摘 要

十九世纪是女性主义文学在英国兴起的时代。当时涌现了许多主张早期女性主义思想的女作家。简•奥斯丁是最早的作家之一。她的作品着眼于中产阶级妇女的爱情和婚姻，其代表作《傲慢与偏见》被认为是当时女性主义思想的体现。

小说中的女主人公伊丽莎白在当时的文学作品中是一位非常突出的女性形象。简•奥斯丁把伊丽莎白塑造成一个知识渊博的女人，具有叛逆的个性和独立的思想和观点。她有许多新女性的优点，她既漂亮又聪明，并掌管自己的生活，大胆追求幸福的婚姻。伊丽莎白的新女性形象，在《傲慢与偏见》这部小说中得到了很好的描述，从各个方面反映了当时女性主义文化。

受当时社会环境的影响，小说中所表达的女性意识或多或少受到限制。然而，作者通过主人公伊丽莎白表达了她的观念，呼吁平等和婚姻自由。小说反映了女性主义最初的觉醒和作者对男权社会的态度。本论文将结合伊丽莎白的形象来分析早期女性主义的斗争与妥协。

关键词：伊丽莎白 性格分析 女性主义

1. Introduction

1.1 Jane Austen amp; Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen (December 16, 1775 - July 18, 1817), born in England, was a female realistic novelist. Her works mainly reflected the moral standards of British family through social interactions of ladies and gentlemen. They also reflected the social patterns of the time through the daily conversation and communication of the family members, meanwhile satirize the phenomenon of mercenary and vanity with humorous language. The main concern of Jane Austen’s works is the personal relationship between human beings. It provides a framework for the story of love and marriage and women in her novels always play the leading role. However, as Austen for all his life living in a powerful feudal country, coupled with family wealth, her works often confined to romance which from a certain extent reflected the views of feudal forces.

Austen wrote her first novel at the age of twenty-one, titled First Impressions. Ten years later, the novel was rewritten and renamed Pride and Prejudice. It was not until the time for publication that Austen found that quite a few novels named First Impressions had appeared on the market. Finally Austen was inspired by a sentence from Madame D’Arblay’s novel Cecilia, “The whole of this unfortunate business has been the result of Pride and Prejudice.” (Gao, 2015: 251) The title Pride and Prejudice was taken thereafter.

The novel describes the love story of the five daughters of Bennett. The protagonist is the second daughter, Elizabeth. She is the most diligent of the five sisters and has never taken marriage into account before. As Elizabeth meeting Darcy at a ball, things become no longer the same in her life. Darcy falls in love with Elizabeth after a short contact. He proposes to her despite the family status and wealth gaps, but was mercilessly rejected. Darcy, who was born wealthy, often seems to be arrogant, which leads to Elizabeth’s misunderstandings and prejudices against him. It seems to her that arrogance of Darcy is actually a reflection of status difference. As long as it exists, there is no unified opinion between them, let alone an ideal marriage. But as time goes by, Elizabeth gradually discovered and witnessed Darcy’s change in interaction with others. Elizabeth gradually discovered and saw with her own eyes that the same kind of Darcy had made a qualitative change in his life and a series of actions. His arrogance has completely faded. Elizabeth’s misunderstandings and prejudices against him gradually disappeared as well, and a happy marriage becomes the end of the story.

Pride and Prejudice is the representative work of Austen. This novel which reflects marital problems became prevailing in no time. The work vividly reflects the British township life in the conservative state from the late 18th century to the early 19th century. It not only attracted readers at that time, but also gives readers unique enjoyment today. Jane Austen is the first novelist who realistically depicts ordinary people in everyday life, and her works affect the writing of later generations a lot.

1.2 Feminism

Feminism refers to social theories and political movements created and initiated to end sexism, sexual exploitation, sexual discrimination and sexual oppression, and to promote equality of the sexes. It is a belief and ideology which stands for every woman to have the same rights and values as men.

The feminine literature initially sprouted in the eighteenth century in Britain. The outbreak of the first industrial revolution boosted the bourgeois revolution. The subversive changes in politics, economics, and society were not only reflected in the material and cultural aspects, but also in the field of literature. During this period emerged early female literature authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. However, female consciousness was still in a vague state at this time. Women’s social status remained low and their political and economic rights were still oppressed and discriminated against.

In the 19th century women’s liberation movements began to rise one after another, especially in the literary world. There was an explosive growth in the number of female writers, especially in Britain, with the emergence of masters such as Jane Austen. Her novels reflected the increasingly clear awareness of feminine consciousness through the analysis of the conservative social reality.

