A Research Into The Ethical Orientation Of Victorian Sensation Novel

Ethic is the product of interpersonal relationship and ethics is the study of human moral behaviors,while literary ethical criticism is the approach to the literary criticism from the perspective of ethics.The common attention of both literature and ethics to human beings forms the intersection of the two different disciplines and establishes the new mode of interdisciplinary studies for literary ethical criticism.The research into the ethical orientation of the Victorian sensation novel with literary ethical criticism as its perspective aims to,with the moral behaviors and the consequence of the moral characters in face of their benefit in the texts,reflects the individuals’ ethical cognition and choices in their social life,which helps construct a harmonious society with the support of the rule of morals and promote the academic research into the popular literature in the context of contemporary popular culture while making nominal rectification for the Victorian sensation novel.The core content of the research on the ethical orientation of Victorian sensation novel is to explore how the ethical orientation is formed to construct a harmonious society through ethical narrative based on the interpersonal relationship between aristocratic class and the middle class and the protection of their interests.The topic of research focuses on the moral behaviors and the moral consequence of the characters in the sensation novel,which embodies the human nature to promote what is favorable and avoid what is unfavorable put forward by humanitarian ethics and the criteria of judging good and evil with the consequences of human behaviors held by the utilitarian ethics.It interprets the novel’s effect of exposing and criticizing the dark side of Victorian society and the human weak natures,and explores the significance in the contemporary construction of a harmonious society with its rule of morals and its promoting effect for the literary ethical criticism of the popular literature in the context of contemporary popular culture.The research of this topic,by placing the sensation novels in the context of the Victorian Age,takes historical and dialectical materialism as the cognitive perspectives.With the relevant ethical theories,it tries to find out the reasons of human moral behaviors,and demonstrates the formation of the ethical orientation to construct a harmonious society with the aristocratic class and the middle class as the study objects;It also analyzes its ethical orientation and human nature by putting the characters in the specific social context,so that the research affirms the positive significance of the sensation novel in the construction of a harmonious society and at the same time finds out its limitations.In addition to the parts of Introduction and Conclusion,based on the overall discussion of the ethical orientation of the Victorian sensation novel,the main body of this dissertation discusses the ethical orientation from three aspects: interpersonal ethics,gender ethics and the elite’s professional ethics with the benefit of the aristocratic class and the middle class as its studying basis.And with the help of the relevant literary theories,the dissertation also analyzes the innovation of literary form and the generating mechanism of the ethical orientation in the sensation novel.The part of Introduction states and analyzes respectively such issues as the origin of the topic,the overview of the relative study both at home and abroad,the main content,the significance and the approach of the study as well as the theoretical framework of literary ethical criticism.The study shows that the origin of the genre of sensation novel is closely related to such factors as the social background of the Victorian Age in Britain,the formation of the popular culture and the cultural industry,the formation of the groups of the popular readers and the professional writers,the modern turn of western ethics,and the influence of the other genres of novel on the sensation novel.Starting from Aristotle’s ethical point of view of human happiness,the dissertation explores the human natures of the aristocratic and the middle-class characters in the sensation novel and the ethical orientation of constructing a harmonious society with the attitude of anti-main-stream-of-ethics thinking model.From the perspective of literary ethical criticism,the dissertation discusses the significance of ethical teaching in the construction of a harmonious society and the academic significance of promoting the development and criticism of popular literature in the era of the contemporary popular culture.The first chapter demonstrates basic ethical orientation in the Victorian sensation novel in general from three aspects: the ethics held by the aristocracy and the anxiety of the middle class,the ethic narrative of gender ethics and the elite’s professional ethics respectively.The study shows that the happiness embodied in the sensation novel only focuses on the category of the specific classes so that it is far from the point of view of human happiness put forward by Plato and Aristotle.The second chapter explores the values of the ethics admired by both the aristocracy and the middle class in three aspects: the relationship between property and ethics,the narrative of benefit and the attitude that the sensation novel takes toward private property respectively.The study also shows that the sensation novel reveals the cultural anxiety of the new aristocracy and the middle class with “suspense” and “sensation” as the novel’s main artistic features in the various texts and from different angles;It expresses the moral judgment of good and evil in Victorian sensation novel with the visualized description of the characters’ moral behaviors in face of the aristocracy’s private property,and at the same time the sensation novel proves,in certain extent,Marxist viewpoint of “economic foundation determines super-structure”.The third chapter discusses the significance of the gender ethical orientation in maintaining the ethical order of the aristocracy from the perspective of the relationship between gender ethics and the construction of a harmonious society.Based on the exploration of the origin of gender ethics,the dissertation