Feminism in Realist Fiction in the East and the West: A Comparative Analysis of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Cao Xueqin’s Dream of the Red Chamber

Abstract

Feminist literary criticism has now become one of the important research directions in the field of literary criticism. Increasingly more scholars are focusing on the works of different eras, and through these works studying the development of feminism in the current era, as well as the attitudes of different writers and cultures towards feminism. Realist fiction, as an important part of literature, deserves to be associated with feminism. In order to study feminism embodied in both Eastern and Western realist novels, this thesis chooses feminism revealed in Pride and Prejudice and Dream of the Red Chamber as its research topics. The two works are compared and analyzed from multiple perspectives through the comparative literature research method. By analyzing two works, this paper summarizes the ways of presentation of feminism in both Eastern and Western realist novels, including the characters in the novels, the plot narratives of the novels, and the attitudes of the authors as well as the social context towards feminism.