1.2 Relevant research in China

  The studies on P&P have been gathered in the past years in China. Since works of Jane Austen was translated into China, his works became more and more popular among Chinese people, especially P&P, people love it and have been doing a number of studies about it. We can simply pide all the studies into around three categories according to the degree of relevance between them.

  The first category, from the perspective of the writing characteristics of Jane Austen. The most remarkable character of his work is the accurate descriptions of the details of daily life. As W. F. Pollock (1860) said “Miss Austen never attempts to describe a scene or a class of society with which she was not herself thoroughly acquainted. The conversations of ladies with ladies, or of ladies and gentlemen together, are given, but no instance occurs of a scene in which men only are present.” Austen focuses on daily life of middle-class with humor and understanding. She observes every small matters and every ordinary person in her own life and tries to paint them in her novel. What are important for her are those little matters, as Emma says, “on which the daily happiness of private life depends”. In her time, marriage mainly determined women' s social status. It is obviously reflected in P&P. The characters of P&P are all ordinary people and the dialogues and events may happen in everyone’s daily life. 论文网

  The second category, it’s very obvious that most of people analyze the story from the perspective of the theme. Luo Qi, the writer of Themes To P&P, points out that this novel has three themes: 1.concept of marriage 2. a woman’s reputation 3. class boundaries and prejudice. In the last theme, Luo Qi thinks that the theme of class is related to reputation, in that both reflect the strictly regimented nature of life for middle and upper classes in regency England. And he also thinks that the whole discussion of class must be made with the understanding that Austen herself is often criticized as being a classist, she doesn’t really represent anyone from the lower class, those servants she does portray are generally happy a lot.

  Zhu Yu shows quite different ideas towards the theme. She thinks that the novel shows that the main themes in P&P really are pride and prejudice. Elizabeth is shown to be guilty of prejudicially judging Darcy to be prideful. In addition, she turns out that improper pride is actually the reason behind Elizabeth's prejudice. At the end, while Darcy is recognized by Elizabeth, the reality is that he actually is the most noble character in the novel and found to not have any improper pride. Zhu Yu thinks that pride and prejudice are the most dominant themes in the book because it is these two themes that create the main conflict in the story, which is Elizabeth's dislike of Darcy and Darcy's unrequited love for Elizabeth.

  The third category, from the perspective of the ball as a narrative device in P&P. Some scholars did the studies of the function of the ball in Austen’ s works, especially in P&P, they thought that in Austen' s fiction, as in many novels of the 19th century, a ball is the ultimate occasion for a heady kind of courtship -- a trying out of partners that is exciting, flirtatious and downright erotic. Throughout P&P, there are two balls were described, which were between Darcy represented by the nobility and Elizabeth represented by the middle class. The first assembly is of great importance in the structure of the whole novel, for it has contributed to the first encounter of the two lovers. So plots developed in this way: making the first acquaintance in the ball, falling in love with each other, and then marriage. So they believes that, dance underscores the theme of courtship and marriage.  Only after forming initial matches on the dance floor can Elizabeth and Darcy and Jane and Bingley progress to the next stage, which may culminate in marriage.  Thus, dance fulfills its primary function in the novel, as it did in Austen’ s society.