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简析 简?奥斯汀的《傲慢与偏见》

——奥斯汀的爱情观

摘要：每一个有钱的单身汉，都得娶一位太太，这就像一条举世公认的真理。”这句话源自英国小说《傲慢与偏见》中的一句话已经成为了脍炙人口的名句了。《傲慢与偏见》这部在当时风靡一时的小说，时至今日，仍给读者以独特的艺术享受。从这部小说中，我们能够看到简?奥斯汀的爱情观。

关键词：爱情观 物质与金钱 傲慢与偏见

正文：

1．简?奥斯汀的爱情观

在《傲慢与偏见》这部小说中，简?奥斯汀描写了四对青年男女的爱情与婚姻，分别是，达西与伊莉莎白、宾利与简、威克姆与莉迪亚、柯林斯与夏洛特。而这几对男女的爱情也代表了几种不同的爱情观。

（1）威克姆与莉迪亚

威克姆与莉迪亚之间的婚姻无疑是最不让人看好的，威克姆的品行不正与莉迪亚的浮躁造成的私奔，这种在当时让家族蒙羞的行为在简?奥斯汀看来这不是真正的爱情，只是简单的情欲。莉迪亚即使知道跟着威克姆必须要四处奔波，躲避逃债，并且会让家族蒙羞，可她为了追求精神上的刺激却依旧选择了跟随着威克姆。而威克姆愿意带着莉迪亚也只是因为他需要一个人陪伴身边，即使不是莉迪亚也可以，只不过当时正好有个像莉迪亚这样的傻瓜愿意跟在自己身边，何乐而不为？由此可见，他们之间显然不存在真正的爱情。后来纵使达西用金钱使他们稳定下来，结了婚，不再四处逃债，但是如果他们不知道珍惜，毫无醒悟，依旧是以前那样轻率浮躁的作风，只是为了追求精神刺激上的他们的婚姻绝对是不美满的。

（2）夏洛特与柯斯林

夏洛特与柯斯林的婚姻是当时社会的产物。要说莉迪亚与威克姆在一起是为了刺激，那么夏洛特愿意嫁给柯斯林纯粹是为了金钱。夏洛特是伊丽莎白的闺中好友，理应不应该品格低下，那她为什么选择了像柯斯林那样愚蠢、狭隘、呆板、目光短浅的人结婚呢？这正是夏洛特的聪明之处。男大当婚，女大当嫁。夏洛特也到了该结婚的年龄，她不能拖下去，因为她没有像伊丽莎白那样姣好的容貌作为资本，深知自己无法得到像达西那样上流社会人的垂青；其次，柯斯林除了人品差了些，但经济上也比较宽裕，与他结婚也不算失了体面。因此，她与柯斯林结婚后，不仅有了舒适的生活，而且有了一定的社会地位。而柯斯林娶了一位聪明的太太，正好弥补了他的不足之处。那么如此看来，也不能对他们的婚姻一味地持有批判的态度，其实他们的婚姻是理性地从现实角度出发的。

（3）简与宾利、伊丽莎白与达西

让人觉得美满幸福的婚姻就是简与宾利以及伊丽莎白与达西这两对了。虽然之前简与宾利两人之间遇到点小挫折，但是这种真正的爱情是能够经历任何考验的，而他们两人能走在一起也必定是命运的安排。在伊莉莎白对达西的偏见消除之后，原先的讨厌逐渐变为互相吸引，这种精神上的喜欢是必须的。到后来伊莉

莎白的姐姐简问她什么时候爱上达西时，伊莉莎白说了一句：“应该是从看到他那美丽的花园时。”由此看来，伊莉莎白不仅追求精神上的爱情，也追求能保障物质生活的爱情。而这正是简?奥斯汀的爱情观。

2．简?奥斯汀形成这种爱情观的原因

（1）作者生活时代

《傲慢与偏见》是英国19世纪著名女作家简?奥斯汀写的一部长篇小说。以其理性的光芒照出了十八世纪末十九世纪初所风行的感伤、哥特式小说的矫揉造作，为十九世纪三十年代现实主义小说高潮的到来扫清了道路。

在简?奥斯汀生活的年代，英国贵族阶层与中产阶层间存在着有经济条件而引起的社会隔阂，英国人虽然思想上开放，但其行为上比较约束。他们的婚姻也讲究着门当户对。在英国的上流社会，女性接受着高等教育。虽然思想上开放，但当时英国的法律还受到一定的封建影响，女性在家族中没有继承权。如果一个家庭中没有男性继承人，那只能从家族中选择一名继承人，那到这时，原本在家中生存了二十几年的女儿是去还是留，就全看那位继承人的意思了。因此这样的时代背景造就了像《傲慢与偏见》所表现出来的现象，女性是男性的附属品，只有找到个好丈夫，下半辈子才有依靠。这也是伯纳特太太到处打听，希望能帮女儿们找个有钱丈夫的原因。

（2）作者的自身经历

其实《傲慢与偏见》从一定程度上说可以看成是带有理想色彩的简?奥斯汀的自传，而文中的女主人公伊丽莎白则可以说是简?奥斯汀的化身。伊丽莎白与简?奥斯汀有着许多相似之处。同样出身在中产阶级家庭，家里同样有着许多女儿，没有男性继承人。因此，简?奥斯汀的父亲与伊丽莎白的母亲一样，执意要将女儿嫁给有钱人。因此，当简?奥斯汀看上一位还没有多少资产的年轻律师时，父亲竭力反对，并且要求那位年轻律师返回自己的故乡。那位律师后来如他家人所愿，与一位大家闺秀结婚了。而简?奥斯汀由于初恋以被迫分手而终结，选择了终身不嫁。将《傲慢与偏见》说成是简?奥斯汀的自传，但又不完全是。最起码伊丽莎白由最初失去继承权的女性上升为彭伯里庄园的女主人。而简?奥斯汀却是怀着对初恋的思忆孤独地度过了一生。所以简?奥斯汀的爱情的失败可以说是成为了物质的牺牲品的典型代表。或许是由于初恋的影响，因此在《傲慢与偏见》一书中我们也可以看到简?奥斯汀对金钱的执着。无论是像莉迪亚与威克姆那样不被世人看好的婚姻，还是像伊丽莎白与达西那样为世人羡慕的婚姻，都少不了金钱的关系。

