阅读理解
Jane Austen has often been considered a woman who led a narrow,
inhibited life and who rarely traveled. These assertions are far from the
truth. Jane Austen traveled more than most women of her time and was quite
involved in the lives of her brother, so much that it often interfered with her
writing. Like most writers, Jane drew on her experiences and her dreams for the
future and incorporated them into her writing. Her characters reflect the
people around her; the main characters reflect parts of herself. In Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, Elinor Dashwood and
Elizabeth Bennet reflect aspects of Jane Austen and dreams she had that were
never fulfilled.
The biographies about Jane Austen describe the facts of her
life in a step-by-step manner. They tend to be repetitive since she did not
leave behind a rich fabric of day-to-day life. Yet Jane Austen is known not
because of the factual details of her life; she is not remembered two hundred
years after her death because she had six siblings and was a wonderful aunt to
her nieces and nephews. Rather, Jane Austen is remembered because of what she
wrote. Only through reading her literature does one get a taste of the real
Jane Austen, the Jane Austen who dreamed and made plans for the future that
failed to materialize. Only by analyzing June Austen's characters do we get an
understanding of the true author.
Sense and Sensibility's Elinor Dashwood mirrors Jane Austen's
strait-laced sense of propriety (礼节) and her concern and care about family
members. For example, after her father died, Jane managed to gather herself
together and send her father's pocket compass and pair of scissors to her
brother Frank as a memento of their father. Elinor in Sense and Sensibility is the sister who holds down the family and
discusses the practicality of situations. She too distributes cherished
mementos of her father when he dies. Elinor is the sister who is concerned with
the welfare of her relations and takes it upon herself to look after their
well-being.
Jane can also be considered the backbone of her family.
After she dies, the family is not as close as they were during her lifetime.
Jane became very close with two of her nieces, Fanny Austen and Anna Austen.
She counseled them on men and marriage when they reached the age of choosing a
suitor. She often helped with delivering her sister-in-law's babies. During her
thirties, she lived with her brother Frank for several weeks. She cooked the
meals for his family and cared for his children while his wife was confined to
her bed. Like the character she creates in Elinor, she sticks by her family and
helps them when they need her.
Austen's life closely parallels that of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Austen begins the
novel with the line, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man
in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”. This statement
reflects the opinion of the time that a woman had to be married or else she had
no social standing. Just as Elizabeth and her sisters feel immense pressure to
get married and procure a good match, so too did Jane. Until she was
twenty-five she still retained a small spark of hope that she would one day
marry and have children.
The most significant similarity between Jane and Lizzy is
their close relationships with their sisters. Jane and her sister Cassandra
were extremely close. When they moved into a house in Chawton, they shared a
bedroom. They were dependent upon each other and supported each other in all
aspects of their lives. They supported each other's decisions and wrote to each
other when apart. Lizzy and her older sister Jane were extremely close. They
too supported each other's decisions and were always there for the other. They
discussed suitors and marriage just as Jane and her sister must have done.
All of Jane's female characters end up happily married, a
state Jane herself never felt. A woman was defined in terms of her husband; if
she did not marry, she had nothing. Well into her twenties, Jane still had
dreams of getting married. When she was twenty-five, Harris Bigg-Wither, a
brother of her good friends, proposed marriage to Jane. At first she accepted:
she would become mistress of a large estate, and be able to ensure the comfort
of her parents to the end of their days. Most importantly, she would have
children and raise a family of her own. The next day, however, Jane reneged the
proposal. She did not love him and did not want a marriage based on nothing but
money. After this proposal, Jane gave up all hopes of ever having a family of
her own. Instead, she fulfilled her dreams through her characters and found
“passion” through them. All her characters marry for love (which happens to
also be financially advantageous). They make Jane's dreams become a reality
within her imagination. _____ . As children reflect upon the parents and often
mirror aspects of their parents, so too did many of Jane's characters mirror
herself and the people around her.
