On Moral Voices In Thomas Hardy's Jude The Obscure

In a literary narrative, "voice" (of the narrator and of the individual character) embodies different moral consciousness and judgments of the narrator and the characters. The implied moral themes may be clearly conveyed by means of analyzing and comparing those different moral voices within a literary narrative. Therefore, as far as literary ethical criticism is concerned, it is necessary and important to investigate the moral consciousness and judgments imported through the competing voices from narratorial positions.Jude the Obscure is both Hardy's last and most-controversial novel. For a long time, literary critics inclined to investigate this novel in term of class, gender and sex rather than ethics. However, it is its ambiguity in ethically interpretive themes that claims the most sparkling characteristic of this novel. This thesis attempts to reveal the most important moral theme—morality of love and marriage in Jude through the detailed analysis of the moral voices in this novel.This thesis consists of the following five parts. The Introduction firstly discusses that ethical criticism should focus on ambivalent literary works that seem to wobble around the moral center. Then it surveys two traditional approaches of the study of Jude, that is, one is in term of class; the other in term of gender and sex. Finally, in this part, the major argument of this thesis is put forward: Jude's moral themes can be conveyed in depth by means of investigating the competing voices among the individual characters and the...