简?奥斯汀岁终身未嫁，但对于爱情与婚姻是同样渴求的。她在作品中也表达了自己的爱情观，即借伊莉莎白之口说出的那段话：真正的婚姻应该是既能有物质上的保障又有精神上的满足，只有爱情没有金钱或者是只有金钱没有爱情的婚姻都是不幸福的。显而易见，简?奥斯汀所认为的美满婚姻应当是金钱与爱情的完美结合。既要有物质上的，又要有精神上的。

参考文献：

[1] 简.奥斯汀.傲慢与偏见[M].上海译文出版社，2006，（2）

[2]淡豹子，奥斯汀可以教给你认识的一切知识. /group/topic/2176670/

[3]朱虹编.奥斯汀研究[M].中国文联出版社，1985（1）

 

第二篇：英语专业毕业论文 傲慢与偏见

摘 要

道德是简·奥斯丁小说中的中心要素。作为进入公众目光的第一部奥斯丁小说，为了理解奥斯丁从而应该得到更多的注意和精力, 《理智与情感》不仅仅是道德准则中的一个简单的问题而是应该引导人们的生活。奥斯丁并不是认为道德准则不该遵循，也不是因为我们的判断经常被我们的期望而影响，而是它并不只是个简单而易懂的事情。许多18世纪后期出版的行为书籍提出规则意味着控制行为。这些行为书籍指出那些遵守礼貌和道德的女人是有道德的并且应被奖赏。个体特征、婚姻、家庭和社会是到研究这部小说角色的焦点所在。在分析奥斯丁关于婚姻、宗教和长子继承权的观点的基础上，这篇论文为研究这部小说运用了文学伦理学批评的方法,目的是为了寻找其中的道德感并且最终了解奥斯丁的道德观。

关键词：道德感；简·奥斯丁；理智与情感

Abstract

Morality is a central element in Jane Austen’s novel. Sense and Sensibility, as the first of Austen’s novels to enter the light of public day, deserves more attention and energy in order to understand Austen, though not as a simple question of the moral rules that ought to guide people’s lives. It is not that Austen does not think that there are moral principles that ought to be followed, but that it is not a simple and straightforward matter, not because our judgment is often influenced by our desires. Many conduct books published in the late eighteenth century offered rules meant to govern conduct. These conduct books suggested that women who follow the rules for manners and morals would be both good and rewarded. Individual traits, marriage, family and society are the focus to approach the characters in the novel. Based on the analysis of Jane Austin’s view point about marriage, religion and primogeniture, this essay uses ethical literary criticism to approach the novel, in order to find the moral sense in it and finally see Austen’s morality.

Key words：moral sense; Jane Austen; Sense and Sensibility

Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction ................................................................................................... 4

1.1 Introduction to Jane Austen .................................................................................... 4

1.2 Introduction to Sense and Sensibility ...................................................................... 6

Chapter 2 Jane Austen’s viewpoints on marriage, religion, primogeniture ........... 9

2.1 Jane Austen’s viewpoints on marriage .................................................................... 9

2.2 Jane Austen viewpoint on religion ........................................................................ 11

2.3 Austen’s viewpoint on primogeniture ................................................................... 14

Chapter 3 Ethical literary criticism and ethical environment of the novel ............. 17

3.1 Ethical literary criticism ........................................................................................ 17

3.2 Ethical environment of the novel .......................................................................... 17

3.2.1 Individual Traits ............................................................................................. 18

3.2.2 Marriage and family ....................................................................................... 21

Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 23

References ...................................................................................................................... 24 Acknowledgements ............................................................... 错误！未定义书签。

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Introduction to Jane Austen

In the 19th century, there appeared several distinguished English novelists that are headed by Dickens and Thackeray who dominated a literature trend named Critical Realism. But women novelists had stepped on the stage of literature as early as the second half of the 18th century. Then some brilliant female novel writers achieved and contributed to the development of the English novel, one remarkable member of whom is Jane Austen. Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in Steventon rectory in Hampshire, England, where she spent her years of childhood and youth. After two unsuccessful attempts to find a good boarding school for the Austen daughters, they returned home and educated themselves from the resources of their father’s extensive library, and certainly with his guidance. At the age of about twelve, Jane began to write down some of the stories she had probably told Cassandra in the bedroom they shared. She copied the stories into three manuscript books which she labeled “Volume the First”, “Volume the Second” and “Volume the Third”. At fifteen, her writing is already marked by her characteristic neat stylishness and crisp irony. In 1795-6, Jane began writing “First Impression”, the first draft of Pride and Prejudice. She read it aloud to her family and it impressed her father so much that he wrote to a London publisher, offering to send the manuscript. However, the offer was refused. In 1801 Jane moved with her parents and her sister to Bath, where they remained until after the death of her father in 1805. With her mother, Cassandra and Martha Lloyd, her lifelong friend, she then lived on Southampton from 1806 to 1809. In July 1809 all four women moved to Chawton, in Hampshire, where Jane remained until May 1817, when she went to Winchester because of ill health. She died there, unmarried on July 18, 1817, and was buried in Winchester Cathedral. Four of her novels, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Masfield Park and Emma were published while she was living at Chawton. Her two other novel, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, were brought out in December 1817, a few months after her death.

