On The Construction Of Women's Discourse Right In Emma

Jane Austen is an outstanding British woman writer in the Victorian Age, who has left for posterity six complete novels in her transient life and whose creative halo in the literary world has been flashing till now. In BBC's"the Millennium Writer Selection"activity in 2000, Austen, followed by Shakespeare, is ranked second, moreover is the one and only female writer among the top ten writers in this activity. It is commonly believed that Jane Austen's novel---Emma published in December in 1815 is the most mature one of her novels. And it is said that Emma is the pinnacle of Jane Austen's energy and craftsmanship by Jean Hart. But, in the original days of the publication of Emma, it was denied by the early readers as well as the new women images in Emma was frequently oppugned, such as Emma and the like which are completely different from the conventional ones in the patriarchal literature. Jane Austen seems to forecast the effect of emergence of Emma and confides that:"I am going to take a heroine (Emma) whom no one but myself will much like"(1989: 187). It is precisely this reason that"Emma has certainly become part of our national heritage"(Adela, 2003: vii). The patriarchal culture is rooted in the women's minds for so long and women are placed, by the society, in the"other"position relative to men thus women discourses have been in the marginal location, which therefore blinds women from constructing their own discourse rights and realizing their self-identity as women. Therefore, women's discourse rights are remain the most vital and costful instrument in this battle with men for pursuit of equal rights. Well then, how does Jane Austen deconstruct the myth of male supremacy, then construct women discourse rights? On the levels of background, the images of female characters and the writing techniques, this thesis will combine Feminist Narratology with Jacques Lacan's mirror stage theory to focus on analyzing the problem of the construction of Jane Austen's women discourse rights, which is a new attempt and a fire-new perspective and is worth digging deeply and deliberating thoroughly.Chapter1 will focus on Jane Austen's life, works, as well as her extraordinarily important roles in women's writings and women's history. A series of critical researches on her work---Emma is also listed in this chapter. In addition, the background knowledge of Lacan's mirror stage theory and feminist narratology will be introduced synchronously.Chapter2, First and foremost, in accordance with Lacan's mirror stage theory, in which Lacan points out it is nothing but a sort of distortion and alienation that the infant recognizes originally its own self-identity, this chapter unfolds that women and women writers have grown up into the suppressed and falsified selves under the reflections of men's illusory mirror images, thus, women have lost their discourse rights completely. Besides, father is referred to as a subject symbolized order, legislation and punishment in the process of the infant's self-perception. But, Jane Austen overthrows father's authority in Emma, which not only makes female return to her true ego, escaping from Lacan's illusion of father mirror image, but also subverts male-dominated center discourse. Last but not least, this chapter expatiates that Emma is designed as the real self mirror image of Austen. By the aid of Emma---this self mirror image of her own, Austen declares to the patriarchal society, to the patriarchal literature that her ego is existent, a woman is existent as well as a woman writer is. Austen, accordingly, establishes truly woman's discourse right both in the text and in real life.Chapter3 concerns Austen's creation of women images in Emma. Emma, Jane, Harriet, Miss Bates, Mrs. Elton in Emma can exist independently, who have denied, by virtue of their respectively unique manner, women's dependency on men for thousands of years as well as disaffirmed the puny, compliant and submissive women images which have been overshadowed by tall male's bodies in the historical text. Jane Austen takes advantage of these new women images to send stealthy an aggression to the stereotypes thrusted upon women by the androcentric discourse and also casts off the trammels forcing women to lost their voices, thereby, erodes the males'discourses step by step and constructs women's discourse rights eventually.Chapter4 lies in probing into the narrative techniques in light of the potential relationship between gender factors and writing skills, which purpose is to expose Austen's truth intention of establishing women discourse rights which is hidden behind the covert, obscure and moderate narrative strategies.In the conclusion Chapter, the author points out that in Emma, Jane Austen casts a ray to the miserable lives of women in the patriarchal society and leaves a new living space for women, which shows that Austen places beautiful hopes for women's bright future and has constructed women's discourse rights and the narrative tradition of subverting patriarchal power. Thereby, Jane Austen, with a strong sense of anti-tradition and subversion, has written a hymn of women successfully.