Jane Austen's Feminist Consciousness Viewed From The Comic Perspective In Pride And Prejudice

Jane Austen (1775-1817) is regarded as one of the greatest women writers in the world. The gradual and steady popularity of her novels has proven her value as a great novelist and an artist. Jane Austen has created six great novels in her short life, among which Pride and Prejudice is the most popular one. The novel has been enjoying worldwide critical audience throughout the almost two centuries since it was published in 1813. Compared with the work of her predecessors, Pride and Prejudice is much lighter, brighter, and more sparkling, fully revealing Austen's comic genius. However, the light outward form of the novel does not carry an equal light subject. Jane Austen, in this novel, portrays several pairs of marriage through which, she conveys her personal values of love, marriage, money, morality, and particularly shows her concerns for women's life and condition, displaying her feminist consciousness. Living in a patriarchal society and being educated as a "proper" middle-class lady, Jane Austen adopts an acceptable style of her time to express her ideas, that is, she interweaves her feminist expression into the portrayal of several comic characters through the use of some comic devices. How Jane Austen comically and delicately infuses the novel with her feminist ideas is what the thesis attempts to explore.The thesis consists of four parts:In the first part, an introduction opens up the research question. In addition, a brief introduction to Austen criticism is given too.