In her short lifetime of 41 years, she never went out of the circle of her life. “Of events her life was singularly barren: few changes and no great crisis even broke the smooth current of its course” (J. E. Austen-Leigh, 1991: 1). Because of her limited personal experiences, Austen’s field of version often focused on the ordinary life and

the association of the so-called respectable middle-class families in villages to which she was familiar. Her work never touched upon the themes of sex, violence, death, radical behavior, dramatic conflicts and tragedies about which the writers in the past took delight in talking; what she concerned was everyday comics in village families, especially the comic experience of provincial girls hunting for husbands. The Bennet daughters in Pride and Prejudice, the Dashwood sisters in Sense and Sensibility, Harriat Smith in Emma are all like that. Although living through the period of the French Revolution, this great historical change never had any influence on her works and the stories and the characters in her pen are all of lyrical and pastoral flavor. “Austen is often happy to follow the Cinderella plot, and to make a happy ending out of marrying her heroine to a man notably above her in income and social prestige” (Copeland & Mcmaster, 2002: 117).

Jane Austen’s very style of her works was criticized by some critics and writers. Charlotte Bronte ever demurred that she “should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen in their elegant but confined houses”(Zhu Hong, 1985: 50). Mrs. Browning stated that “Austen’s characters had no souls and were lack of depth and width”. (Ibid, P5) However, those who appreciated her praised highly for her fine art. The British female writer Virginia Woolf said in her famous A Room of One’s Own: “Of all great novelists, Jane Austen is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness” (Ibid, P5).

Really the subject matters of Austen’s novels are limited to a narrow and small field, but just in this narrow and small field she lingered all her life. Thus she knew about it so clearly and thoroughly that she had ability and condition to create the first scale of generally-acknowledged British realistic novels in the nineteenth century. She remains fundamentally concerned with the social reality of her life. In her life and in her novels, Austen takes up residence in the middle world of life, the world of small towns, rural hamlets, country houses, occupied by landed gentry and their relation, Anglican clergymen with modest livings and large families, the daughters and the second and the third sons of noble families, relatives of military and especially naval officers. “Class difference was of course a fact of life for Austen, and an acute observation of the fine distinctions between one social level and another was a necessary part of her business as a writer of realistic fiction” (Copeland & Mcmaster, 2002: 115).

All Jane Austen’s works show a recognizable standard of values. Her father was a country churchman; his family remained faithful Christian throughout their lives,

and went regularly to church. Jane took it for granted that a person should be sincere, unselfish, disinterested and unworldly, and that virtue should be judged by good sense and good taste. These beliefs are fundamental to her work. In Sense and Sensibility, the first of her novels to be published, the impetuous Marianne, who judges by the heart, is contrasted with her sister Elinor who believes that the heart should be disciplined by good sense and moral principle. “Jane Austen was equally prepared to laugh at those who thought it right to live entirely by their emotions” (Gillie, 2005:

30). Pride and Prejudice shows the foolishness of trusting to first impressions which are corrected by understanding and reflection.

Jane Austen lived in the transition period between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but she belonged much more to the eighteenth century than to the nineteenth century. Three of her novels were written before 1800 and the other three between 1812 and 1816. “English society in the late eighteenth century was largely made up of a series of rural communications governed in paternalistic fashion from the great house by a number of the gentry or the aristocracy who owned his authority and prestige to the ownership of land.” (David Monaghan, 1980:1) Together, the aristocracy and gentry owned more than two-thirds of all the land in England. That is, the landed families at that time in England were the most important social history among many currents. In Austen’s day, the aristocracy and the inheritance of land depended heavily on the system of primogeniture. Just as only the eldest son can inherit a peerage, so the bulk of land would normally descend by the same system.

1.2 Introduction to Sense and Sensibility

Sense and Sensibility is a novel by Jane Austen that was first published in 1811. It is about two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. The unexpected death of Mr. Dashwood forces the sisters and their mother to live with a greatly reduced income because the family estate is left to a son by their father’s first marriage. They are forced to leave Norland, their home in Sussex, to move to a cottage on the estate of a cousin, Sir John Middleton, of Barton Park in Devonshire. Elinor’s prudence welcome this move, even though it will give her few opportunities to see Edmund Ferrars, the amiable brother of her sister-in-law and the heir to a large estate. At Barton, Marianne meets and falls deeply in love with John Willoughby, the cousin of a neighbor. Both relationships encounter problems. Elinor learns that Edward Ferrars has long been engaged to the vulgar, ambitious Lucy Steele. His sense of honor will never permit

him to break his engagement, though he no longer loves her. Willoughby abruptly disappears from Barton. Marianne, distraught, pursues him. When she finds out that he has married a wealthy heiress, she becomes dangerously ill. Colonel Brandon, a neighbor form Barton, does everything in his power to bring assistance to Marianne. Meanwhile Edward loses his inheritance, and Lucy Steele suddenly elopes with his younger brother, now the heir. Being free now, Edward proposes to Elinor, the woman he has loved. Marianne recovers from her near-fatal illness and eventually recognizes her love for the steady, dependable, and devoted Colonel Brandon.

Sense and Sensibility was the first of Austen’s novels to be published, under the pseudonym “A Lady”. Elinor and Marianne Dashwood are sisters with opposite temperaments. Traditionally, it has been viewed that 19-year-old Elinor, the elder daughter, represents “sense” of the title, and Marianne, who is 17, represents “sensibility” (emotion). However this view is a very restricting one. On close inspection of the novel it can be seen that each sister represents different aspects of each characteristic. Elinor and Marianne are the daughters of Mr. Dashwood by his second wife. They have a younger sister, Margaret, and an older half-brother named John. When their father dies, the family estate passes to John and the Dashwood women are left impoverished. Fortunately, a distant relative offers to rent the women a cottage on his property. The novel follows the Dashwood sisters to their new home, where they experience both romance and heartbreak. The contrast between the sisters’ characters is eventually resolved as they each find love and lasting happiness.This novel shares resemblance with her other works because Jane Austen is always concerned with the same themes and issues and variations on the same plot, in which rustic gentlemen and ladies’ love, marriage and domestic trifles have been accurately and comprehensively recorded. Jane Austen is a realistic novelist who acts as an opponent to Romanticism which has dominated literature for almost one hundred years. Therefore Jane Austen sets her eye on people nearby and recreates their life vividly from a realistic point of view in this novel:

The novel is treated as offering a simple and satisfactory moral, in

representing the effects on the conduct of life, of discreet quiet good

sense on the one hand, and an over-refined and excessive susceptibility

on the other. This is a temptingly easy way in which to read the novel, but

we may doubt if such simplicities offer a full or just description of the

work. (M.A.D., Introduction :viii )

We can see that from the first time of this novel’s appearance, moral sense has been a topic for our appreciation and debate. Copeland and Mcmaster have concluded that “its emphasis upon the importance as well as the costs of self-command made it (Sense and Sensibility) her most orthodox novel both aesthetically and morally” (2002:19).