reveals the aristocracy’s male-dominated gender ethics with the different characters in the various works as examples,and discusses the gender injustice in the patriarchal society,so that the conclusion is made that the sex differences belong to the scientific category of physiology,while gender differences belong to the social and cultural categories,and the latter is one of the main gender narratives in the sensation novel;The discrimination against women has its origin from theology ethics and the influencing factors of history and economics;The gender ethical narrative that the male identity determines the ownership of family property demonstrates Engels’ point of view of gender ethics in families;The phenomenon of gender transgression is another main feature of gender narrative in the sensation novel that shows the sensation novel’s anti-traditional attitude,and also expresses the sensation novel’s orientation of gender ethics for gender equality.The fourth chapter analyzes the professional ethics orientation of legal elites and medical elites to maintain social justice in the background of upholding the law and modern science in the Victorian sensation novel.The sensation novel affirms positive roles played by the professional elites in upholding social justice,and on the contrary satirizes and fustigates the elites for their non-ethical professional conduct and their negative effect in social justice,thus criticizing the so called doctrines of “ruling by law” and “advocating science” in a reverse way.This is how the orientation of the professional ethics is established in the sensation novel.The fifth chapter discusses the innovation of the sensation novel in its form and its anti-the-main-stream tradition.The study finds that the “suspense” and “sensation” are the typical innovation that the Victorian sensation novel makes in its form.In addition,the characters in the stories are also the story narrators.The unique way to image portraying of the characters and the straightforward way to express central ideas in the introductory remarks are also the innovations in form.The study also reveals the innovation in the aspect of human nature reflection in a paradox way of thinking and narrative model,as well as the “fuzzy zones” of the different moral characters.Aristotle’s poetic theory and Piaget’s structuralism are the powerful pillars in the textual studies: The former reveals the ethical and moral interaction between the literary texts and the real world.The latter forms the integrity between the textual world and real world in the perspective of ethics with the analysis of integrity,commutability and the self-regulation of the sensation novel as its starting point.The integrity between the virtual world and the real world is formed by analyzing the classification of the characters in the different stories of the sensation novel in the aspect of ethics.The innovation of the sensation novel in form generates its artistic aesthetic values,while the profound connotation creates its political ethic values.Therefore,the combination of perfect unification of the textual form and profound ethical connotation is the key factor that forms the ethical orientation of the sensation novel.In the part of Conclusion,what is drawn on the basis of the studies of the different sub-levels of the ethical orientations in each chapter are as follows: Although the ethical orientation of the sensation novel is against the main-stream of ethics with the interpersonal relationship and the relationship determined by benefit among the members of the aristocracy and the middle class,it still has its positive significance to construct a harmonious society with legal justice,honesty and friendship,human harmonious coexistence,stable and orderly social order as its basic features.And the educational function of the sensation novel in the perspective of ethical literary criticism is also formed by constructing a humorous society.Such conclusions turn over the negative criticism of the early evaluation of the sensation novel,and it also forms the academic significance to promote the development and research of popular novels in the context of contemporary popular culture.At the same time,it also forms the social practical significance based on the sense of history for constructing a contemporary harmonious society.In the literary ethical criticism of the sensation novel,the study also finds that M.H.Abrams has a defect in setting the “text” and the “world” as the one-way relationship.From the perspective of ethical literary criticism,the relationship between the two elements should be mutual-way relationship,so it has been amended.The effect of the amendment is that the creation of the sensation novel originates from the real world of Victorian Age,and in turn the novel influences the real world with its form of the literary text.The research of the topic affirms the contributions that the Victorian sensation novel makes for the construction of a harmonious society,but the study also finds that there are still some limitations in the sensation novel.Firstly,the sensation novel ignores the main social contradictions in Victorian Age,but it only takes the specific classes for its field of literary ethic reflection,and what it keeps is only the ethical order and what it safeguards is only the benefit of the specific social classes.Therefore,the sensation novel has certain limitations for constructing a harmonious human society on the whole;Secondly,in almost all the stories of the sensation novel there is rare description of the resources of the aristocracy’s property so that it seems that the property of this specific social class is obtained all by legal means;Thirdly,in the aspect of the ethical ideas of happiness,the aim of the sensation novel is not for all the social members,but limited in the specific social classes.Therefore,the concept of “supreme good” put forward by Aristotle is not the sound reflection in the sensation novel,thus making its limitations in the aspect of ideas of happiness on the whole either.Despite the limitations of the Victorian sensation novel,generally speaking,the positive values of the sensation novel to punish evil and promote good,and the ethical orientation of constructing a harmonious society still remain its main aspects of success.