It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, "Call me Ishmael," the first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice must be among the most quoted in literature. And certainly what Melville did for whaling Austen does for marriage——tracing the...《傲慢與偏見》主講了奧斯丁的諷刺藝術,不僅表現(xiàn)在某些人物的喜劇性格上,也不僅表現(xiàn)在眾多情節(jié)的喜劇性處理上,而且還融匯在整個故事的反諷構思中,讓現(xiàn)實對人們的主觀臆想進行嘲諷。男主角達西最初斷定,貝內特家有那么多不利因素,幾個女兒很難找到有地位的男人,可后來恰恰是他娶了伊麗莎白。而伊麗莎白呢,她曾發(fā)誓決不嫁給達西,可最后還是由她做了達西夫人。再看看那個不可一世的凱瑟琳·德布爾夫人,為了阻止伊麗莎白與她外甥達西攀親,她不辭辛勞,親自出馬,先是跑來威嚇伊麗莎白,繼而跑去訓誡達西,殊不知正是她這次奔走為兩位默默相戀的青年通了信息,促成了他們的美滿結合。更令人啼笑皆非的是,就在這幾位“智者”受到現(xiàn)實嘲弄的同時,書中那位最可笑的“愚人”貝內特太太,最后卻被證明是最正確的。她認為:“有錢的單身漢總要娶位太太,這是一條舉世公認的真理?!边@種荒謬與“真理”的滑稽轉化,盡管超越了一般意義上的是非觀念,但卻體現(xiàn)了作者對生活的深刻思索。
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, "Call me Ishmael," the first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice must be among the most quoted in literature. And certainly what Melville did for whaling Austen does for marriage——tracing the intricacies (not to mention the economics) of 19th-century British mating rituals with a sure hand and an unblinking eye. As usual, Austen trains her sights on a country village and a few families——in this case, the Bennets, the Philips, and the Lucases. Into their midst comes Mr. Bingley, a single man of good fortune, and his friend, Mr. Darcy, who is even richer. Mrs. Bennet, who married above her station, sees their arrival as an opportunity to marry off at least one of her five daughters. Bingley is complaisant and easily charmed by the eldest Bennet girl, Jane; Darcy, however, is harder to please. Put off by Mrs. Bennet's vulgarity and the untoward behavior of the three younger daughters, he is unable to see the true worth of the older girls, Jane and Elizabeth. His excessive pride offends Lizzy, who is more than willing to believe the worst that other people have to say of him; when George Wickham, a soldier stationed in the village, does indeed have a discreditable tale to tell, his words fall on fertile ground. Having set up the central misunderstanding of the novel, Austen then brings in her cast of fascinating secondary characters: Mr. Collins, the sycophantic clergyman who aspires to Lizzy's hand but settles for her best friend, Charlotte, instead; Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr. Darcy's insufferably snobbish aunt; and the Gardiners, Jane and Elizabeth's low-born but noble-hearted aunt and uncle. Some of Austen's best comedy comes from mixing and matching these representatives of different classes and economic strata, demonstrating the hypocrisy at the heart of so many social interactions. And though the novel is rife with romantic misunderstandings, rejected proposals, disastrous elopements, and a requisite happy ending for those who deserve one, Austen never gets so carried away with the romance that she loses sight of the hard economic realities of 19th-century matrimonial maneuvering. Good marriages for penniless girls such as the Bennets are hard to come by, and even Lizzy, who comes to sincerely value Mr. Darcy, remarks when asked when she first began to love him: "It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley." She may be joking, but there's more than a little truth to her sentiment, as well. Jane Austen considered Elizabeth Bennet "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print". Readers of Pride and Prejudice would be hard-pressed to disagree. ——Alix Wilber 點擊鏈接進入中文版: 傲慢與偏見(展開)