Growth And Awakening:The Interpretation Of The Summer Before The Dark From The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

Doris Lessing is a famous contemporary British novelist and she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007.Her writings are featured with subtle feelings and profound thought.Her works often focus on female characters and discuss the topics of mental growth,identity pursuit and self-worth realization of the female.Published in 1973,The Summer Before the Dark was hailed by The New York Times as the best novel since One Hundred Years of Solitude.The Summer Before the Dark is essentially a novel of female self-growth and self-awakening.It mainly tells the summer trip of the heroine Kate,a middle-class British housewife.There are many ethical knots in the novel,so it is possible to analyze the novel from the perspective of ethical literary criticism.The heroine Kate makes different ethical choices and pursues the growth and awakening of her ethical consciousness in the variable ethical environment.It provides ethical enlightenment for modern middle-aged women to realize their own growth and awakening.This thesis attempts to analyze the novel The Summer Before the Dark by using the method of intensive reading and relevant theories of ethical literary criticism.The main part of the thesis analyzes the heroine’s growth and awakening process from four aspects: ethical predicament,disordered ethical identities,different ethical choices,and the growth and awakening of her ethical consciousness.Faced with the ethical predicament,the heroine with disordered ethical identities begins the journey of self-exploration and self-growth.At the end of the summer journey,she realized self-growth and self-awakening in terms of external image and inner mental state.It tells us that we should pay more attention to the growth of middle-aged women,create a harmonious and healthy ethical environment for them,and guide them to make the right ethical choices suitable for their development.Doris Lessing’s concern on the growth of female and her description of complex ethical relationships both reflect her thinking about the growth of middle-aged women in her country.Her focus on the pursuit of self-worth and the spiritual growth of women reflect the enduring charm of her works.