A Study On The Similarities Between Maggie In The Mill On The Floss And Yao Mulan In Moment In Peking From Ethical Perspectives

The Mill on the Floss and Moment in Peking are two pieces of representative works of the twofamous writers—George Eliot, the brilliant English Critical Realist of the19thcentury, and LinYutang, the great Chinese novelist, essayist, philosopher, philologist and lexicographer. Theirworks have influenced the literary world a lot and would last forever. The Mill on the Flossdescribes the ups and downs of the heroine Maggie’s whole life. In her short life time, herpsychology and ideology change a lot in several aspects after experiencing her family’smisfortune. Researchers both abroad and at home have studied the novel from various aspectsand have proposed a large number of valuable ideas for the future studies. Moment in Pekingtells the protagonist Yao Mulan’s sagacious life. Lin Yutang once says that if he were a woman,he would always be Mulan. In his eyes, Mulan has all the qualities that a lady should own, suchas gracefulness, kindness and talent. The novel helps westerners better understand Chineseculture and the life at that time.A large number of people have studied the two famous works before. Among all the studies onthe two novels, few writers compare the two heroines from any similar perspective with thispaper. Until now, there are still many writers who interpret The Mill on the Floss from theperspectives of analyzing the reason leading to Maggie’s tragic life, taking Maggie as theauthor’s shadow or analyzing the society in which she lives. Most studies on Moment in Pekingconcern more about Daoism’s influences on Mulan in different aspects. Therefore, guided byEthics Theory and Comparative Literature Theory and by adopting the qualitative method, thepaper aims to discuss the similarities in Maggie and Mulan from ethical perspectives. It makesan analysis of the two characters’ different attitudes from the same ethical perspectives in order to find out the similarities between the characters, and then explores the causes for thosesimilarities. And finally, the author concludes that Maggie and Mulan have the similarities inself-discovery, protest and compromise.