Chapter 2 Jane Austen’s viewpoints on marriage,

religion, primogeniture

2.1 Jane Austen’s viewpoints on marriage

In her novels, Jane Austen well described most of the unmarried girls’ pursuits and ideas about marriage in her own time. Of course, these descriptions had brought her a great fame as well as some criticisms. Whatever she was considered as, in my opinion, she had a sensible view on marriage. Maybe her view is not advanced nowadays. However, in the past, especially in the eighteenth century in England, she undoubtedly possessed a far liberal attitude towards marriage beyond her contemporaries. At that time, women’s social status was very low. Living in a confined circle, they couldn’t find any job unless they would like to become a governess. As a result, to assure their everyday life, it was very important for them to marry a wealthy man. So, at that time, for most marriageable girls, marriage was just a way to live a stable life. Money became the most important factor in conditioning a marriage. With a keen sense of humor, Austen expressed a critical view on this money-oriented marriage. As to the union of man and woman, Jane Austen believes that there should be a balance between sense and sensibility in love, equal need of property and love in marriage, and domestic equality in personalities.

The novel of Sense and Sensibility brings to a close with a Hollywood’s ending which gives a general account of the two sisters’ marriages with their beloved. Marriage plays the role of compensation for Elinor as well as Marianne’s previous effort and ill treatment from others in the pilgrim of love. As the above mentioned, the novel has explained enough why their major concern has to divert to marriage. For one thing, both Elinor and Marianne have got the age of dating, one is 19 years old while the other one is 17 years old, who have got into the age suitable for the pursuit of the opposite sex. For another, their family has lost financial foundation after their death. In the novel, property is inherited according to a tradition called primogeniture. The Norland estate along with passion has gone to their half brother, John. As to John, the novel has given a sketch of him in three long acidulous sentences”:

He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted, and rather selfish, is to be ill-disposed: but he was, in general, well respected; for he conducted himself with propriety in the discharge of his ordinary duties. Had he

married a more amiable woman, he might have been made still more respectable than he was: he might even have been made amiable himself; for he was very young when he married, and very fond of his wife. (,:6)

But Mrs. John Dashwood was a strong caricature of himself; more narrow-mined and selfish.Then as soon as they arrive at Norland, Mr. John Dashwood wracks his brains to save money from his widowed step mother and his three half sisters, while Mrs. John Dashwood plays her tricks to take over the control power of the Norland estate. Confroned with such an unfriendly couple, the widowed mother and three daughters have to leave and take refugee to Barton Cottage which belongs to her relative, Sir John Middleton. Now we should be convinced well of that the harsh environment should be one explanation for their haste to seek after a wealthy husband to escape the financial dilemma and guarantee their future life. Money has always plays a key role in marriage of Jane Austen’s young ladies which has a detailed and vivid description in Sense and Sensibility. Jane Austen’s novel creation and social satire initiate from a realistic standpoint, so she is even considered as an anti-romanticist. Even her characters in this novel are able to enjoy pleasure as well as sadness from love, but their love is not entirely composed of romantic elements but supported with realistic consideration as a safeguard. Neither of Elinor and Marianne’s love affaires goes without difficulty, but nor of them goes beyond commonness. If there is something which can be called hindrance, it will be overcome without much effort or bypassed with sense as a director. There is a mishap in both Elinor and Marianne’s love process, but both of them are solved nearly with perfection. Between Elinor and her lover, Edward, there is a Lucy, no matter how shallow, ignorant and hypocritical this lady is, Lucy gets advantage in the competition with Elinor because of her early engagement with this gentleman. When Elinor knows this by Lucy’s intentional revelation, she covers her soreness with sense and pretends to be calmness for she knows there is a financial gap between them, and Edward’s mother as another obstacle, who is always fond of her son marriage to a rich lady. As to Marianne, she is poisoned by the notion of romantic love and something visional at first. She falls in love with Willoughby at the first sight, and her passion is ignited soon after their further connection Marianne loves Willoughby just because his handsome countenance, his figure of a knight and their commonness in interest. None of them is concerned with money, but Willoughby’s embarrassing departure is at last proved he has more interest in comfort from a wealthy lady than love from a romantic

poor girl. The novel goes to show that Marianne’s affection is destined to get no reward because he is a complete secular dandy. Even Marianne experiences a hardship because of failure in love, she recovers as soon as Elinor’s disclose of Willoughby’s vicious behavior and her own suffering in love. Then Marianne almost transforms completely and she begins to follow her sister to abandon her indulgence in desperation and deal with life with sense. The unions between Elinor and Edward, Marianne and Colonel Brandon are demonstrated on the base of property. The first couple’s marriage happens after Edward becomes a rector who now has no worry about financial problem. Colonel Brandon’s marriage to Marianne results from his persistence in love as well as his wealth. In his pursuit of Marianne, he has anything charming to mention except his property. Marianne even thinks this dull middle-aged gentleman is not suitable for love. What’s funnier is that there is no clue to show their possibility for love except old ladies’ rumor and Colonel’s Brandon’s expression to Elinor. Conflicts in Sense and Sensibility are preferred to be resolved in a practical way and marriage is the natural compromise between sense and sensibility. Young characters in Sense and Sensibility are willing to gain happiness through marriage but none of them want to risk at jumping out their circle or bringing any financial loss. In Jane Austen’s point of view, the Dashwood sisters contemplating practically but not secularly and there are genuine elements of human nature in their characteristics, which are a combination of the ideal and the real. But compared to the Dashwood sisters, Nancy and Lucy are thorough secular girls who will grasp any opportunity to cheat, to flatter and to gain profits when they are communicating with the wealthy. Though their nasty activities incurs condemnation from righteous readers, they will form something called forgiveness because their vices are rooted in personality but in social factors which have deprived woman rights to inherit property or to achieve financial independence. Therefore, marriage is the eternal goal for young ladies, in which money plays an important role.

