留学生essay范文：A Feminism Reading of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest

www.ukthesis.org

08-30, 2013

Acknowledgments

There are so many people whom I wish to extend my gratitude to during my composition of the thesis and the past four years of study in the university.

I would first express my appreciation to Prof. , my supervisor, whose guidance and insightful criticism have been greatly helpful in the writing of the thesis. I have been impressed and inspired by her patience and encouragement, without which this present study would not have been what it is.

My thanks also go to the School of Foreign Studies, Hunan University of Science and Technology, where I had great opportunities to attend classes and improve myself in knowledge as well as my character formation.

My gratitude will also extend to my classmates and friends who have helped me all along the past four years and who have given my good advice in my study.

Last but not the least, I’d like to express my thanks to my parents. Their love and concern for me gives me endless strength and courage on the way to graduation.

Abstract

Oscar Wilde, remarkable playwright, poet, and essayist,contributed a lot especially in the drama,was aestheticism spokesman,who has advocated the "art for art's sake" movement at the end of the nineteenth century in England and has influenced the western literary of a whole century.The Victorian Age is the primary of women's liberation movement in England.At that time,with the humanism rising and human rights being respected,subject consciousness is increasing.The women are not satisfied with under man's wing.They start to find access to self-development in pursuing freedom and marriage.Tradition women gradually get rid of obedience and tolerance and become self-confident and independent.The Importance of Being Earnest is the representative play of Oscar Wilde.As a treasure in literature,this play has won the favor of people and keep enduring attraction.This thesis discusses some of the female characters in The Importance of Being Earnest on the view of Feminism and .try to show how the Feminism enlightens the works and take interest in some more feminist study on Oscar Wilde's works

Key Words: Oscar Wilde;The Importance of Being Earnest;feminism; self-consciousness

中文摘要

奥斯卡•王尔德是19世纪末英国唯美主义的著名代表作家。在诗歌、议dissertation、小说等方面都有文学才能，而最大的贡献是在戏剧方面。他“为艺术而艺术”的主张影响了当时整个欧洲文学。19世纪维多利亚时期是女性解放在英国的初期，当时，人文主义精神兴起，个体权利受到尊重，主体意识日益觉醒，女性逐渐不再满足于长期在男性的保护下，女性在生活、自由和对幸福的追求上开始寻求自我发展的途径。一向被赞扬的传统女性逐渐从顺从和默默忍受走向自信和独立发展。《认真的重要性》是王尔德的代表作，也是世界戏剧的瑰宝，一直为人们所喜爱，至今魅力依然。本文通过分析《认真的重要性》中的女性形象，发掘女性主义在其作品中的体现，（体现在哪？）借此引发从女性主义角度对王尔德作品的进一步思考。#p#分页标题#e#

需更简洁，文章完了再摘要

关键词：奥斯卡•王尔德；《认真的重要性》；女性主义；自我意识

Contents

Acknowledgments …………………………………………………………………...… i

Abstract ………………………….……..………………………………………….… ii

中文摘要 ………...…………………………………….……………………..……. iii

Introduction …………………………………………………………………………..…1

1. A Brief View of Oscar Wilde's Life and His Works

Oscar Wilde and his The Importance of Being Earnest…..…………………………2

1.1 Oscar Wilde and His Literary Achievements…………………………………...3

1.2 A Brief Introduction to The Importance of Being Earnest ……………………3

1.3 Feminism in The Importance of Being Earnest ……………………3

II. Female Characters in The Importance of Being Earnest…………………………4

2.1 Personality of Female Character…………………………………………………5

2.1.1 Character Traits of Gwendolen……………………………………………11 #p#分页标题#e#

2.1.2 Character Traits of Cecily…………………………………………………11

2.2 Elements that Shape of Female Character's Personality…………………………5

2.2.1 Family Environment ………………..….……..….……..….……..….……11

2.2.2 External Environment……………………………….…………..….……..12

III. Self-consciousness…………………………………………………………………11

3.1 Self-consciousness in The Importance of Being Earnest ………………………11

3.2 Self-consciousness of the Role of Art………………………………………12

Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………...13

Bibliography ……………. ……………………….…………………………………… 19#p#分页标题#e#

坦白说，你还得下苦功才行。你应该把女性主义的观点体现在文章的主体部分。从目前的大纲看，你就讨论了一点，即女主人公的自我意识，但应该不止如此吧。所以你应该找出反映女性观点的关键词作为主体章节的标题，以便使文章更有逻辑。

Introduction

Although listening comprehension plays so importent a part in English study, however listening teaching has always been overlooked. In China, only when listening test came into College Entrance Examination did listening teaching began. Prior to this time, English teaching focused on reading and writing skills, while listening classes remained insignificant. Due to insufficient attention which had paid to this area, listening teaching suffered a lot of drawbacks. Students became victim of poor listening education. This has to be changed in order to meet the need of international communication.

