Exploration Of Austen’s Complex Of Cinderella Model In Her Novels

Jane Austen has secured her lasting place in the history of English literary. Sheearned the high esteem by her six great completed works, Pride and Prejudice, Senseand Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. Althoughthose six novels have been analyzed with different theories from different perspectivesseparately or as a whole, few scholars and critics have ever tried to explore the reasonswhy Jane Austen employs the Cinderella model in all of her novels. The author in thisthesis tries to explore the reasons for Jane Austen’s complex of employing Cinderellamodel in her six completed novels. It is argued that the reasons lie in Jane Austen’sunsatisfied desires and the deep meaning of Cinderella model. The present paper mainlyemploys the psychoanalytic approach in its analysis. This approach contains Freud’sopinion about literary creation and Jung’s ideas about the archetype and collectiveunconscious. Freud argues (1987) that the drive of literary creation stems fromnovelists’ unsatisfied desires in reality, and thus they create some figures in their worksto satisfy those desires. The archetype, in Jung’s opinion, contains human beings’collective unconscious and best wishes. This thesis consists of six chapters. ChapterOne is the introduction, mainly including the significance, thesis motivation of writingthis thesis, statement, the theoretical basis of the analysis respectively, as well as theoutline of this thesis. Chapter Two is literature review, summarizes the previousresearches both at home and abroad, on Jane Austen’s six completed novels. ChapterThree analyses Jane Austen’s Cinderella complex and its embodiment in her novels.Chapter Four analyses Jane Austen’s writing skills. Chapter Five studies the relationshipbetween Jane Austen’s unique life experience and her subject matter as well as thetheme. In Chapter Six, this thesis first summarizes the major points of the discussions inthe previous sections and then concludes the reason why Jane Austen repeatedly chosethe Cinderella model in her novels lies in that the Cinderella model projects thecollective unconscious of sense of shortage and pursuit of a happy life, which comfortsJane Austen and satisfies her hidden desire for a happy married life.