2.2 Jane Austen viewpoint on religion

Religion was of central ideological and material interest for Jane Austen’s people and has been long so. Austen belongs to the Church of England, or Anglican Church, established as the state church in the sixteenth century. Its theology and ecclesiastical structure are a compromise between Roman Catholicism and non-Calvinist Protestantism. Anglican theology is Arminian, rejecting the Calvinist doctrine of

predestination and affirming salvation by a combination of true faith and good work, free will and divine grace. But there are some groups who reject various aspects of the established church and its theology, however, and who are accordingly known as “Dissenters” or “Nonconformists” and excluded from certain civil rights. These difference and inequalities result in social, cultural, and political tension that reach a particular crisis in Austen’s day. In Sense and Sensibility, Austen’s characters are fictitious, drawn from the contemporary life, relatively few in number, and mostly from the middle class. Even the poor Dashwood sisters have servants and carriage to enjoy though they have been stripped the property of Norland estate; Colonel Brandon and Sir John are real landlords; Edward finally became a priest with a stable financial support; additionally there are also their rich superordinate relatives who have been described in this novel. It presents a life full of ordinary conversations, walks, drives, teas, dances, visits, picnics, journeys, and other common activities. Their lives were commonplace. Such a group of gentry of similar class origin and life style enable Austen to emphasize the protagonist’s moral deliberations and ethical commitments through similarities and differences of character and action, as in the stark contrast between Elinor and Marianne and the Steel sisters. Austen omits the kinds of characters found in the gothic romances, historical fiction, and regional novels, which often promote reforming agendas that are put forward by “Dissenters”. Thus this novel can be seen to imply that true or important social meaning is found not among such people and places but among the rural upper and professional middle classes she represents, to which her and their friends belong. Moreover, by keeping to a relatively narrow range of character types Austen both concentrates her social satire and emphasizes moral discernment and ethical interaction in daily life and in local rural society. Such interaction is seen as the main arena of religious practice, and such a social space is the typical stronghold of the Anglican Church. In spite of her current social background, Jane Austen’s domestic life is not far away from religion because her father is a rector. Maybe this is a drive for her to create Edward as a clergyman in Sense and Sensibility. We can not make sure that his father is the model for this figure, but she must absorb some materials from her domestic life in writing a rector with vividness and accuracy. More importantly, the plot of Sense and Sensibility can be read as meditating from an Anglican viewpoint, between these different forms and their opposing religious implications. The central doctrine of Anglican theology asserts that God has knowledge of predestination to salvation but that individuals still

have free will to be saved or damned, that good works are useful but true faith matters more, and that neither faith nor works can guarantee salvation without the intervention of grace, or divine power, infusing the individual life and actions. The plot in this novel is resolved by neither the protagonist’s rational will nor the force of systemic injustice, by neither individual design nor coincidence, but by a convergence of will and circumstance. In this novel, Austen links the plot form to different kinds of protagonists, the active and the passive, deployed in alteration. The active protagonist, Marianne, errs repeatedly, but acts correctly and somewhat unexpectedly, at the decisive moment. Passive protagonist, Elinor, has correct judgment, but seems unable to act, and destined to endure rather than to prevail, until circumstances unexpectedly present the occasion to receive their merited happiness. For Marianne the turning point is her recover from her indulgence in sadness and resorting to sense like her sister, which can be seen as an act of self-abnegation in Christian belief. Elinor practices a Christian-like humility and self-abnegation throughout, though she is often undervalued by the characters, until the mistaken selfish action of Lucy brings about her obviously merited happiness. The impulsive active Marianne prides herself on the accuracy of her judgment and correctness of her actions since both are sanctioned by her “sensibility”, represented by Austen as a form of excessive will. In fact, Marianne errs repeatedly, and dangerously, until she learns some humility and then achieves, or rather receives happiness. The self-disciplined and self-sacrificing Elinor is more prominent in the novel, and seems destined to lose her happiness to the actively scheming Lucy Steele. Lucy’s scheming leads to what is obviously a morally mistaken choice, abandoning Edward for his selfish and decadent brother, thereby leaving Elinor to be rewarded for her self-sacrifice and endurance in love. Austen endeavors to mention religious issues in a particular novel form and she raises her novel to the height of religious level in an important context of moral judgment and ethical action in everyday and local life. At last, the Dashwood sisters are compensated with their happy end-result because of their virtue, while Lucy and Willoughby are morally censured because of their respective wrongdoings.

This is a persuasive argument to support Jane Austen’s comprehension and intentional application of religion as a tool for didacticism in Sense and Sensibility. But this novel has provided more meaning than a happy ending, as it presents Marianne’s recognition of her fallibility and Elinor’s endurance in virtue as turning points in the plot that guarantee their happiness. The turning points also disclose that

merit is a safeguard for happiness, which must get the help of circumstances. So Austen links plot and character and expresses an optimistic belief that selflessness and self-sacrificing must defeat selfishness and self-serving. This can be seen as a conventional Christian moral teaching and secular morality in Austen’s days. However, Austen’s combination of merit and circumstance seems to lack of inevitability, which is different from other novels of that period. Like many other writers of her days, Austen seeks to repair the dangerous divisions opened by differences of religion in the classes her novel addresses. She seeks to repair those differences, however, from a particular religious-political position. That’s to say, a position of a woman are involved in supporting an open coalition of gentry and upper middle classes based on the values and teaching of the historic English national church. In doing so she creates what could be called the Anglican romance.

