| The dissertation explores the subtleties and apperception of evil--by characters and readers--in novels by Iris Murdoch, Margaret Atwood, and Alice Walker. Its purpose is to enliven and expand the possibilities of ethical criticism by probing the development of moral consciousness in the novel, through characterization, narrative, and consideration of authorial intention and reader response. It argues for the epistemological value and moral implications of literature: that the close study of character development in fiction, especially in the novel, gives us the imaginative space to explore the connection between the vast and seemingly overwhelming impersonal evils of our time, and the workings of individual consciousness and responsibility by which evils of great proportion may gradually be diminished.; Evil is herein defined by combining the views of Nel Noddings (Women and Evil, 1989), Bernard Lonergan (Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, 1957), and Joseph H. Berke (The Tyranny of Malice, 1988). Noddings emphasizes the harm caused by deliberately neglecting or inflicting pain and helplessness, and denying or avoiding human relationship. Lonergan elucidates the evil inherent in avoiding insight or the full use of intelligence, by individuals and societies. Berke identifies envy as the source of hostile acts against persons, communities, and cultures. These and other views of evil are utilized to explore the significance of malevolent and victimized characters depicted in Murdoch's A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970) and The Message to the Planet (1989), Atwood's Cat's Eye (1989) and The Robber Bride (1993), and Walker's The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970) and Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992). These novels share narrative attributes of caring attention, insightful compassion, and forgiveness that bespeak the opposite of evil. In various perspectives, they imply that the lack of these attributes--the privation from caring attention--is at the root of evil itself. Readers are thus called upon by these narratives to transcend passive objectivity and render caring, intelligent attention to the potentially powerful and healing constituents of moral apperception and responsibility. The work closes with a discussion of various theoretical implications of this interpretation. |