The present study attempts to find some solutions to help teachers and students to improving the listening comprehension. In order to achieve the aim, we need to, first of all, investigate the existing problems. In other words, we need to find out the barriers that hinder students in their understanding what they are listening to and analyze the true nature of listening comprehension. Then we are able to offer helpful suggestions.

王尔德创造的女性角色大多独立坚强，聪明，浪漫执着。与维多利亚时期的其他大师相比，更加反叛，思想更加自由，自我意识更强。本文通过分析这部作品的女性形象，着力于发掘王尔德的女性主义在作品中的体现，希望能借此引发从女性主义角度对王尔德的进一步思考。

The thesis consists of three chapters.

After the Introduction, Chapter One . Chapter Two is a . Chapter Three . Then we come to the last part, Conclusion.

dissertation的第一部分介绍了作者和作品。第二部分从女性主义角度具体分析了格温多琳和塞西莉的女性特征，第三部分通过作品分析女性主义对女性的自我意识的觉醒以及对艺术的推动作用。

A Brief View of Oscar Wilde's Life and His Works

Listening comprehension is a kind of input process of a language. Before going to problems and solutions to listening comprehension education in senior high schools in China, importance and essence of listening comprehension are discussed first.

1.1 Oscar Wilde and His Literary Achievements

Researches performed in recent years proved listening comprehension more and more vital to English study. According to statistics, every adult spends approximately 40 to 50 percent of their daytime listening, while 20 to 30 percent speaking, and 11 to 16 percent reading, finally, only 9 percent writing (Rivers, 2006). From this, we can see that listening is the most prominent ability when absorbing knowledge. Gary (2004) pointed out that listening had to come first in foreign-language teaching. There are four advantages of listening: recognition, efficiency, emotion and practicality. Merit in recognition refers to listening as a natural approach to absorb foreign language knowledge. And merit in efficiency means that focusing on improving listening study could effectively improve efficiency in foreign language study, because what students hear is the most natural, accurate and authentic language material. That means, students emphasize memorizing and storing correct language knowledge, rather than wasting time practicing oral English among students with limited speaking ability. Advantage in emotion also refers to psychological advantage. To emphasize speaking more than listening would undoubtedly pose great potential psychological stress, because students have no idea whether the way they speak are accurate and authentic. To the contrary, rank listening in the first place will reduce students’ pressure, so that students are more relaxed and give more practice opportunities to listening. Lastly, the advantage in practicality. Language input has to come to first especially for those learners. Listening comprehension give orientations structuring foreign language acquisition theory and foreign language pedagogical approaches.#p#分页标题#e#

奥斯卡•王尔德（1854~1900)历来被公认是维多利亚时期唯美主义的典型代表，他的五部剧作《温德米尔夫人的扇子》（1982）、《莎乐美》（1983）、《一个无关紧要的女人》（1983）.、《理想丈夫》（1895）以及《认真的重要性》（1895）获得了极大成功，把英国戏剧复兴推向了一个高潮。

1.2 A Brief Introduction to The Importance of Being Earnest

What is the process of listening comprehension and what happened in the process? Mary Underwood (1990: 16) thinks it can be divided into three steps:

The first stage: phonetic signal come into a sense pool(often known as memory pool) and forming meaningful units(words or phrases) according to listener’s own knowledge.

The second stage: processing information in a short time, our brain checks these words and phrases by comparing to long-term memory in order to retrieve the meaning of these words and phrases. Once brain finished the retrieving, words and phrases will be forgotten.

The third stage: once a listener understand the meaning of the sentence by hearing, he or she will store the meaning of the sentence to long-term memory. Listener seems to copied the information and stored on mind in a short form.

There are two fathers in the sentence, one of them relates to godfather, and the other father means the real father. If a student fails to realize the particular father in the church, the student will confused. He or she may wonder if the sentence is wrong, or which father is the real father. However, if the student knows the godfather, and considering the place where this conversation take place, he could understand the sentence without any trouble. From this example, we can see that how crucial background knowledge is when comes to listening comprehension.

1.1.1 Specialized Training in Distinguishing Pronunciation

Teachers have to impart stress, rhythm, and tone in order to build a corresponding pattern on mind. At the same time, to improve students’ pronunciation and intonation in order to make them getting used to authentic way of English speaking, including practice like distinguishing single phoneme, distinguishing familiar pronunciation(陈晓湘2003:58). Through these training, students are more familiar with pronunciation of each word, so their sensitivities to familiar and unfamiliar words will greatly enhance

