Eye of the beholder: Physical beauty in the novels of Jane Austen.

摘要

The eighteenth-century novel traditionally features heroines and heroes who are beautiful and handsome. In fact, they are usually the most physically attractive characters in the novel. Austen recognizes and satirizes this prejudice for beauty in her Juvenilia. In her mature works she leaves overt sarcasm behind. However, by creating male and female characters who span the range of attractiveness, Austen diverges from established literary norms.;This dissertation draws on theories of beauty from the Greeks, eighteenth-century thinkers, and current historical, evolutionary, and feminist theorists to analyze the role of physical beauty in Austen's novels. Several facets of beauty's relation to characterization are explored: Beauty and Virtue (the human tendency to link the beautiful with the good); Sisters, Brothers, and Beauty (the role of beauty within families); Beauty and Female Competition (the marriage mart and how competition based on beauty affects women); Beauty and Male Competition (the different aspects of male attractiveness and how these attributes shape male competition and dominance hierarchies); and Beauty and Aging (the effects of eighteenth-century ideas about aging and beauty on both women and men).;An exploration of physical beauty in Austen's works reveals that, although she is influenced by both literary and social tradition, her Christian worldview also influences her presentation of physical beauty. She appreciates beauty but assigns no moral value to it. Her characters are not all beautiful; the beautiful are not all virtuous; and all are equally capable of good and evil. Thus, Austen encourages readers to judge characters by what they can control, their behavior, not by what they cannot control, their physical appearance. By focusing on the beholder of beauty and by emphasizing personal integrity without denigrating physical beauty, Austen broadens her depictions of beauty to include goodness; and she makes virtue, rather than physical beauty, the defining trait of her admirable characters.