Abstract

Jane Eyre is a novel written by English writer Charlotte Bronte on the basis of her own experiences. This work tells a story of an orphaned English lady who continually pursues freedom, dignity and independence in all kinds of hardships to gain eternal happiness, which creates the first female character having the courage to fight for freedom and equality in the English literature history. With the female consciousness embodied in it, Jane Eyre has become an essential work in the bibliography of classic reading for female college students. However, under the totally different cultural and social background, how well can female college students understand Jane’ s female consciousness? And what are the differences between their female consciousness? Our former researchers, both domestic and oversea, all have respectively touched on Jane’ s and female college students’ female consciousness, but few have made an in-depth research on the differences of the two. Standing on the shoulders of our former giants, through text analysis and questionnaire survey, this thesis is going to analyze the female consciousness’ differences between Jane and female college students from two aspects— the attitudes towards women pursuing beauty, the attitudes towards love and marriage. The comparison can help to understand the female consciousness of Jane better and have some inspiration for classical reading.

Keywords: Jane Eyre; female college students; female consciousness; differences

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1. Introduction-1

1.1 Background Information-1

1.2Literature review-1

1.2.1 Studies on Jane’ s female consciousness at home and abroad-1

1.2.1.1 Positive attitude towards Jane’ s female consciousness-1

1.2.1.2 Critical thinking on Jane’ s female consciousness-3

1.2.3 Studies on female college students’ female consciousness-4

1.2.3.1 The lack of female college students’ female consciousness-4

1.3 Research problem-5

2. The research procedure and data collection-6

2.1 Literature research method-6

2.2 Questionnaire survey-6

2.2.1 Questionnaire sampling-6

2.2.2 Questionnaire design-6

3. Female consciousness’ differences between Jane and female college students-7

3.1. Different views on women pursuing beauty-7

3.1.1. Jane’ s views on women pursuing beauty-7

3.1.2. Female student’ s views on women pursuing beauty-8

3.2. Different views on love and marriage-9

3.2.1 Jane’ s views on love and marriage-9

3.2.2 Female student’ s views on love and marriage-10

3.3 The summary-11

3.4 Implications for classical reading-13

3.4.1  Take social background into consideration while reading-13

3.4.2  self-reflection after reading-14

4. Conclusion-15

Reference-16

Appendix-17