Jane Austen's Cinderella Complex--The Combination Of Idealism And Rationalism

This paper focuses on Jane Austen's Cinderella Complex, which can find its expression in dealing with the theme of marriage in almost each of her novels. Jane Austen is famous for her neo-classic emphasis on common sense in literary history, but her Cinderella Complex is to some extent the manifestation of Jier idealistic attitude towards marriage. On the other hand, she does not confine her presentation of marriage to pure idealism. Jane Austen's Cinderella Complex also involves some rational features, which can be found in the realistic settings of her Cinderella stories and her moral concern in the stories. Jane Austen's Cinderella stories are not so idealistic as to be far away from social reality. The moral concern involved in Austen's Cinderella Complex also seperates it from the traditional fairy story or the conventional daydreams. So Jane Austen's Cinderella stories are different from the traditonal ones in that it is the combination of idealism and rationalism. In the end, the author of this paper also tries to trace the origin of Jane Austen's Cinderella Complex from a brand-new point of view-Freud's psychoanalytic analysis. Being a Cinderella who could never find her prince in her life, Austen could at least create Cinderella stories in her novels.