简·奥斯汀 第2页
Moreover, her development from rationalism to the romanticism also reflects in her new concept of marriage. That is she advocates the only base of marriage should be the true love, not the family backgrounds and economic base. This vividly reflects in the scene of Elizabeth Bennet refusing Mr. Collins’ proposal. When Mr. Collins proposes to Elizabeth, she answers,
“I thank you again and again for the honor you have done me in your proposals, but to accept them is absolutely impossible. My feelings in every respect forbid it.”
These words show Elizabeth the determination that she prefers to keep single in all her life rather than to marry to Mr. Collins without love, and therefore, establish a romantic character.
Secondly, her transitional role also displays in her writing style. That is to say, on the one hand, she inherited some characteristics of the neoclassicism in style and painted the world she knew; so it is foolish to expect from her the high-flown sentiment; but on the other hand, to some degree, her style is also different from the previous enlightening writers, like Fielding, just as she herself claimed that she not only painted the world she lived in with fidelity, but also with sympathy; with a sensitive sense of its blemishes, but also with a true insight into its redeeming virtues. So her characters evolve themselves without any great dramatic episodes. And although her language sparkles with wit and irony, they are moderate. Her novel Pride and Prejudice provides a good example for this point. We know that Mr. Collins is a clergyman in this novel. When he sings high praise for his patroness, he says,
“Lady Catherine was reckoned proud by many people, he knew, but he had never seen anything but affability in her. She had always spoken to him as she would to any other gentleman; she made not the smallest objection to his joining in the society of the neighborhood, nor to his leaving his parish occasionally for a week or two to visit his relations.”
It is true that these words are also the satire to Mr. Collins’ snobbery. But different from the traditional satire, Jane Austen is too conscious of people’s snobbery to be angry with them, and thus gives her criticism a flavor of humor. Therefore, we say that in style she is also a transitional writer at the turn of the century, just as one of the most important neoclassicist, Sir Walter Scott, comments on her,
“The big bow-wow strain I can do myself, like any now going; but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment is denied me.”
To sum up, through the above analysis, we can make such a summary that Jane Austen plays a transitional role in the English literature from the 18th neoclassicism to the 19th romanticism. Trained in the enlightening tradition, she displays the feeling moderately; influenced by the coming romanticism, she satirizes the society in comedy. So it might be an error to say that Jane Austen is incapable of sentiment, because nobady can create a true comedy of life without romance and passion that is even in the humblest existence.
【Notes】
[1]Austen, Jane, 1997, Pride and Prejudice, Bei Jing: Foreign Language Teaching & Research Press & Oxford
University Press, p.1.
[2]Austen, Jane, 1997, Pride and Prejudice, Bei Jing: Foreign Language Teaching & Research Press & Oxford
University Press, p.48.
[3]Craik, W. A. 1965, Jane Austen: The Six Novels, New York: Barnes & Noble Inc., p.56.
【References】
[1]Austen, Jane, 1997, Pride and Prejudice, Bei Jing: Foreign Language Teaching & Research Press & Oxford University Press.
[2]Craik, W. A. 1965, Jane Austen: The Six Novels, New York: Barnes & Noble Inc., p.56.
[3]Rubinstein, Annette T. 1953, The Great Tradition in English Literature from Shakespeare to Shaw, New York: The Citadel Press.
[4]朱红编写，1985，《奥斯丁研究》，北京：中国文联出版公司。