Austen’s Imperial Narrative And Consciousness:a Perspective Of Post-colonialism

Jane Austen (1775-1817), one of the top remarkable British women novelists in the18th century, was virtually recognized by all common readers. Despite the fact that Jane Austen lived in a quiet and circumscribed life in the countryside, she dedicated herself to creating a series of comedies revolving around marriage. Thus her works were all romantic fictions, set among the landed gentry, talking about several families pursuing their own ideal and perfect partners. Since publication, her novels were widely read all over the world; so far, her novels have been translated into over20languages, with some known to every family.Although the majority of scholars on Jane Austen’s novels give a high evaluation, there are still some scholars criticizing that her novels do not pay attention to changes of the outside world and development of the United Kingdom and are not concerned about current affairs. Accusations like these are in fact biased. Admittedly, Jane Austen has never deliberately written about Empire activity; but being created in the background of Regency dynasty, no matter she neglects the social environment unconsciously or intentionally avoids describing social events, her works are inevitable to be marked with the stigma of that period.This paper employs post-colonial cultural critique especially Said’s Orientalism to combine the virtual space of imperial narrative in the text with true history outside the text in order to prove the facts that with the British Empire as the center,"others" also exist in her novels and their status is different and unequal; with few and obscure clues, Austen’s imperial consciousness and recognition which are disguised in her novels can still be discovered. Based on these analyses, a conclusion can be reached that growing in the colonial expansion period, under the influence of the superior national system and culture, moral and family values, Austen must have had the consciousness of the Great Britain and colonial imperialism, thus more or less the description of the colonial expansion policy as well as the recognition of imperialism would be revealed in her works. Her expression, however, is just different from other male writers such as Defoe, Kipling and Conrad, that is, she cleverly hides her description and attitude towards the expansion of imperialism in seemingly innocuous and plain emotional details.