ASudyofMarriageOulookinPrideandPrejudice_开题报告

Literature Review

Jane Austen,the writer of  Pride and Prejudice,was born in southern England, Austen deliberately portrayed the ordinary people and things,through the familiar people and that description reveals her age British gentry living landscape,such as property inheritance of family,education,the status of women and the morals and customs.Her work is popular with profound fresh and acuity,containing the perspective and the philosophy of human nature.As a realistic novelist,her novels actually reflect the social history,the economic realities as well as women's social status of the her time.As a woman writer focusing on love and marriage,Austen describes different type of marriage and puts forward her own views on marriage in all her novels.

 Pride and Prejudice is a very popular novel written by Jane Austen and it is read widely all over the world. It was written in 1813. That specific history time decided that people at that time took money much more seriously, even on their marriage. The novel was evaluated as the one of the most successful novel masterpieces,describes the four pairs of young men and women in marriage through hero and heroine love entanglement. From the ancient times to the present,there are many studies both at home and abroad studying and discussing the novel about Jane Austen an her some works. Scholars mainly studied on this novel from the following aspects： 

   1.Researches about Jane Austen 

In 1813, Oxford World's Classics for the first time recorded and published the work Pride and Prejudice and aroused great repercussion around the world. Then, in 1826 after the work has been widely read, Sir Walter Scott analyzed Pride and Prejudice from an overall perspective. In his article “The Journal of Sir Walter Scott”, he summarized the features of Jane Austen, he said that “Jane Austen has a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful that I ever met with.”The background of Pride and Prejudice was reflected in his points that Pride and Prejudice was the description about the descent life and communication in her familiar country. The author Jane was born in a country clergyman’s family, she had six novels published all her life and six novels share a general writing style and show her viewpoints on love and marriage. Having a talent for describing trivial things of ordinary people, she was the first to write novels of realism in the 19th century. 

2.Researches about irony in Pride and Prejudice

There are some researches about irony in Pride and Prejudice at abroad.For example,For instance,a scholar called X Zhu writed a paper named Irony In Pride and Prejudice and Its Rhetoric Effect in 2013.Irony in Pride and Prejudice shaped fresh characters. This paper tries to make a tentative application of speech-act theory to the analysis of irony in Pride and Prejudice,as the author believes that irony is the fundamental feature of the novel.Thus,it also further proves the applicability of speech-act theory literary criticism.From the point of view of the plot development, the whole story seems to be made of many ironies which make the work so fun.Irony plays the decisive role in characterization and plot development. We should pay attention on the irony words in dialogue, scene irony and dramatic irony. Irony can be achieved joking, teasing and the effect of sarcasm,makes the work lively and humorous and full of artistic appeal. Austen also uses irony quite often to inform the readers on her own personal opinions. The comic techniques caricatures, irony,  and satire, not only helped to provide humor for Austen's readers, but they also helped Austen to give her own personal opinion on public matters.Austen’s satire arts run through the entire novel idea, letting the reality ridicule people’s subjective guess.  Pride and prejudice continues to be popular today not only because of its memorable characters, but also because of the perfect use of rhetoric-irony. 

3.Researches about marriages in Pride and Prejudice

There are also some researches about the views on marriage in Pride and Prejudice .For instance,a scholar called Huang Rong published a paper called “Thought of Marriage in Jane Austen’ Pride and prejudice”.  The paper agreed that in the opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice, there are two important words “fortune” and “want”. “Fortune” is the basis of marriage, while “want” provides the marriage chance for those unmarried women. We can read “fortune” everywhere in the novel, and “money” played an important role in marriage. Because women had no economic ability and status, they usually got married conventionally when they were old enough, no other than they became one’s wife, just had their own status, and be acknowledged by society only after getting married. The seeming preoccupation with money in connection with marriage in Jane Austen’s work may mislead modern readers. While there is no lack of greed and shallow materialism on the part of some characters, even sensible people must devote serious thought to this topic, since it is rather foolhardy to marry without having a more-or-less guaranteed income in advance—not only was marriage for life, but there was no social security, old age pensions, unemployment compensation, health insurance, etc.

4.Outline 

1.  Introduction

1.1 The Background of Jane Austin   

1.2 The Background of  Pride and Prejudice

2.  The Four Marriages in Pride and Prejudice

2.1 Marriage of Charlotte and Collins

2.2 Marriage of Lydia and Wickham

2.3 Marriage of Jane and Mr. Bingley

2.4 Marriage of Darcy and Elizabeth

3.   Conclusion

4.   References

5.Biography

[1]Austin, Jane. 1991. Pride and Prejudice. Beijing: Beijing Foreign language Study Association.

[2]Penn, Merlin. 2007. Money and marriage in Pride and Prejudice. London: Longman.

[3]Huang Rong. 2007. Thoughts of Marriage in Pride and Prejudice. Wuhan: Wu Han University of science and technology.

[4]X Zhu.2002.A Speech-Act Perspective on Irony in Pride and Prejudice.[5]Zhao Fa.Methodologies of Literature Criticism[M]. Congqing: Chongqing publishing House,1993.

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[7]张伯香.英美文学选读[M].北京：西语教育与研究出版社，2002。

[8]卢玉娜.奥斯丁《傲慢与偏见》中女性意识和男性声音的和谐[J].贵州师范大学学报，2007。

[9]裘因.奥斯丁与英国女性文学[J].上海大学学报，1996。

[10]常耀信，2000，《英国文学简史》， 天津：南开大学出版社。