Jane Austen’s Gender Writing

As a famous writer known to the world from England, the themes of Jane Austen’s works are mainly on the marriage of the middle class in England’s country-side. The works show us the world of male and female and also the writer’s view on genders. As a subsequent discipline of feminist literary criticism, gender poetics not only inherits the criticism of androcentrism and male centered doctrines, but also holds a more open attitudes to avoid the one-sidedness. Besides, it questions the preconceived ideas about male and female, namely gender orientation, and advocates discussing the value of gender equality.Since the works of Jane Austen focus on the marriage and family life of the middle class in England, many researches have been done on her works from the perspective of feminism and female consciousness, and trying to find its potential traces in her works. Under the guidance of gender poetics, the paper analyzes Jane Austen’s gender writing by means of close reading, discusses the unique images and features of male and female, and tries to find a harmonious world of themThe significance of the paper lies in that from a new aspect it may broaden our horizons and add something to the research on Jane Austen’s works. The images of male and female, the relationship between them, and the outlook on love and marriage in Jane Austen’s work have been studied from feminism, but with gender poetics, the thesis may highlight the problems, such as the equality of genders and the harmonious relationship between them. The study of male images may be of some help to provide a new train of thought for literary study and promote the diversification in literary studies.