It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen's novels are about courtship and marriage. But it is a truth almost as universally ig? nored that they are also very much about sex. As a social force, as an embodiment of value systems, as an index of personal maturity, the role of marriage in Jane Austen's work has been ably and extensively examined. But as the consummation of sexual attraction between a man and a woman and as the reconciliation of "maleness" and "femaleness," her conception of marriage has seldom been discussed. One reason for the imbalance of emphasis lies in our preconceptions about her personality. Few critics consciously share Marvin Mudrick's view of a Jane Austen armored in impenetrable wit and muslin against the "personally involving aspects of sex" and the "unknown adult com? mitment of sexual love." But his vision of her as a defensively ironic "genteel spinster" does represent a popular and subtly pervasive stereo? type. The phrases he uses about her?"routed by the sexual question," "fogged in bourgeois morality," opposed to "sexual vitality," and in fa? vor of "frigidity as a standard of sexual conduct"?while inaccurate in themselves, serve to suggest the kinds of presuppositions to which Jane Austen has been subject and which have rendered the sexual aspects of her work less visible than they should be.1 A second reason that the sexual element in Jane Austen's fiction has tended to be ignored lies in her art itself. The coolness and deftness of her surface and the interplay of irony and wit have made her novels seem more purely cerebral than they are and have reinforced the pre? sumptions about her temperament. A merciless satirist of false or excess? ive feeling, she has wrongly been seen as suspicious of all feeling; and her very desire to subsume sex within marriage has somehow made her seem

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“一双美眸”：简奥斯汀对性的处理

简奥斯汀的小说是关于求爱和婚姻的，这是一个普遍公认的事实。但它是一个真理几乎一样普遍 ig？注意到他们也非常关注性。作为一种社会力量，作为价值体系的体现，作为个人成熟度的指标，婚姻在简·奥斯汀的作品中所扮演的角色得到了巧妙而广泛的研究。但作为一男一女的性吸引力的圆满，作为“男”与“女”的调和，她的婚姻观却鲜有讨论。重点不平衡的原因之一在于我们对她的个性的先入为主。很少有评论家有意识地赞同马文·穆德里克的观点，即简·奥斯汀穿着难以捉摸的智慧和薄纱，反对“涉及性的个人方面”和“ 未知成人com？性爱的承诺。”但他将她视为具有防御性讽刺的“文雅老处女”确实代表了一种流行且微妙无处不在的立体？类型。他使用的关于她的短语？“被性问题引导”，“被资产阶级道德蒙蔽了双眼，”反对“性活力”，赞成“性冷淡作为性行为的标准”？虽然本身不​​准确，但有助于暗示简奥斯汀所服从的各种预设，这些预设使性行为变得她作品的某些方面比应有的更不明显。1 简·奥斯汀小说中的性元素往往被忽视的第二个原因在于她的艺术本身。她表面的冷静和灵巧以及讽刺和机智的相互作用使她的小说看起来比它们更纯粹是理智的，并强化了前？关于她的气质的假设。一个无情的虚假或过度的讽刺作家？我的感觉，她被错误地视为怀疑所有的感觉；她非常渴望将性纳入婚姻之中，不知何故使她看起来