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Money and Marriage——The matrimonial value orientation in Pride and Prejudice |
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时间：2009-8-8 16:59:05 来源：不详
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p;was getting more and more important in people’s mind about social value. A western literature critic once said that “ even David Ricardo (a British economist) had a unlikely clearer understanding about the function of money in daily life as Jane Austen had.”(3) It is exactly because of the secure pledge in finance that the country squire society could be existing strongly and solidly.
The first sentence of the whole novel proclaims, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”(4) Here, “a good fortune” and “in want of” are two key phrases. “in want of” means it is needed objectively, but not subjectively. Such kind of wording makes the proposition have more objectivity of “truth”. In Pride and Prejudice, the Bennets are taken as the typical to test the “truth universally acknowledged”.
Mr. and Mrs. Bennet have five daughters, living at Longbourn. Mr. Bennet’s property consists almost entirely in an estate of two thousand pounds a year, which, unfortunately for his daughters, is entailed, in default of heirs male, on a distant relation. That means there will be no other guarantee for their daughters’ future lives, but their perspective marriages. Therefore, it is no wonder that Mrs. Bennet takes Mr. Bingley as “the rightful property”(5) for their daughters when she hears about that he has one hundred thousand pounds property, though she has not even seen him – “A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!”(6) That is the beginning of the novel. The implicit marriage mentioned here obviously concerns no feeling but only financial condition and subsistence. To those husband-hunting ladies, Mr. Bingley is an abstract signal. The most important thing is that he has “a good fortune”. So we can say, to opposite with the proclamation at the beginning, so-called “ a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife” is not at all “ a truth universally acknowledged”, but only Mrs. Bennet’s own wishful thinking. We can also say that, as Zhu Hong pointed out, in Pride and prejudice, the real “truth universally acknowledged” is “ a woman without property must be in want of a husband with a good fortune.”(7)
We first see Mr. Darcy at the ball, “ He soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien, and the report which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a-year.”(8)
Next is the introduction about Mr. Bingley and his two sisters.
“They were in fact very fine ladies; not de上一页 [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] ... 下一页 >>
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