This thesis examines four translations and retranslations of novels by British female writers. They are Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, George Eliot’s Silas Marner, and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The translations and retranslations, eight target texts in total, are mapped onto the sociopolitical and sociocultural milieu of China from the late 1920s to 1930s. During the span of time when the eight translations were published, China was undergoing a special period of political turbulence intertwined with literary vibrancy. With the literary field of China segmented into various literary societies or political organizations subscribing to their respective doctrines and principles, Chinese intellectuals including translators from various backgrounds produced literature and translation within the agenda of their respective literary or political societies. The heart of this thesis’s theoretical framework is the role of agents of translation involved the practice of translation production. The interaction amongst the human and nonhuman agents: translators, patrons, intellectuals, literary institutions, publishers and more, are examined in order to identify the translation motivations of the translators. The seven translators covered in the present study are categorized into three distinctive groups: the leftists, the humanists and the commercial translators. A collective analysis of the translators’ behaviour should shed light on the general understanding of the intended social functions of these translated novels written by British female writers published during Republican China.

This thesis argues that a ‘tradition of moral analysis’ between Jane Austen and George Eliot — a common ground which has been identified by critics from F.R. Leavis to Gillian Beer, but never fully explored — can be illuminated by turning to what this thesis calls ‘the reflective tradition’. In the eighteenth century, ideas about reflection provided a new and influential way of thinking about the human mind; about how we come to know ourselves and the world around us through the mind. The belief in the individual to act as his/her own guide through the cultivation of a reflective mind and attentiveness to a reflective voice emerges across a wide range of discourses. This thesis begins with an examination of reflection in the philosophy, children’s literature, novels, poetry, educational tracts and sermons that would have been known to Austen. It then defines Austen’s development of reflective dynamics by looking at her six major novels; finally, it analyzes Middlemarch to define Eliot’s proximity to this aspect of Austen’s art. The thesis documents Eliot’s reading of Austen through the criticism of G. H. Lewes to support a reading of Eliot’s assimilation of an Austenian attention to mental processes in her novels. Reflection is at the heart of moral life and growth for both novelists. This thesis corrects a tendency in Austen’s reception to focus on the mimetic aspect of her art, thereby overlooking the introspective sense of reflection. It offers new insights into Austen’s and Eliot’s work, and it contributes to an understanding of the development of the realist novel and the ethical dimension in the role of the novel reader.