【摘  要】简·奥斯汀是英国文学史上18世纪末新古典主义过渡到19世纪初浪漫主义的重要代表作家。本文重点从两方面探讨她的过渡性：一方面从作品的主题看，大部分奥斯汀的小说都反映了人们对婚姻态度及观念的变化；另一方面，从写作风格上看，她的作品以喜剧的形式讽刺社会，令人深思。

【关键词】简·奥斯；过渡时期

as we all know, it is not until the second half of the 18th century that women novelists began to appear in england. and some gifted women from the end of the 18th century to 19th century made some contributions to the development of the english novel, which even won their places in the front ranks of some realists like charles dickens, william makepeace thackeray, etc. jane austen (1775-1817) was just such a great woman writer in this period. she brought the english novel to its maturity and her satirical fictions marked the transition from the 18th-century neoclassicism to the 19th-century romanticism in the english literature.

jane austen was born at steventon and the seventh child of a country clergyman family. she was educated at home and passed all her life in doing small domestic duties in the countryside. she wrote six complete famous novels, including sense and sensibility (1811), pride and prejudice (1813), mansfield park (1814), emma (1816), northanger abbey (1818), and persuasion (1818).

she lived and worked at the turn of the century, which witnessed a great change of the english society. since the industrial revolution in the second half of the 18th century, the english social structure underwent rapid changes. the industrial capitalists began to control not only the economic but also the political power and thus the struggle between the workers and capitalists also became more and more sharp. consequently, people started to doubt and even lose hope to the enlightening thoughts that was popular in the first half of the 18th century. literature, as a “barometer” of the social life, also experienced great change. one of the most remarkable changes was in the literary taste. that is to say, people started to dislike swift’s brutality, defoe’s frank realism, and even fielding’s masculine satire. so the works with the rational tone began to give way to the works full of sentiments.

under such a social and literary environment, jane austen exerted her transitional role in english literature. we can see it from two aspects.

firstly, in theme, most of jane austen’s novels reflect the process of the change of the attitude towards the marriage. as we all know, in austen’s novel sense and sensibility, one of the heroine, elinor dashwood, is quite sensible. she thinks very highly of a man whose worthiness in her eyes only increases when she learns why he cannot marry her. however, another heroine, marianne dashwood, is very sentimental at the beginning. so she trusts her senses and falls in love with a man who in truth is not as good as he seems and finally is abandoned. through the different fates of these two sisters, jane austen shows us her early attitude towards the marriage that to marry according to sense will end in failure while with ration will succeed. such a theme reflects that at first jane austen inherits the traditional enlightening thoughts. however, her minds change in her later novels, especially in her novels pride and prejudice and persuasion. in these novels, sentiment becomes upper hand and attains success in the end. for example, at the very beginning of the novel pride and prejudice, jane austen wrote, “it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” and the hero and theroine are the very sensible people. mr. darcy, from a noble family, has a strong sense of family status and turns up his nose at the vulgarity of bennet family. and elizabeth bennet is also very sensitive to her family background and becomes instantly prejudiced against mr. darcy, despite his good looks and great wealth. however, with the gradual deep intercourse and understanding between these two people, they fall in love with each other and finally smash the bonds of the ration and social pressure and marry. so this novel shows the victory of the sentiment, for it is just thanks to the deep love that makes these two people from different class status successfully marry. this reflects that jane austen’s creating thoughts begins to change from the rationalism to the romanticism. her last novel persuasion also displays such a change. therefore, we can say that it is just through the conflict between the ration and sentiment in the novels that jane austen accomplishes the transition from the rational literature to the romantic literature.

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。Www.11665.cOm