摘要:The novel by Jane Austen is characterized by the unique feminine and keen realistic insight. Different from the men realistic novelists, she writes from a keen feminine visual angle. Feminist consciousness focuses on the women characters' inner lives during their self- development written by women writers.
owing new topics to be considered in new ways. Among the new topics, the moral nature and status of women was one of the most important.
Eighteenth-century feminism was not in general specifically concerned with the political equality of women, though it is true that, from the start, it carried political implications, first brought out into the open by Catherine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft in the early 1790s. The feminist impulse showed itself first in its objection to the
assignment of women to an inferior status as spiritual and moral beings. The first well-articulated female claim to equality was not directed towards enfranchisement via the ballotbox, but to delivery of women from the restrictions which it had pleased male theologians, moral philosophers and poets to impose upon women.
The essential claim of feminism during this period (Enlightenment feminism) was that women, not having been denied powers of reason, must have the moral status appropriate to “rational beings”, formed in the image of a rational God. Feminist moralists were in general that an improvement in the status of women would be brought about through increasing their powers of rational understanding and reflection. The demand for an adequate education, the main practical concern of Enlightenment feminism, arose directly from this.
Enlightenment feminism in the eighteenth century, with its emphasis on Reason and its action with the middle class, may not strike contemporary feminists as not having much to do with liberation, but this is a misunderstanding. The most orthodox beliefs, when applied to a class of persons previously excluded from serious moral and political discourse, may take on a new aspect.
Ⅲ.The Feminist Consciousness of the Female Characters in Emma
3.1 Emma’s Feminist Consciousness
3.1.1 The Consciousness of Freedom
The direct way to analyze feminist consciousness in this novel is through female characters. The narrator introduce Emma to us by emphasizing her good fortune: “handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition,” Emma “had live nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.” Emma is growing up freely, Emma’s mother died when Emma was five years old, her sister Isabella married and moved to London, her father treats her very kindly, he cares for nothing except his health. Governess Miss Taylor is the only custodian of Emma, Miss Taylor is warm-hearted, and she cares for Emma like Emma’s mother. So Emma’s experience of growing, there is no patriarchal oppress from father or brother, there is no guidance from mother or sister. This kind of freedom endows her a free heart, a kind of admiring free consciousness.
England is a patriarchy social in the eighteenth century. Emma just reflects a kind of feminist consciousness which castes the domination of patriarchy. Emma’s father is not the center of authority, who arranges his daughter’s rights. On the contrary, he is a weak, sensitive, kind father, pampers his daughter. In the whole novel, he never restrains Emma. Emma becomes a hostess when she is very young, her father let her to deal with all the affair at home, Mr. Woodhouse gives Emma all the things she desired, and always agreed with her. Emma does not have brothers, maybe John Kightley her bro
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