The Aristocratic Charity In Mansfield Park In The Light Of Lacan’s Gaze Thoery

Jane Austen’s classical work Mansfield Park treats aristocratic charity as thenarrative thread. Through the desirable gaze of protagonist Fanny, it portrays the love andmarriage of the aristocratic youths as well as British squire’s daily life during the periodof the social transition at the end of the18thcentury and the beginning of the19thcentury.At the same time, it reveals Austen’s appeal for the equal and mutual beneficial charity,her criticism of the selfish colonization and recall of the beautiful conventional morality.Yet, the current researches both at home and abroad mainly focus on the theme of love aswell as marriage and characterization and so on, and rare studies pay attention to thetheme of charity, let alone the interpretation and revelation of the nature and transition ofdifferent aristocratic charity in the novel from the perspective of gaze.Based on the above cognition, this thesis starts from the source, performing processand result of the charity to interpret the representations, variation and its nature as well asthe similarity and the difference between the conventional aristocratic charity and thenew uprising aristocratic charity through Lacan’s desirable gaze, the mutual interactionof gaze and the effect of gaze, attempting to reveal Jane Austen’s deep thinking ofcharity’s nature so that her cognition and attitude towards the British social transitionduring the transitional period in the turn of the19thcentury will be explored. Specifically,this thesis first analyzes the colonization color, inequality and mutual benefit of theconventional aristocratic charity from the gaze of the receiver, giver and implied authorin the novel. Secondly, it analyzes the colonization color, utility, inequality and mutualbenefit of the new uprising aristocratic charity from the gaze of the receiver, giver andimplied author. And then this thesis makes an analysis and comparison of the nature andcharacteristics of two types of aristocratic charity to reveal Austen’s deep thinking ofcharity’s nature and her cognition of the social transition.Above analysis indicates that in the turn of the19thcentury, with the development ofindustrialization, the composition of the giver and the purpose of British aristocraticcharity changes gradually: in order to maintain the strong sense of social identity and responsibility, the conventional aristocrat who relies on the agricultural economy heavilystarts to seek colonization as the new economic source of charity, at the same time, thenew uprising aristocratic charity rises with the utilitarian color, showing a morebeneficial trend than the conventional aristocratic charity. It is during this transitionalprocess that Austen’s nostalgia towards the conventional charity ethics is revealed, andher cognition of the charity ethics that the charity is equal and mutually beneficial for thegiver and the receiver is also revealed. In a word, using Lacan’s gaze theory as thetheoretical foundation and the research strategy, this thesis focuses on the representation,variation and nature of aristocratic charity. Therefore, it expects to enrich the study ofMansfield Park and provides a new perspective for the study of Austen. Meanwhile,through employing Lacan’s gaze theory to interpret this work, this thesis also looksforward to providing a convincing proof for the feasibility of Lacan’s gaze theory’application in the literary study.