2.3 Austen’s viewpoint on primogeniture

Primogeniture is a system of inheritance by which an eldest son receives his parents’ property. Primogeniture prevents the subdivision of estates and diminishes internal pressures to sell property (for example, if two children inherit a house and one cannot afford to buy the other’s share). In Western Europe most younger sons of the nobility, having no prospect of inheriting land or property, were obliged to seek careers in the Church, the Armed Forces or in Government. A girl might look forward to marriage in her future. A dowry was a present of money, goods, or sometimes land given by a bride’s father to her husband. The dowry, however, was for his use, not hers. A dowry was thought to make a young girl more attractive to a potential husband.

A large dowry might make it possible for a young lady to attract a rich landholder. Many girls entered the clergy as nuns, while others worked as servants at the manor house. As what is shown in Sense and Sensibility, John Dashwood gets the Norland estate from his dead father which will hand his son, a child, but has nothing to do with the Dashwood sisters. This is a convention which has enjoyed by Colonel Brandon’s brother and would also be Edward’s privilege if he lived in a way satisfied by his mother. But such second sons as Colonel Brandon and Robert, they have no rights to share family property though both of them indeed get it as the former should gratitude his service in the army. As to girl in this novel such as Elinor, Marianne and Lucy, they all gain life insurance from marriage to a husband of wealth no matter it comes from virtue or vice. Austen holds a satirical attitude towards primogeniture from the

standpoint of a fortuneless woman of her days. In this novel, those heirs are all despised for whether their behavior or their thought. The selfish John Dashwood, Colonel Brandon’s indifferent brother and unmoral Robert Ferrars are all given a negative description and evaluation. ( )

They are privileged in abundance of physical wealth, but they have nothing to be approved by others except it. It is these ugly figures that show the irrationality of primogeniture and social injustice for those who are immoral can live comfortably while those who are virtuous have to wait patiently for others’ charity if they have the same desire.

Austen has no purpose to discuss the matter of fate of determinism because she doesn’t belong to that literature period. Her focus is put on the hindrance of primogeniture to individual development. The first sons or inheritors are educated to cater for this system which has constraint their personality in secularity. A man is born endowed with virtue which is an integral part of human nature. But nothing concerning virtue has been found on these inheritors because their social behavior must obey the rules set by primogeniture and their minds have been filled with the notion of property- how to keep it and how to enlarge it.

A good landlord is a person who can bring the extension of his property not a person who has enough sympathy. So now we can understand John’s pettiness, greed and meanness, Colonel Brandon’s brother’s cruelty and indifference, and Robert Ferras’s immorality and selfishness. If not, he will lose everything which is even destined to belong to him. Edward, for example, is disinherited because his engagement to Lucy and his unyieldingness have ruffled his mother and have been seen as a challenge to the secular social principle. As to his loss, it has been early implied in the novel because he has no interest in his mother’s arrangement for him and his weakness is opposite to cold blood which is elemental to a landlord. In front of primogeniture, a perfect marriage should be the union between a wealthy gentleman and a lady with a large dowry and therefore it has nothing to do with mutual understanding or share of common interests. Sir Middleton and Lady Middleton are such a kind of couple. Sir Middleton is a sportsman and his interest is in horses and hunting, while Lady Middleton is a mother and her favor is domestic parties and spoiling children. Throughout the novel, it is hard to mutual communication between them, which may be a model of country nobles’ life. On the contrary, Edward and Elinor have conversed a lot on many subjects but their ultimate

union has experienced hardship and coincidence. Marianne and Willoughby share a lot of commonness in interest but their love affairs ends in a failure. All this can explore their reasonable answers in a society in which primogeniture prevails and money is the first consideration in marriage.

Primogeniture has a bad influence personality of the first sons and inheritors, then how about its effects to the second sons and the disinherited? They have no pressure and obligation to laws of primogeniture so they can choose their own way to live. Edward enjoys spiritual cheerfulness with his attachment to his wife and home and his profession as a priest. If he give up his own conviction and yield to his mother who is actually a spokeswoman of primogeniture, he will become the second Willoughby. Thanks for some virtuous elements hidden in his heart which provides a worthy husband for Elinor. Colonel Brandon forms his persistence in life as well as in love after his years of training in army, which has become a major cause of his eventual winning of Marianne’s affection. It also applies to the women who are viewed by society as poor but in fact will become rich because they do not have to bow down to social rules and systems. Although people dealt with the way of living in that time and they had to constrict to these rules to feel successful, the most successful characters in the novel are the ones who were brave enough to break away from the conformity.

Chapter 3 Ethical literary criticism and ethical

environment of the novel

3.1 Ethical literary criticism

In terms of methodology, ethical literary criticism is an approach to literary criticism developed on the basis of the introduction of ethical methods and the assimilation of them into the texture of literary critical methods. It is used not only to interpret the moral phenomena recorded in literature on historical and dialectic bases, but also to make value judgment of those in the present literature based on the moral values in the reality. Professor Nie Zhenzhao (professor at the School of Liberal Arts and School of Foreign Languages, Central China Normal University) makes a pioneering and comprehensive exposition of the notion of literary ethical criticism, including its sources, methods, contents, foundations, the applicable areas, practical values and realistic significance. Professor Nie proposed that the previous literary approaches we use are the development of the western literary approaches, so it is emergent for our Chinese people to find our own literary approaches. ()

From his point of view, literature is the ethical and moral expression of the product process of human being in the history. Literature should teach people how to distinguish right from wrong, and moral from immoral. Ethical theme is the crucial element to decide the moral and aesthetic meaning of literary works. No one of us can be free from moral, whether to be against it or to be in coherence with it. Within the world of ordinary life, we unavoidably inherit a body of religious and moral ideas. We never start with nothing. We are always gifted an inheritance to assess, criticize, and perhaps modify, as we pass it on. That is to say that all the works and their authors are endowed with moral sense, though it is not always in consistence with the dominant. To be completely objective and non-moral is impossible. The words have to do with reality and it will have to deal with the value judgment and ethical problems. So using ethical approaches in literary appreciation will be more and more important. Ethical approaches can approach literary works as the analysis of human being. It gives prominence to the literary characteristics and it is easy to get new conclusion and make innovational understanding of literary works.

