As we all know, one of the four great Chinese masterpieces "Dream of the Red Chamber" and the British masterpiece "Jane Eyre" are two internationally renowned literary masterpieces, while being highly respected by Chinese and Western literature lovers, its two heroines Lin Daiyu and Jane Eyre are also deeply loved and pitied by readers, Lin Daiyu is the most aura of female images in world literature, and the enterprising Jane Eyre is an outstanding female artistic image representative of the pursuit of "women's rights", and their "female self-awakening consciousness" about love and marriage is also widely circulated all over the world.
Both novels are based on the heroine's pursuit of twists and turns of love, and the two have similar experiences, but write different endings: the sentimental sister Lin is deterred by the halfway of the battle and is separated from her beloved, and the strong and tenacious Jane Eyre finally leads to a happy marriage with her lover because of her courage to forge ahead. So what kind of sparks will be created when the "sister of the worldly fairy Shulin who shines on the water and the weak willows and supports the wind" in the east and the "Jane Eyre, the flower of England who laughs at the wind and rain on the wasteland" in the West, will spark? At the same time, this will also be a very exciting blend and discussion of Chinese and Western cultures on the road of women's pursuit of "women's rights" to a certain extent.
▲87 version of "Dream of Red Mansions"
Now let's try to analyze the similarities and differences in their attitudes towards love and marriage based on the personalities of the two protagonists, their outlook on love, social background and other aspects.
Lin Daiyu attached to the shadow of her grandmother in Jiafu to learn piano, chess, poetry and painting with her cousins, she learned to be careful and careful in order to survive in Jiafu, where the environment was severe and snobbish, and she suffered from "three hundred and sixty days a year, and the wind and frost and swords were strictly pressing". In the days when they had no guesses with Jia Baoyu, they slowly developed from common ideals and aspirations to sincere love, and finally ended up in tears due to layers of resistance to Jia Baoyu and Xue Baochai's wedding night. Due to her fragile personality and realistic social background, the flower of life has been sold before it can bloom. On the other hand, Jane Eyre, although she came from a humble background and was mediocre in appearance, did not feel inferior because of this, Jane Eyre was fostered in the house of her aunt, who was very disgusted with her, and her cousin bullied her from time to time. Ten years later, Jane Eyre, who couldn't bear it anymore, finally resisted under the shocked eyes of her aunt's family. She and Rochester, the male owner of Thornfield Manor, are deeply attracted to each other, and even though their social identities are very different, she still bravely pursues it, and ushers in a tortuous but ultimately consummate love.
Lin Daiyu is weak and inferior, while Jane Eyre is firm and resolute, and they show themselves vividly in the face of their respective rivals: when facing Xue Baochai, Lin Daiyu always feels inferior because she has no parents, while Jane Eyre is neither humble nor arrogant in the face of her beautiful and rich rival Miss Ingram, and in her opinion, all people are equal. Daiyu, who is shy and reserved in the expression of love, does not directly confide in you and me, but always makes a childlike gesture to test Baoyu's sincerity, for example: when she inadvertently said that Baoyu is like a "fisherman" and herself is like a "fisherwoman", she immediately regrets it. Jane Eyre did not abandon her pursuit of happiness because of her position as a governess, and she fell in love with Rochester not because of his wealth, but because he could be honest with her as an equal. However, when it is learned on the wedding day that Rochester has a wife, the "madwoman in the attic", she resolutely leaves despite the bitter pleas of her sweetheart, even though she is in great pain, which is the most valuable thing about it. It wasn't until Rochester's wife burned herself to death and Rochester became bankrupt and disabled that Jane Eyre got close to her lover again and never gave up.
On the road of bravely pursuing love, both of them are restricted to varying degrees by factors such as their own factors, surrounding environment, social background, etc.
First of all, it is manifested in her own factors, Lin Daiyu is frail and sick, has no financial support, has no one to decide her marriage, and is suspicious and not independent. After Lin Daiyu entered Jiafu, she was the same as her cousins Yingchun, Tanchun, and Xichun, with the love of her grandmother, the flattery of her cousin-in-law Wang Xifeng, the care of the sisters and the love of Baoyu, everything seemed beautiful, but after all, she was a relative separated by a layer, and no one was in charge of marriage, so she could only weep and hoe the funeral flowers. Jane Eyre's strong will and strong personality make a brave resistance, and she meets her friend Helen and her mentor, Miss Turnpole, at the Harsh but still warm Loward Charity School. When the kind-hearted Helen was punished for wearing a sign with the word "Sloppy" written on it, Jane Eyre bravely tore off the sign and threw it into the fire.
