pride and prejudice主人公的特点

Characters in Pride and Prejudice
Mr. Bennet — An English gentleman with an estate in Hertfordshire. He is married with five daughters, a circumstance injurious to his family. The terms of Mr. Bennet's inheritance require a male heir. Because he has no son, upon his death, his property must go to his closest male relative, Mr. Collins, a clergyman who provides him with much amusement. Mr. Bennet, a gentle if eccentric man, is very close to his two eldest daughters, Jane and particularly Elizabeth. However, he has a poor opinion of the intelligence and sensibility of his wife and three youngest daughters, frequently declaring them "silly" and visiting them with insulting remarks as well as gentle teasing.
Mrs. Bennet — The querulous wife of Mr. Bennet. Her main concern in life is seeing her daughters married well. She angles for her new neighbour, Mr. Bingley, as a match for one of them. She also hopes for a match between one of her girls and Mr. Collins himself.
Jane Bennet — The eldest of the Bennets' five daughters and the one considered the most beautiful. She has a reserved personality and tends to hide her feelings. She is incapable of suspecting the worst of people, preferring to see only the good.
Elizabeth Bennet — The 20-year-old second sister, and the protagonist of the story. She is her father's favorite and inherits his intelligence and wit. She is generally regarded as one of the most enduring and popular female protagonists in English literature.
Mary Bennet — The third sister, bookish and shy. Mortified by unfavorable comparisons between her appearance and that of her beautiful sisters, she disdains their frivolous interests and seeks to impress others instead with her scholarly yet ill-timed aphorisms and limited musical abilities.
Catherine "Kitty" Bennet — The fourth sister, 17 years old, generally follows the lead of her younger sister, Lydia.
Lydia Bennet — The youngest sister at 15 years of age. She is extremely flirtatious, naive, headstrong and reckless.
William Collins — A clergyman and cousin of Mr. Bennet. Mr. Collins, as the closest male relative, stands to inherit the Bennet estate. When not pompously full of himself, Collins is a narrow-minded sycophant, excessively devoted to his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. He is always keen to show his admiration and gratitude.
Charlotte Lucas — Elizabeth's close friend and daughter of a neighbouring landowner. She is willing to put up with Mr. Collins' flaws in return for a home and security.
Fitzwilliam Darcy — Mr. Bingley's close friend, an intelligent, wealthy and reserved man, who often appears haughty or proud to strangers. He is wary of his friend Bingley's romantic entanglements with unsuitable women.
Georgiana Darcy — Much younger sister of Mr. Darcy. The age difference is so great that he is more of a father figure than a brother. Since their parents' death, she has been under the joint guardianship of Darcy and their cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam. She became infatuated with George Wickham and was persuaded by him to elope. Fortunately, she felt it was her duty to inform her brother and he quickly put a stop to this ill-advised plan.
Charles Bingley — An outgoing, wealthy young man who leases property near the Bennets' estate.
Louisa Hurst and Caroline Bingley — Mr. Bingley's sisters, who look down upon the Bennets and their society.
George Wickham — A dashing, handsome young soldier who attracts the attention of Elizabeth Bennet. His father was the manager of the Darcy estate, so he grew up with Mr. Darcy and his sister. Though a favorite of Darcy's now-deceased father, there is bitter enmity between him and Darcy, due to his attempt to elope with Georgiana Darcy for her substantial inheritance.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh — Aunt of Mr. Darcy and patroness of Mr. Collins. A proud and domineering woman, she had planned for the marriage of Mr. Darcy and her daughter since they were infants.
Anne de Bourgh — Daughter of Lady Catherine and presumed betrothed of her cousin Mr. Darcy, suffers from some infirmity. A gently humorous running joke has the proud mother describing extraordinary talents her daughter would have possessed had she applied herself.
Colonel Fitzwilliam — Another nephew of Lady Catherine and friend and cousin of Mr. Darcy. He is attracted to Elizabeth Bennet, but is not wealthy enough to consider her seriously as a spouse.
Mrs. Philips — Sister of Mrs. Bennet
Edward Gardiner — Sensible brother of Mrs. Bennet and Mrs. Philips.
Mrs. Gardiner — Wife of Mr. Gardiner. She is the favorite aunt of Jane and Elizabeth Bennet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_and_Prejudice
Analysis of Major Characters
Elizabeth Bennet
The second daughter in the Bennet family, and the most intelligent and quick-witted, Elizabeth is the protagonist of Pride and Prejudice and one of the most well-known female characters in English literature. Her admirable qualities are numerous—she is lovely, clever, and, in a novel defined by dialogue, she converses as brilliantly as anyone. Her honesty, virtue, and lively wit enable her to rise above the nonsense and bad behavior that pervade her class-bound and often spiteful society. Nevertheless, her sharp tongue and tendency to make hasty judgments often lead her astray; Pride and Prejudice is essentially the story of how she (and her true love, Darcy) overcome all obstacles—including their own personal failings—to find romantic happiness. Elizabeth must not only cope with a hopeless mother, a distant father, two badly behaved younger siblings, and several snobbish, antagonizing females, she must also overcome her own mistaken impressions of Darcy, which initially lead her to reject his proposals of marriage. Her charms are sufficient to keep him interested, fortunately, while she navigates familial and social turmoil. As she gradually comes to recognize the nobility of Darcy’s character, she realizes the error of her initial prejudice against him.