3.2 Ethical environment of the novel

With the emphasis of ethical literary criticism, we should make a historical analysis of the ethical environment at the end 18th and the beginning of 19th century of British society. This is a society with social and financial system which is so systematically heartless in its treatment of women, and in which marriage must seem first of all important as a step towards material prosperity or its reverse. The society sticks fast to the petty conventions and pays special attention to individual moral character. Individual behavior plays an important role in communicating moral sense and it connects closely with social stability and development. However, at that time men were the superior sex, while women were considered inferior to man. The purpose of women was marriage and their proper sphere was the home. Meekness is the key issue for women. Women had little chance to escape from home, even a girl must sacrifice to her family. Most women had no economic income, so they must totally depend on men and obey the men. The moral sense of women were judged and confined by men. So, in Austen’s novels, she faces directly moral problems by economic individualism and the middle-class quest for improved status. From Jane Austen’s point of view, the young women’s marital fates depend on their decorum. The “good breeding” often provides a ground for judgment of individuals in action. She became interested in moral problem. Whether women ought to have moral lives in the same way men have moral lives was the issue hotly debated in Austen’s time. In the eighteenth century, we can say that Jane Austen tended to belong to Aristotelian pattern of ethical ideas. We will analysis Austen’s moral sense in Sense and Sensibility from the aspect of ethical literary criticism in detail.

It’s hard to give morality a definite definition in the long history of human history. The intension and extension of morality may changes a little with the changes of society and human attitude. However, we should know that ethical literary criticism is used to analyze not only the moral phenomena recorded in literature on the historical and dialectic basis, but also to make value judgment of those in the present literature based on the moral values in the reality. So, in order to analyze the moral sense in Sense and Sensibility, we should focus on the aspects that connect closely with morality. The characters’ individual traits and their attitude towards marriage and family are main aspects we want to focus.

3.2.1 Individual Traits

In recent years some philosophers interested in ethics have rejected approaches, such as utilitarianism and Kantianism, that emphasizes moral rules and principles.

Joel J. Kupperman claims ethics in this way:

British and American ethical philosophers in this century have tended to

focus on choices such as whether to break a promise when it is especially inconvenient to keep it or whether to kill an innocent man so that twenty

others will be saved. The images is that the subject matter of ethics

consists of dramatic choices under pressure ethics, fortunately, most of us

do not have to make all that often…the subject matter of ethics has been

presented…as consisting of cases in which something of importance is at

stake and someone explicitly weighs alternatives and then decides to do

one thing or another. Ethical theories have been designed with a view

toward telling people how to make these decisions. (Joel J. Kupperman, 1991: 12)

Ethical behavior is not limited to dramatic occasions when we can see in clear outline the impact of one choice or another. Such an approach makes it seem as if ethical moments are, happily, relatively infrequent. Occasions for rescuing others, though more frequent, are not nearly as frequent as our regular interactions with others. Yet it is in the regular interactions that our characters are revealed and in which we have relatively small but cumulative impact on others, and they on us. They too, Austen sees, are ethical moments. Thus she favors an ethical approach that emphasizes character and virtues, emphasizing aspects of character, particularly self-knowledge, spirit within limits, proper pride, sympathy, and intelligence and education, that she believes will serve us, and others, well.

Austen focuses considerable attention on a number of traits and dispositions: pride, vanity, self-knowledge, responsibility and the lack of it, prudence, selfishness and self-centeredness, sympathy, kind and cold-heartedness, self-esteem, insensitivity, love, liveliness and being dutiful. In Sense and Sensibility, Elinor and Marianne are the heroines of the novel. They have different characteristics. Obviously, Jane Austen favors the traits of Elinor and proposes strongly the sense in order to do the others and the society good.

Elinor possessed a strength of understanding, and coolness of judgement, which qualified her, though only nineteen, to be the counselor of her

mother, and enabled her frequently to counteract, to the advantage of

them all, that eagerness of mind in Mrs. Dashwood which must generally

have led to imprudence. She had an excellent heart; --her disposition was

affectionate, and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern

then: it was a knowledge which her mother had yet to learn, and which

one of her sisters had resolved never to be taught. (Jane Austen, 1994: 4)

This traits plays an important role in the novel and makes Dashwood family get well with the society and keep themselves good in the society. In dealing with the matter of Willoughby and Marianne love affairs, she remains calm and sensible. After Willoughby and Marianne’s acquaintance, they seem to fall in love with each other. But Elinor “could not be surprised at their attachment. She only wished that it were less openly shewn; and once or twice did venture to suggest the propriety of some self-command to Marianne. (Jane Austen, 1994: 61) Upon the suspicion of their engagement, she remains clam and analyses the matter. “I confess that every circumstance except one is in favor of their engagement. But that one is the total silence of both on the subject, and with me it almost outweighs every other ” (Jane Austen, 1994: 113). When Willoughby breaks up with Marianne, Marianne suffers from great distress physically and psychologically. Elinor always consoles and takes good care of her sister. Her calmness and consideration makes Marianne realize her selfishness and become sensible and strong. In the description of Mairanne’s traits, according to the novel we can see her contrast to Elinor and Austen’s criticism to her. According to the novel:

Marianne’s abilities were, in many respects, quite equal to Elinor’s. she

was sensible and clever; but eager in every thing; her sorrows, her joys,

could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable, interesting: she

was every ting but prudent. (Jane Austen, 1994: 4)

A complication of the novel is the amount of the feeling Austen encourages the reader to have for Marianne. She is over-ardent in her enthusiasm, and very absolute in her judgments. She talks rather too decidedly and authoritatively for such a young lady, and is fond of making final pronouncements, as on the lack of love to be expected in a marriage between a man of thirty-five and a woman of twenty-seven. She lives in a world created by her reading of poetry. In fact, she cannot see for herself how lacking in originality she is, how slavishly she is following a certain set of conventions. Her aesthetic sense, her love for wild trees, rugged hills, and dead leaves, is a mediated and artificial sense. Her love and her hate bring the others annoyance and especially her sister’s worry and concern. Her strong way of expresses herself make the others embarrassed sometimes. We can feel that Marianne need to

understand the truths of the world she is dealing with-though it is not an easy matter to introduce Marianne to such truths, and her assumed romanticism is a way of evading what she does not want to know. From the description of their characteristics and the role they plays in the story, we can see the moral sense in dealing with their characteristic and the traits of the people in that society. No one can exclude himself or herself totally from the society.