▲British movie "Jane Eyre"
In the surrounding environment, Lin Daiyu has the jealousy of Aunt Zhao's concubine, and Xue Baochai's "golden and jade good fate". Because Lin Daiyu is the beloved of Baoyu, the future male owner of Jiafu, Aunt Zhao has always been jealous of Bao Dai and the others, and Xue Baochai, a popular rival in Jiafu, also makes him worried all the time, so there is a sharp contrast in the twenty-seventh episode of "Dicuiting Yang Concubine plays colorful butterflies, buries incense mounds and flies and cries red". Yahuan Zijuan also used the sentence "bullying by others" to point out that the sleek and sophisticated Baochai is not the real "Golden Ranchi". Jane Eyre was very financially independent, and even though she agreed to Rochester's marriage proposal, she insisted on being Adele's governess to support herself.
The most profound impact is the constraints of the social context. Lin Daiyu lived in the late 18th century in the Qing Dynasty, where the feudal hierarchy was strict, although her awareness of female equality had awakened, but in view of the environment of "a woman's lack of talent is virtue", it was difficult for Miss Lin to break through the feudal social etiquette of "matching the family" as the concept of marriage, which became her inescapable weakness on the road of resistance. Although she resisted, she couldn't escape the shackles of feudal etiquette after all, so she could only stop the battle in the middle of the battle. However, even if it ends in the tragedy of the mirror flowers and the moon withering, Lin Daiyu has a much stronger sense of resistance than the average aristocratic woman of the same era, which is really commendable and worthy of praise and praise. Jane Eyre was in the Victorian era of Britain in the middle of the 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution was in full swing, although women still could not achieve complete equality in politics, economy, and personality, but they had a certain degree of autonomy in marriage, Jane Eyre could still support herself by being a governess. Jane Eyre's strong personality and sanity, and the ability to be financially independent and not dependent on others made her rebellion inevitable to succeed, so in the end, when the only love bond between the two - the death of Rochester's crazy wife, Jane Eyre could pursue a happy marriage and finally become a family after going through hardships.
▲Author Jiang Fang: Post-80s, member of Guangdong Overseas Chinese Writers Federation, member of Shenzhen Futian District Writers Association. His works have been scattered in "Shenzhen Evening News", "Yantian Literature and Art", "Cultural World" and "Bao'an Daily", and his work "The Wind Comes from the Prairie" won the Excellence Award of the 5th "Thousand Miles of Road, Ten Thousand Books, Civilized People" National Essay Contest in Futian District, Shenzhen in 2018.
The very different personalities and social backgrounds and national cultures make Lin Daiyu in this side of the box "burn the manuscript and break the infatuation" and return to hatred, and Jane Eyre in the other side of the room will eventually become a family. When Lin Daiyu, who is very delicate and feminine in the East, and Jane Eyre who is tough in England are compared, these two beautiful women with different personalities echo each other in the distance to tell the helpless beauty, sorrow and pain of thousands of women in Eastern and Western civilizations, and complement each other to interpret the beauty of women's various styles: delicate or tenacious, innocent or bright.
Rousseau, a famous French Enlightenment thinker, emphasized that "human beings are born free and equal, and their natural human rights cannot be denied". It is still difficult for us to fully obtain human rights today, let alone the weak women of two centuries ago, who have completely released the "women's rights" that have been suppressed by masculinism for thousands of years, and it is clear that there is a long way to go. On the road of the development of "feminism", whether it is Lin Daiyu in the East or Jane Eyre in the West, both of them have put forward the germ of feminism and developed it to varying degrees, thus profoundly influencing the development of feminism and women's emancipation in later generations. If Lin Daiyu is the germ of feminism, then Jane Eyre is its development, such as Ibsen's "A Doll's House" and Lu Xun's "After Nala Ran Away", both of which are the embodiment of the profound social significance of feminism.
In short, both Lin Daiyu and Jane Eyre have received great attention around the world for their successful classic artistic images, and the two classic female literary images of Lin Daiyu and Jane Eyre will always shine with the brilliance of precious and eternal "feminism".
Author: Jiang Fang, a member of the Guangdong Overseas Chinese Writers Federation and a member of the Shenzhen Futian District Writers Association
Editor-in-Chief: Liu Disheng
Deputy Editor-in-Chief: Zhong Minyi
Editor-in-Chief Assistant/Typesetting: Zhao Yanghuan
Manuscripts are welcome to be sent to [email protected]
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