Analysis Of Improvement Of Female Subjectivity

To ensure success of box office, it has already become a common practice toproduce films through adapting classic literary works. At the same time, manyscholars began to use a series of different theoretical methods to study this kind ofadaptation films. At the early stage, study in this field mainly focused on whether thefilms managed to faithfully reflect their original literature works and treated it as theonly standard for measuring an adaptation film’s success. But with the developmentof this research, from the1970s, the standard has been questioned. More and moreresearchers believed that the relationship between adaptive movies and their historicalperiods, social environment and cultural ideological trend is of more significance.This article analyzed difference of female subjectivity among three differenteditions of Pride and Prejudice from feminist perspective, and illustrated causes ofthis change based on their specific social backgrounds and the development of thefeminist movement.In the1940version, the heroine’s female subjective consciousness wasweakened relatively. This change reflected the fact that the Great Depression whichthe United States has just experienced has strengthened the traditional distribution ofgender roles. In the1980edition, the heroine showed contradictory characteristics ofboth “Angel in the House” and “New Women”. This change reflected the impact ofthe second feminism movement in the1960s and1970s and women’s confusion ofself-cognition after the Second World War. In the2005version, the heroine’s imagewas as strong, independent, confident and free as a modern woman. Thisdemonstrated the impact of the third wave of feminist movement, especially theinfluence of the “New Feminism” which emphasized the harmonious relationshipbetween men and women. Through analysis, this article comes to a conclusion that with interactiverelationship of feminist thoughts, film adaptation which is one of mass media not onlyreflects the female subjectivity, but also plays a part in constructing femalesubjectivity.