Pride and Prejudice typifies Jane Austen’s works, and it is also a representative work of realistic literature. The novel takes the youth marriage as a main line and contains the inheritance of property, the status of women, the norm of morality and local customs and practices. Under the social background at that time, women’s only virtue is to be full of patience and humility. At the time in which men was in male supremacy, and women always in much oppression and discrimination, to find a good end-result, we also can call it marriage, is a way, an only way to gain respect and social status. From Pride and Prejudice, Austen makes a full expression about her own marriage views.

 As a great work written by the famous female author in English literature, it has been discussed for about two hundred years. Over these years, a lot of scholars are in the way to research and innovate it. Since then, Pride and Prejudice has been sold over twenty million copies worldwide, translated to dozens of languages, and also been adapted for televisions plays and films for ten times. 

In Jane Austen, Feminism, and Fiction (1983), Margaret Kirkham argues in a feminist view and regards Austen as an exemplar of Enlightenment feminism. Mary Lascelles shows her modern criticism to Austen in Jane Austen and her Art (1939). Marilyn Bulter is the first one to put Austen in a historical context. In Jane Austen and the War of Ideas, she focuses on the characterization and political attitude of her. Christopher Gillie emphasizes on the writing style of Austen in his work: A Preface to Austen (2005). He believes her works are narrowly focused and tightly structured to the previous age.

In China, the studies to Austen boomed in the 1980s. Many scholars pay their great attention to Pride and Prejudice from different perspectives. Qian Qing analyzes Pride and Prejudice from the narrative perspective in the Austen which can be seen in History of British Literature in Nineteenth Century (2005). Wu Weihua writes An Analysis of Pride and Prejudice’s Female Writing Position from feminist perspective and he discusses about the development of British feminism from the novel. In addition, the researchers significantly study the masterpiece from other perspectives. For instance, Lin Zhiping writes Austen’s Artistic Charm in Pride and Prejudice, in which he digs into Austen’s writing styles and her art in the novel.

From the brief literature review, we can see that Pride and Prejudice is popular both in China and the west and it gains great attention from many critics. I write this paper to convey Austen’s marriage views from analyzing the different marriage modes in the novel. 文献综述

The thesis mainly consists of introduction, three chapters and conclusion. In chapter one, the paper starts with the author’s age, briefly introduce social background from social context and women status. In chapter two, it mainly sums up four marriage modes in the novel: an erotic marriage of Lydia and Wickham, a convenience marriage of Collins and Charlotte, Jane and Bingley’s moral marriage, and a perfect marriage of Elizabeth and Darcy. In chapter three, the paper will convey the author’s own marriage views. Besides the love and wealth which we have already been familiar with, the paper also adds some new factors: A perfect marriage requires suitable characters and sense. In the conclusion, this thesis will sum up Jane Austen’s marriage views more profoundly. It conveys author’s views again that a marriage needs love, wealth, characters and sense.

Chapter One  An Overview of Social Background in Austen’s Time

We can obviously see the author’s own views on love and marriage from Pride and Prejudice and if we want to analyze it deeply we should start with Austen’s age and its background. In this chapter, I will study the social background of the author as well as the work Pride and Prejudice in two aspects: social context and women status.