Jane Austen’s Feminine Consciousness That Reflected in Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen is one of the most famous female novelists in the world.Among her works,"Pride and Prejudice" is her most outstanding representative.The story of "Pride and Prejudice" happened in Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.At that time,Women regarded marriage as goods to climb up the upper class and to obtain the financial support and their attitudes towards marriage was affected by material factors in determine way.The story of this novel and the behavior of the characters develop around marriage.It mainly talks about Elizabeth,Jane,Charlotte and Lydia these four young ladies’ marriages.There are three kinds of motivations of or attitudes towards marriage that are presented for manifestation.First,Charlotte’s marriage to Mr.Collins is just for money and social position.Second,Lydia’s marriage to Wickham is for beauty regardless of personal morality.Third,is the marriage of Elizabeth and Darcy and that of Jane and Mr.Bingley which are for love and personal merits.Their love stories reveal different views to marriage among young women of the middle class and express Jane Austen her own attitude towards marriage.What’s more important,we find that Jane Austen concerns about women’s lives and their unfair conditions by means of her feminine consciousness.By examining Jane Austen’s social conditions that she lived in and her experiences and analyzing these four marriages,this paper attempts to find the Austen’s views of marriage and her feminine consciousness that reflected in this novel.