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/pride/canalysis.html
Analysis of Major Characters
Jane Eyre
The development of Jane Eyre’s character is central to the novel. From the beginning, Jane possesses a sense of her self-worth and dignity, a commitment to justice and principle, a trust in God, and a passionate disposition. Her integrity is continually tested over the course of the novel, and Jane must learn to balance the frequently conflicting aspects of herself so as to find contentment.
An orphan since early childhood, Jane feels exiled and ostracized at the beginning of the novel, and the cruel treatment she receives from her Aunt Reed and her cousins only exacerbates her feeling of alienation. Afraid that she will never find a true sense of home or community, Jane feels the need to belong somewhere, to find “kin,” or at least “kindred spirits.” This desire tempers her equally intense need for autonomy and freedom.
In her search for freedom, Jane also struggles with the question of what type of freedom she wants. While Rochester initially offers Jane a chance to liberate her passions, Jane comes to realize that such freedom could also mean enslavement—by living as Rochester’s mistress, she would be sacrificing her dignity and integrity for the sake of her feelings. St. John Rivers offers Jane another kind of freedom: the freedom to act unreservedly on her principles. He opens to Jane the possibility of exercising her talents fully by working and living with him in India. Jane eventually realizes, though, that this freedom would also constitute a form of imprisonment, because she would be forced to keep her true feelings and her true passions always in check.
Charlotte Brontë may have created the character of Jane Eyre as a means of coming to terms with elements of her own life. Much evidence suggests that Brontë, too, struggled to find a balance between love and freedom and to find others who understood her. At many points in the book, Jane voices the author’s then-radical opinions on religion, social class, and gender.
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/janeeyre/canalysis.html
Analysis of Major Characters
Tess Durbeyfield
Intelligent, strikingly attractive, and distinguished by her deep moral sensitivity and passionate intensity, Tess is indisputably the central character of the novel that bears her name. But she is also more than a distinctive individual: Hardy makes her into somewhat of a mythic heroine. Her name, formally Theresa, recalls St. Teresa of Avila, another martyr whose vision of a higher reality cost her her life. Other characters often refer to Tess in mythical terms, as when Angel calls her a “Daughter of Nature” in Chapter XVIII, or refers to her by the Greek mythological names “Artemis” and “Demeter” in Chapter XX. The narrator himself sometimes describes Tess as more than an individual woman, but as something closer to a mythical incarnation of womanhood. In Chapter XIV, he says that her eyes are “neither black nor blue nor grey nor violet; rather all these shades together,” like “an almost standard woman.” Tess’s story may thus be a “standard” story, representing a deeper and larger experience than that of a single individual.
In part, Tess represents the changing role of the agricultural workers in England in the late nineteenth century. Possessing an education that her unschooled parents lack, since she has passed the Sixth Standard of the National Schools, Tess does not quite fit into the folk culture of her predecessors, but financial constraints keep her from rising to a higher station in life. She belongs in that higher world, however, as we discover on the first page of the novel with the news that the Durbeyfields are the surviving members of the noble and ancient family of the d’Urbervilles. There is aristocracy in Tess’s blood, visible in her graceful beauty—yet she is forced to work as a farmhand and milkmaid. When she tries to express her joy by singing lower-class folk ballads at the beginning of the third part of the novel, they do not satisfy her—she seems not quite comfortable with those popular songs. But, on the other hand, her diction, while more polished than her mother’s, is not quite up to the level of Alec’s or Angel’s. She is in between, both socially and culturally. Thus, Tess is a symbol of unclear and unstable notions of class in nineteenth-century Britain, where old family lines retained their earlier glamour, but where cold economic realities made sheer wealth more important than inner nobility.
Beyond her social symbolism, Tess represents fallen humanity in a religious sense, as the frequent biblical allusions in the novel remind us. Just as Tess’s clan was once glorious and powerful but is now sadly diminished, so too did the early glory of the first humans, Adam and Eve, fade with their expulsion from Eden, making humans sad shadows of what they once were. Tess thus represents what is known in Christian theology as original sin, the degraded state in which all humans live, even when—like Tess herself after killing Prince or succumbing to Alec—they are not wholly or directly responsible for the sins for which they are punished. This torment represents the most universal side of Tess: she is the myth of the human who suffers for crimes that are not her own and lives a life more degraded than she deserves.
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/tess/canalysis.html