Abstract

Jane Austen is one of the most brilliant female novelists in English literature that is born at the turn of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. She has devoted her whole life to writing novels, and finally accomplishes six completed novels, all of which are masterpieces and share the same theme of marriage. It is the marriage theme that makes her novels popular among readers and literature researchers. Persuasion is Austen’s last mature novel where the marriage theme is further developed. 

This thesis analyzes Anne’s ethics of love and marriage from the perspective of traditional ethics of family as well as Anne’s evolution from caution to romance. At first, the bad influence of the backward feudal system on people’s ethics of love and marriage is analyzed from the perspective of traditional ethics of family. Then, studies are conducted in Anne’s evolvable ethics of love and marriage. Next, Anne’s evolution from caution to romance is proved not only influenced by the society at that time, but also by Anne’s female consciousness. Finally, this paper makes a comparison between Austen’s famous novels Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility, by analyzing two different marriage patterns to reveal that happy marriage must be based on the mutual true love, thus encouraging the older female youths today to pursue their happy marriages bravely.    

Key words: caution; evolution; romance; love and marriage; persuasion

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1 Introduction-1

2 Literature review-2

3 Traditional ethics of family-3

3.1 Background and embodiments-3

3.2 Influences on social ethics of love and marriage-4

4 Anne’s evolution from caution to romance-5

4.1 Reasons for caution and its consequences-5

4.2 Anne’s struggle in the course of evolution-7

4.3 Influence on Anne’s ethics of love and marriage-8

5 Two love patterns in Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility-9

5.1 Love between Anne and Wentworth-9

5.2 Love between Elinor and Edward-10

5.3 The secret to happy marriage-11

6 Conclusion-13

References-15