1.3 Feminism inThe Importance of Being Earnest

Thematic Analysis从女性主义以及维多利亚时期分析小说的主题,

1 Feminism in the Importance of Being Earnest#p#分页标题#e#

2 Feminism in Oscar Wilder’s Time

美国女权主义批评家伊莱恩•肖瓦尔特在其dissertation《走向女权主义诗学》中认为，女权主义文学批评大致可以分为两类：第一类涉及的是解读男性作家创造的文学作品中的女性形象，即“在衙门的文学中的她们是什么样的”；第二类关涉到解读作为作者的妇女所创作的文学的历史、主题、类型和结构，即“她们的文学是什么样的”。

作为男性的王尔德在《认真的重要性》中塑造的女性形象是不受世俗约束，争取恋爱的女性。女主角格温多林年轻貌美，天真浪漫。当他爱上了杰克后，便抛开世俗的观念，强烈的爱着这个她心目中的“王子”，并不考虑对方的身份地位能否给自己带来荣华富贵。在格温多林心里，杰克和自己一样热烈而单纯的爱着对方。

Female Character in The Importance of Being Earnest

2.1 Personality of Female Character

2.1.1 Character Traits of Gwendolen

2.1.2 Character Traits of Cecily

Speaking English is entirely different from speaking our mother tongue. Different vocal organs are used in English comparing to Chinese. Repetitive imitating pronunciation becomes paramount. In learning process, teachers are responsible to give students feedbacks about whether students are pronouncing correctly when students are repeating. Only in this way, could students have solid memory about the voice they are pronouncing. The more authentic the students can do to imitate, the more likely the improvement in listening comprehension could they make (Ridgway 1990:34).

2.2 Elements that Shape of Female Character's Personality

What is the process of listening comprehension and what happened in the process? Mary Underwood (1990: 16) thinks it can be divided into three steps:

The first stage: phonetic signal come into a sense pool(often known as memory pool) and forming meaningful units(words or phrases) according to listener’s own knowledge.

These three processes are conducted in several seconds. However a foreign-language study student may not catch up with the speed, therefore, fail to give relative meaning on his or her mind.

According to the statement above, we can see that a successful listener has to make connections between sounds and meaning on mind and to correctly distinguish different sounds. Only when brain can tell the sounds and corresponding meaning can make a successful listening comprehension. Otherwise, it can not perform smoothly. And this requires listener to make strong connection between sounds on mind and the meaning of a word.#p#分页标题#e#

从女性主义角度对作品进行分析，

Personality of Female Character 女主角的性格特征, 格温多林勇敢而聪明,但她不能自主婚姻;赛西莉在日记里主宰爱情,可是在现实中无能为力.她们面对爱情和婚姻时必须得服从父母和监护人的意志。布拉克尼尔伯爵夫人是个复杂的贵妇，反映老一辈

2.1 Character Traits of Gwendolen

2.2 Character Traits of Cecily

2.3 Character Traits of Lady Bracknell

Elements that Shape of Female Character’s Personality从家庭和外部环境影响和决定女主人公性格形成的因素

3.1 Family Environment

3.2 External Environment

王尔德笔下的少女具有强烈的自我发展和自我表现的渴望

Self-consciousnesss

3.1 Self-consciousness in The Importance of Being Earnest

3.2 Self-consciousness of the Role of Art

What is the process of listening comprehension and what happened in the process? Mary Underwood (1990: 16) thinks it can be divided into three steps:

The first stage: phonetic signal come into a sense pool(often known as memory pool) and forming meaningful units(words or phrases) according to listener’s own knowledge.

These three processes are conducted in several seconds. However a foreign-language study student may not catch up with the speed, therefore, fail to give relative meaning on his or her mind.

（1） Joey went to church to pray, and he told father that his father can not be here today.

Conclusion

In the thesis, we have given a careful analysis to the barriers existing in the listening comprehension of the senior high school students, such as speech speed, phoneme barriers, bad listening habits, shortage of background knowledge, psychological obstacles, limitation of vocabulary and of grammar knowledge. The best ways of helping them to improve their listening are such that we train students in the skill of distinguishing pronunciation, imitating speech speed, and that we help students to broaden their horizon of knowledge, and finally help students to obtain good listening habits.#p#分页标题#e#

Listening becomes vital in daily communication and how to make listening comprehension education more effective become paramount. Listening begins with feeling of sounds, after receiving words, phrases and sentences, our brain begins to process the meaning. Therefore, we have to enhance our ability to sense different sounds. Through repetitive listening practice, we are not only able to get used to pronunciations and tones, but also to tell the slight differences in different sounds. A second language unquestionably differ from mother tongue, therefore major impediments in listening comprehension are generated.

从《认真的重要性》中女性主义的分析可以看出，王尔德的作品表现出鲜明的女性观，笔下的女性大都具有一定的个性特征和自由意志。剧本在某种程度上体现了时代女性觉醒的自我意识。王尔德从自己的角度向读者展现了一群不受世俗约束，勇敢追求恋爱权利，寻求通过个人努力实现自我价值的新女性。

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