Of course, we can find other traits that express moral sense from other characters in this novel. Colonel Brandon, whose sense of honor requires him to fight a duel to punish a man who has violated a woman for whom he is responsible. Acting honorably is an important part of Brandon’s idea of himself and thus implicates his pride, in the self-concept sense of pride. Elinor Dashwood too responds to demands of honor in the critical scene in which Lucy Steele tells Elinor of her long-standing engagement to Edward Ferrars, in whom Elinor is interested, and Lucy extracts a promise to tell no one of the engagement. But beyond her promise, Ausen tells us, Elinor “was firmly resolved to act by her as every principle of honour and honesty directed, to combat her own affection for Edward and to see his as little as possible” (Christopher Gillie,2005: 83). How are we to understand the sense of honor that motivates Elinor? Elinor’s self-concept, and her pride, are at stake. Elsewhere in the novel she exhorts her sister Marianne, in pain as a result of her treatment by Willoughby, to counter others’ ill will by demonstrating a reasonable and laudable pride.

3.2.2 Marriage and family

Marriage and family plays an important role in human’s life and we can know the moral sense of the society from people’s attitude towards marriage and family. Like Auten’s other novels, Sense and Sensibility also focuses on gentlemen and ladies’ love affairs and marriage. From what we have explained, we know women’s position in the 19th century and the purpose of their lives was marriage, and their only proper sphere was the home, while men had all the rest of the world to exercise their talents. We know that when Colonel Brandon’s partiality was discovered by Elinor, she considers him to be a suitable man economically and personally. Edward was preferred by Marianne and her mother, they thought him to be a proper matcher for Elinor because to some extent he can inherited a good fortune from his family. Furthermore, Lucy’s affection to Edward turns out to be the influence of money. So we can know ladies’ attitude towards marriage was influenced greatly by money.

However, this is not all about marriage. Elinor’s true love for Edwards, and Colonel Brandon’s love for Marianne reflecting the moral sense Austen’s strongly suggests.

Before marriage, a woman must sacrifice to her family. People believed that a woman was never separated from her family. “Her very soul is in home, and in the discharge of all those quiet virtues of which home is center” (H. George Tucker, 1983:152). Elinor thought for her sister and mother during the whole story. Her responsibility for the family is a way to reflect the moral sense of that society. Marianne’s final renunciation with Colonel Brandon is a way to reflect family’s important role in people’s life.

However, there are characters in Austen’s novels who do things that are wrong. But when they do, Austen’s approaches is not, contrary to earlier novels of which she was critical, to show that bad things happen to the wicked, or to demonstrate that holding to sound precepts is the right strategy for a successful life. The most noteworthy moral wrongs that occur in Austen’s novels are not, and are not meant to be, lessons from which the heroes and heroines learn. They are the plot elements that form the context in which characters make difficult choices. They are the centerpieces of the novel. In Sense and Sensibility, Mr. Willoughby is the most amoral person. His seductions are a bad thing and his shabby and immoral behavior indirectly affects Marianne Dashwood; however, his bad behavior has also led to his being cut off from his inheritance as well, which in turn induces him to give up Marianne in favor of a rich women. Willoughby himself, we learn at the end of the novel, “lived to exert, and frequently to enjoy himself” (Edward Austen-Leigh James, 1926: 334). Though he did really love Marianne, it hardly appears to be Austen’s intention to sermonize on the wages of sin. This is one way to show Austen’s moral sense about people that there is no totally vice in human’s life and the vice should get punished by the society or him.

Furthermore, we should remember that not all of Austen’s characters regard promises as inviolate. In the novel, Elinor Dashwood, against her own interests, keeps her promise to Lucy Steele not to disclose Lucy’s secret engagement to Edward Ferrars. We should also remember that Lucy’s unrelenting self-interest is successful.

Conclusion

Austen’s moral concern is not really with instruction in rectitude. She is not trying to illustrate the precepts we can rely on if we would sail successfully through life. Indeed it is just the reverse. She is concerned with the difficulty, in real life, of clearly understanding both ourselves and others, of figuring out the right thing to do, and trying to do it in the face of our desires and life’s conflicts. Precepts are inadequate in the matter. People are all too frequently in a moral muddle, a state either of blindness or a confusion. In Sense and Sensibility both Elinor, the sister who is in control of her emotions, and Marianne, the romantically impetuous one, fail in similar ways. Both of them, owing to desire and insufficient evidence, have formed mistaken beliefs about the intentions of the men in their lives. Elinor reproves Marianne for her responses to Willoughby, though they are hardly different from her quieter responses to and thoughts about Edward. Sometimes we can see that Austen blurs the moral focus and challenges an approach to life that presents the problem of living as much too easily solved by the application of theory. Austen’s characters are not stick-figures, nor are they caricatures. We cannot say, in an easy way, whether her characters are simply good or bad. Furthermore, her characters are sometimes inconsistent, not because Austen is inconsistent, as some of her critics have thought, but because life, as she represents it, is too difficult to be easily subsumed under a set of clear and firm guidelines.

However, we can feel the strong moral sense in Sense and Sensibility, and this is an important feature of Jane Austen. She pays special attention to people’s traits and marriage and family, through which we can know the importance of moral sense. This makes the analysis of Sense and Sensibility from the ethical literal criticism reasonable and meaningful.

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