Comparative Study On Female Consciousness

Female consciousness refers to women’s experience and perception of their own values as a person,especially a woman.In a male-dominated society,it can be manifested through refusing to accept the traditional definition of women by the male society,and questioning and subverting male’s power;at the same time,it means paying attention to the living conditions of women,examining the psychological feelings of women and showing the life experiences of women.In Chinese and English literatures,the core themes about females include the growth of women in the patriarchal society,their social status,love and marriage,education rights and so on.A Dream of Red Mansions and Pride and Prejudice are respectively the realistic masterpieces in China and Britain in eighteenth Century.The heroine in both works is with well-rounded portrayal and different personalities.The works reflect the status of women in the patriarchal society and the gradual awakening of women through the authors’ description of household chores,love and marriage and educational rights.The study aims to analyze and conclude the similarities and differences among the main female characters in the two works on the aspects of their self-awareness,education awareness and marriage awareness,based on dialogues and some important events that happened.The results are:in the aspect of self-awareness,the heroines in the two works are desire for freedom,equality and independence,but because of the culture background females in Pride and Prejudice try their best to fight for their rights,while females in A Dream of Red Mansions can not get rid of the shadow of feudal system;in the aspect of education awareness,the learning goals are quite different from educated females in the two works,what they learned in A Dream of Red Mansions focus on the permission of morality,while females in Pride and Prejudice pay more attention to the basic skills for life;in the aspect of marriage awareness,the heroines in the two works both are eager to the freedom and true love,but because of the different social background,the results of the their love are quite different,the marriage in Pride and Prejudice are mostly happy while results in A Dream of Red Mansions is mostly tragical.From the study we can conclude that a woman must have independent consciousness,and relies on her own ability to fight for the desired rights and happiness.