A Study Of Feminist Narration In Jane Austen's Novels

Jane Austen is a distinguished writer in British literary history. Her novels, although small in number, are all of high literary value. As a female writer who shows female consciousness earlier, Jane Austen expresses female ideology in her novels in a unique way.Since 1980s, the rapid development of various critical theories has been providing new perspective for the study of Austen and her novels. However, little attention has been paid to her feminist narrative techniques. Based on her six novels, this dissertation tries to use Feminist Narratology to probe into the narrative characteristics of Austen's six novels from four aspects: narrative content, narrative perspective, narrative voice and narrative rhetoric.This dissertation can be divided into six parts. The first part is introduction, in which Austen's life, the literature review and the significance and purpose of the dissertation are introduced. The second part is on Austen's feminist narrative under the guidance of feminist narratology. The third part discusses the feminist point of view in Austen's novels. Austen tells female experience from the heroines'point of view which turns female images into active observer so as to guarantee their female consciousness. The fourth part is on the narrative voice. Austen's six novels exhibit a tendency of subversion of male discourse and construction of female discourse. Both the narrator's and the heroines'voices can be found in the six novels. In order to achieve feminine authority, Austen uses much free indirect discourse to produce duplicitous voice. The fifth part mainly introduces Austen's narrative rhetoric. She makes full use of irony and dramatization. The exploitation of these skills not only serves the theme of novels but also achieves esthetic effect. The last part is the conclusion.The dissertation argues that as a female writer, Austen shows her consciousness of women. She uses her particular narrative techniques to challenge the male-dominated narrative strategies and establish the female narrative authority. She makes great contribution to female literature. The purpose of studying Austen's narrative pattern is to suggest that her fine writing style can not only be approached in perspective of formalist analysis, but also can be interpreted from ideological perspective, for form is the carrier of content, and they are well blended in Austen's six novels.