Abstract

Pride and Prejudice, a popular novel written by Jane Austen in 1796, depicts four major marriages. In the novel, there are five factors that influence people’s views on marriage. They are money, social status, character, family and virtue. Different people have different views on marriage and their marriages naturally turn to be different. Through a brief analysis of two marriages of Elizabeth-Darcy and Charlotte-Collins in the book Pride and Prejudice, this paper aims to argue that social status is not only the catalyst but also the obstacle of marriage at the end of the 18th century which indicates that marriage needs to take the disparity of social status of both sides into consideration.

Key words:  Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, marriage, social status, effect

摘 要

《傲慢与偏见》是简•奥斯汀于1796年所著的一部有名的小说，主要描述了四段婚姻。在小说中，有五大因素影响着人们的婚姻观，它们是金钱，社会地位，性格，家庭和品行。不同的人有着不同的婚姻观，自然而然他们的婚姻结局也会不同。本文旨在通过对《傲慢与偏见》中伊丽莎白和达西以及夏洛特和柯林斯的两段婚姻的简单分析，论述18世纪末社会地位对婚姻的双重影响——推动和阻碍，从而强调了婚姻里考虑双方社会地位差异的必要性。

关键词： 简奥斯汀,《傲慢与偏见》，婚姻，社会地位，影响

1. Introduction
Jane Austen (1775-1817) was an English novelist. She was born in a country priest family located in Hants, the village of Kingston, Steventon Rectory, Hampshire, Sidemen in north England. She was the second daughter and the seventh child in a family of eight. She was mostly educated at home, and irregularly at school, but she received a broader education than many women of her time, which provided the foundation for her later writing.
Austen is a realistic writer in style and a neoclassicism advocator upholding ideas of order, reason, proportion, and gracefulness. Her works show an apparent preference for good manners and sound sense, which are typical of the country gentry class. As W•F•Pollock said, “Miss Austen never attempts to describe a scene or a class of society with which she was not herself thoroughly acquainted”.