gave his daughters expensive papers to write on. He was quite tolerant of Jane Austen’s experiments in writings. Her mother was also knowledgeable and often read her children stories. Therefore, Jane Austen’s parents played an important role in her development as a novelist. She loved to act out her own writing stories, performing them for her families. Her family has a great influence on her great success as a novelist. She lived her life with her families and never got married, carrying out those activities normal for women of her age and social standing. She attended female relatives during childbirth and older relatives on their deathbeds (Gary, 2001). She also attended church regularly, socialized frequently with friends and neighbours and many other staffs. All of these gave Austen a keen look into female and family life which was the main concern of her novels. From 1782 to 1788, her family and close friends staged a series of plays called private theatricals. Most of the plays were comedies, which suggest one way in which Austen's comedic and satirical gifts were cultivated.