On Jane Austen's New System Of Family Values As Illustrated In A Study Of Pride And Prejudice

Values, as explained by Guoming Chen(陈国明) and William J. Starosta (2007), are guiding forces of human behavior. John C. Condon and Fathi Yousef (1975) divided values into six spheres: the self, the family, society, human nature, nature, and the supernatural, among which family values constitute a fundamental and important part, because the family is a basic unit of society where people spend most of their lives. But the 21st century has witnessed an increasing loss of family identification, due to the intensifying social competition and pressures. Traditional family values have been practically ignored and discarded in many societies, but a satisfactory system of family values has not yet been established as a substitution. Pride and Prejudice, a great novel of Jane Austen (published in 1813) focusing on family and marriage, offers an adequate set of family values combining traditional values, such as respecting one's parents and elders, with her own pioneering ideas and improvements suggested, for example, she had faith in the mental and intellectual equality between men and women and encouraged women to ask for their own rights. In this case, she made a great contribution to the emergence and development of modern family values.Therefore, the thesis proposes to give a detailed research into Pride and Prejudice to offer a comprehensive description and analysis of Jane Austen's then new system of family values, by presenting the family values generally acknowledged in the early 19th century England, the criticisms Jane Austen voiced to them in the novel, and the improvements she made to the traditional family values. Though many scholars have made their contributions to the study of this field, few of them have integrated an intercultural communication family value study with literary criticism. Besides, the thesis points out Jane Austen's literary greatness in giving her acceptance and objections to traditional family values of that period and combining traditional values with her own ideas to form a new family value system. The thesis first gives a clear introduction, including the thesis structure, and the reasons why the author has decided to conduct research into Jane Austen's new family value system in early nineteenth century England based on contemporary writers Condon and Yousef's family value model. Then a brief review is provided of some of the significant concepts and theories concerning family and family values, the cultural context in England of the early nineteenth century, and the scholarly criticism of Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Primarily, the author offers research into the novel from four principal value aspects: relational orientation, authority, positional role behavior, and mobility, to present an illustrative image of England at that time and Austen's pioneering ideas of family values. In the conclusion, the author offers a brief but comprehensive summary of the whole thesis, a description of its limitation, and suggestions for further research.