The end of the 19th century was the first wave of the Women’s Liberation Movement, which often referred to as the “feminist movement”. The focus of the controversy was the equality of life between men and women, which means equality between the sexes as well as citizenship and political rights. The movement opposed noble privileges and polygamy, emphasizing that men and women have no difference in intelligence or ability. The most important goal of the movement is to strive for the equal value and political rights of family labor and social labor.

2. Literature Review

Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice has always been loved and admired by domestic and foreign readers. In recent years, Pride and Prejudice has rekindled people’s attention as a literary work reflecting the early ideas of feminism. The 19th century was an age of the rise of a feminist literary group in the United Kingdom. Female writers such as Jane Austen, Bronte sisters and George Eliot emerged to advocate feminist thoughts. Jane Austen was the pioneer of this team. She was one of the earliest writers who attempted to raise people’s awareness of women’s consciousness in the history of British literature. Her masterpiece Pride and Prejudice was regarded as the epitome of feminism at that time. Scholars at home and abroad have done a lot of research. Most of the previous studies focused on Austen’s thinking on marriage, the shaping of heroine figures, and the use of unique writing techniques.

2.1 Studies on women’s images in Pride and Prejudice

Yao Qun (2016) has described the feminist ideas in Pride and Prejudice in his paper. At that time, the British society worships male power and the status of women was extremely low. Jane Austen described a deviant heroine in Pride and Prejudice, which symbolized the initial awakening of women’s consciousness.

In the novel, Elizabeth despised all kinds of secular etiquette, showing the author’s strong opposition to traditional ideology and traditional consciousness. Under the background of society at that time, people paid attention to various secular rituals and women pursued the talents of ladies. Therefore, in the family education, the emphasis was placed on instilling the lady’s thought. However, according to the novel’s heroine, Elizabeth, these rituals are relatively backward. Therefore, she breaks through the shackles of feudal thought and boldly fights against the etiquette. Elizabeth also has a sense of independence for love and marriage. She does not esteem the character of traditional women’s patience and obedience, and believes that a happy marriage must be based on deep love. She advocates mutual understanding and respect. This is undoubtedly a challenge to the mainstream view at that time and also represents the germ of feminism.

2.2 Studies on marriage views in Pride and Prejudice

Huang Fuyan (2016) made a detailed description of the concept of marriage in Pride and Prejudice. Five different marriages were described in the novel to explain the author’s view of marriage. Elizabeth’s friend, Charlotte, is smart and beautiful. However, she marries Collins, who doesn’t match her at all, for the money. This kind of marriage for the sake of money and interest is spurned by Austen. Elizabeth’s younger sister, Lydia, is a simple woman who eloped with the hypocrite, Wickham. This kind of marriage bases on eroticism and simply pursues their own enjoyment is a shame in Austen’s view. When Mr. Bennet is young, he is in love with Mrs. Bennet for her beauty, which leads to difficulties in communicating for the rest of their life. This kind of marriage, which was merely a combination without love, was disdain by Austen. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth is smart, bold and brave. Darcy is talented, kind and generous, Jane is gentle and generous, and Bingley is sincere. In the pursuit of marriage, only Elizabeth and Darcy and the marriage between Jane and Bingley are the perfect combination. From this the readers can see the author’s longing for a good marriage and the contempt for a material marriage. Jane Austen highlights the perfection of the heroine’s love and her preference to this kind of combination through the lines.

2.3 Studies on writing technique in Pride and Prejudice

In Pride and Prejudice, the author narrates the entire novel from a feminist perspective. This was rare at the time, because most of the novels in the society were described in terms of men’s perspective. Yao Xiaohui (2013) presented himself to the female perspective. In his opinion, he believes that most of the literary works were dominated by male narratives in the social context of the time. Jane Austen, who was unconventional, boldly adopted the feminist narrative perspective and set out from the general public to describe people’s daily life. The main body of the novel is set to be female, making women have a certain right to speak in the novel for the first time.

In the novel Pride and Prejudice, the author firstly used the third-person narrative novels to fully demonstrate the heroine’s female image. In Austen’s novels, the third person is often used, so that the heroine of the novel is free from limitations of time and space and can freely express her thoughts. The image of the heroine is displayed directly in front of the readers, and social life is thus flexibly reflected. In addition, the third-person narrative is also a protection for women’s safety. Second, the female narrative perspective demonstrated a strong feminist trend of thought. It can be said that the novel Pride and Prejudice pushes women in a disadvantaged and marginalized society to the front, and uses women’s perspectives to develop novel narratives, prompting women to become the protagonists of the entire story scene, and women leading the right to speak of the entire novel.