Study Of The Mothers In Jane Austen's Novels By Categorization Method

Jane Austen is a British writer in nineteenth century, who is well-known because of six novels written by her, including:Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion. And she was mentioned in the same breath with Shakespeare by British historian Macaulay. The researchers'attentions are usually focused on the love between leading characters and especially on their marriage in Jane Austen's novels while their study topics and viewpoints are similar and pay little attention to the supporting characters such as the images of mothers in Jane Austen's novels and there are few research results about it. The thesis try to investigate the mothers'image in the six novels mentioned above as a whole, and special attention is paid to Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, because there are a lot of mothers appears in the two novels and each of them has their own personality. The thesis also investigates the motivations for the writing the novels including the main family structure at Jane Austen's time and her viewpoints on love, marriage and family. The mother images as a whole are studied by careful text analysis and combine with other methods including social historic criticism, ethnics and feminist criticism, psychological criticism Eysenck's personality theory and geometric graphs.The main part of the thesis has three chapters. Chapter one consists of two sections. The personalities of the mothers are categorized into extraversion and introversion according to personality analysis proposed by British psychologist Eysenck. The first section investigates three extroverted mothers whom are misunderstood for a long time from a mother's perspective:Mrs. Bennet is foolish and funning, She is nonideal mother and is not the leading character but she loves her daughter very much. Mrs. Katherine is a haughty arrogant noble lady, but she shows lots of virtue; Mrs Jennings is vulgar, but she is also a kind sincere lady. The second section analyzes the introverted mothers, including:Mrs. Dashwood, Mrs. Middleton, Mrs. Bertram. The common personalities of the three ladies are apartness and selfishness.Chapter two consists of three sections, which studies the relationship of the mothers with others and using geometric graphs to explain the relationship between the roles more clearly. The first section investigates the mothers who love their sons, and analyzes three kinds of mothers respectively:matey, estranged and intervened mothers. The second section investigated the mothers playing the roles of wives, and they are categorized from the husband's point of view, including two categories:transition from passional to peace relationship with the husband, and attracting each other in marriage. And the second category of mothers including who pursue equal rights, who are tolerant and who go to the same with the husband. The third section investigates the mothers in social relations, including having good relationship with the relatives, have simple relationship with other people and help each other.Chapter three analyzes the motivation of writing the novels. First of all, The family styles in the writer's time are analyzed, and the statuses of the mothers in marriage and family are investigated by statistics. According to Jane Austen's own experiences and her viewpoint to love, marriage, family, the thesis analyzes why there is no ideal mother in her novels because that she has never gotten married and has no real experiences about it.The conclusion analyzes that the writer applies double standards to look at the heroes and heroines and their mothers. The conflicts in the writer's mind is expressed by the opposite personality and conflicts of the viewpoints between different characters in her works. The writer places her dreams and hopes on the younger heroes and heroines but places her conflicts in mind and deviation from ethics on the mothers. The second part conclude that the mother images in her works is more comprehensive than that in novels written by other female writers in nineteenth century. And the thesis also studies spirit of Jane Austen's time and the social and historical responsibility.