On The Narrative Ethics Of Yan Geling's Novel From Women's Life Forms

Yan Geling is a Chinese-American writer arousing people's attention in recent years, whose works are able to transcend national boundaries and cultural barrier, showing their rich connotations. She shaped a lot of eye-catching image of women, whose life forms show tolerance for others and confidence in life, and thus present unique ethical connotations. This paper starts with the women's life forms of Yan Geling'novel, using specific text reading method, and some of the theories of narrative ethics, studies the works by connecting the writer's background, historical conditions, as well as the writer's life experiences, in order to clearly classify several women's basic life forms, and analyze the highligting narrative ethics of Yan Geling's works.This paper is divided into three parts: introduction, body and conclusion. The introduction describes the object of study and methods of this paper, defines the concepts of narrative ethics and life form, and outlines the status of Yan Geling's works.The body part is divided into three chapters according to the different women's life forms in her novels.The first chapter describes the women in misery. They live in the harsh environment, or escape, rush everywhere because of war and turmoil, but they have gone through the hardships, assumed their own destiny courageously, and brought out a strong will to survive and love in the cruel history and society. The writing of the women living in misery contain Yan Geling's strong care for people, showing the narrative ethics of the writer's concern for the world and mankind, and of respect to life.The second chapter focuses on the women's attitude and performance in the face of love. They can confront the suffering with their good nature, assume the responsibility of love bravely, and save the declining humanity in the name of love, eventually completing the great salvation of the soul. These great women are filled with glory of love. No matter how hard and rough they live, the rich and wonderful feelings filled in their lives add a belief of love and survival strength to the people, which demonstrates narrative ethics of the writer's love idealism and female subjectivity.The third chapter is about the women's compassion of"Mother Earth". They have traditional virtue of Oriental women, who are suffering but can live originally. Despite they live humbly or suffer humiliation, but they have tolerance, generosity and love. Yan Geling is able to concern about the life struggling of the weak beyond the vision of good and evil, and the novel presents such narrative ethics that we feel the tolerance and power of love.Narrative ethics does not make a clear and simple judgements of good and evil, but rather to understand the lives of individuals, care the human soul, help people understand themselves and improve their confidence through the narrative. Yan Geling starts with the individual life experience, concerns the basic situation of the whole mankind and presents the complexity and richness of life, which express her deep feelings and profound understanding on human nature and life, but also convey life ideal to the human nature in her works. Yan Geling care and cherish each women she described, who no matter what kind of life forms appear, have show tolerance and compassion, and let us feel the warmth of heart care.