A Study Of Sense And Sensibility From The Perspective Of Feminist Narratology

Jane Austen is an outstanding female writer who is famous for her tradition and rebellion in the literary history, and more importantly she develops the female literature. The consideration about women's value can be found in her works, which become the most conspicuous feature of her. Sense and Sensibility is her first published work in which Jane Austen expresses her pursuit on ideal marriage. The critics have long been limiting their study in feminist, however, since 1980s, with the emergence and development of many new theories, especially the interdiscipline—feminist narratology which is the combination of classical narratology and feminism provides a new angle to analyze Austen's work. Feminist narratology is a new approach which combines the investigation of narrative form with gender politics, which means it applies the narrative theories to interpret the structure, narrative strategies and sexual politics of the text. This thesis tries to apply this new theory—feminist narratology to examine the narrative characteristics and women's independent consciousness in Sense and Sensibility, moreover, a specific examining of the establishment of author's authority will be given.There are seven chapters in this thesis. Chapter One is a brief introduction about Austen's life, literature review, significance of the research and the framework of this thesis. Chapter Two is about the main theories applied in this thesis. Chapter Three is about narrative structure in Sense and Sensibility. Chapter Four examines the feminist point of view in Sense and Sensibility. By analyzing the point of view, readers could easily find the female's subjective consciousness is guaranteed. Chapter Five is mainly about the narrative voice in Sense and Sensibility. On one hand, Austen subverts the male's discourse right; on the other hand, she ensures her female discourse right. By applying free indirect discourse (FID), she constructs both the narrator and characters' voice, thus the author's female narrative authority has been established. Chapter Six introduces Austen's narrative rhetoric in Sense and Sensibility. Irony and dramatization are the two rhetoric ways which she uses to deliver the female ideology. The last chapter is the conclusion.The thesis, through examining Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, aims to show the feminist consciousness in her book. It is clear that she uses the unique narrative skills to challenge the man-dominated narrative way and revise the distorted female image. Finally, Austen successfully establishes her female narrative authority. It is hopeful that the paper will make little contributions both to the study of Jane Austen and Feminist Narratology.