《傲慢与偏见》英语论文开题报告
On the Relationship between Money and Marriage in Pride and Prejudice
《傲慢与偏见》中金钱与婚姻的关系
I. Literature Review
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. From the ancient times to the present, there are many studies about Jane Austen and her major works.
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.
Nowadays, we would like to pay more attention to the marriages in Pride and Prejudice. The first Chinese study on the marriage in Pride and Prejudice would be Zhu Aiping, and in her article “Attitude Toward Marriage in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice”, she expressed her point that“By the stories we can see, It mainly tells of the love story between a rich, proud young man Darcy and the beautiful and intelligent woman Elizabeth Bennet.” So we know that Pride and Prejudice is a story about the five Bennet sisters and their search for suitable husband, of which Darcy and Elizabeth only depend on the help of Lady de Burgh became a happy pair. Just before the conversation between Elizabeth and Lady de Burgh, both Darcy and Elizabeth dare not to have the wild wish of their love. Though they have cleaned up the misunderstanding between them and understood each other further, there are no earnest feeling, no loath to pant each other, no strong desire of living together between them. Instead of that, there is a little diffidence and a little caution. Only the Lady de Burgh’s tempting to break them up encourages them and helps to bring about their marriage. How passive of the pair youth to pursue love and happiness.
The author made a further analysis, “it is the inevitable result of the marriage concept, which in that time was based on the economic condition and affected by the family status.”Besides the main story of this happy pair, also told are the minor ones about the union between the rich bachelor Bingley and the beautiful mild Jane, another happy pair; about the servile clergyman Collins, who firs propose to Elizabeth and when refused, marries the plain 27-year-old Charlotte Lucas, through which we see the reality of marriage, not because of love, but a necessary step if a woman is to avoid the wretchedness of aging spinsterhood; and about the elopement of the thoughtless couple Lydia and Wickham, from which we are shown the dangers of feckless relationships unsupported by money.
At the same time, another scholar 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.
Latter, a scholar called Xin Shulan from Langfang Teachers College raised an article from a totally new perspective on woman’s situation in Jane Austen’s age. The title of the article called “Women’s Happiness Secret—On Elizabeth’s Marriage Choice in Pride and Prejudice”. We can guess what the author wants to say in her article. The author said “a woman who did not marry could generally only look forward to living with her relatives as a “dependant” (more or less Jane Austen’s situation), so that marriage is pretty much the only way of ever getting out from under the parental roof—unless, of course, her family could not support her, in which case she could face the unpleasant necessity of going to live with employers as a dependant governess or teacher, or hired lady’s companion.” A woman with no relations or employer was in danger of slipping off the scale of gentility altogether and in general, becoming an “old maid” was not considered a desirable fate (so when Charlotte Lucas, at age 27, marries Mr. Collins, her brothers are “relieved from their apprehension of Charlotte’s dying an old maid”, and Lydia says “Jane will be quite an old maid soon, I declare. She is almost three and twenty!”). Given all this, some women were willing to marry just because marriage was the only allowed route to financial security, or to escape an uncongenial family situation. In Pride and Prejudice, the dilemma is expressed most clearly by the character Charlotte Lucas, whose pragmatic views on marrying are voiced several times in the novel: “Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honorable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.” She is 27, not especially beautiful (according to both she herself and Mrs. Bennet), and without an especially large “portion”, and so decides to marry Mr. Collins “from the pure and disinterested desire of an establishment”.