A Literary Ethical Interpretation Of The Man Who Loved Children

Christina Stead is one of the greatest novelists in the twentieth century Australia, and her representative work The Man Who Loved Children is hailed as a contemporary classic. For a long time, critics tend to make a feminist reading of the novel while ignoring its ethical factors. Therefore, the thesis is devoted to analyzing the Pollits family tragedy and exposing the ethical phenomena in the novel from human-society relationship, human-other relationship and human-self relationship by using the approach of ethical literary criticism and textual analysis, with the hope of providing some enlightenment for the family life in the modern society.Firstly, the thesis points out the Pollits family tragedy is fundamentally caused by the patriarchal society and its ethical values from the perspective of human-society relationship. In the novel, Henny, an old-fashioned woman, is enslaved by marriage and conventional cumbrance and finally resorts to death as an escape from her sufferings; Samuel Pollit, the husband, attempts to create an ideal kingdom, a miniature patriarchal society, by means of language to govern his wife and children. Through the miserable life of Henny and the construction of the patriarchal family by Samuel Pollit, Christina Stead not only makes a relentless attack on the patriarchal society and its deeply rooted ethical values, but also places her hope of eliminating the patriarchal moralities from the society.Secondly, from the perspective of marriage and family ethics, this thesis aims to disclose the main reasons of the Pollits family tragedy and denounce the egocentricity of the Pollits couple by giving analyses of the relations between husband and wife, and parents and children. Frederick Engels once points out that "a marriage is ethical because it is not only based on true love, but also a marriage where love continues." In The Man the marriage between Sam and Henny is not only marked as no love and no communication, but also characterized by mutual attacks and family violence for both of them are self-centered without realizing one's own faults and tolerating each other. Thus, their marriage violates marriage ethics. As for the relationship between parents and children, both of the parents are ignorant of the bad influence upon their children brought by their bitter feuding. Besides, children are like damp clay for their father to freely and playfully manipulate and they are also like a receptacle for their mother to pour out her resentment and curses, which greatly hurt the children. Therefore, they also go against family ethics.Finally, through exploring human-self relationship, the thesis analyzes the intrinsic reason for the family tragedy and calls on people to care about one's inner self and pursue the true self. The family tragedy is basically caused by Sam and Henny who do not recognize their true self, but simply evade the reality. In contrast to them, Louie experiences the process of growing up and knowing self, and she gradually knows the constant war between her parents ruins the children's moral nature. At last, she makes an ethical choice to kill her parents and save her brothers and sister from being destroyed.In conclusion, this thesis historically and dialectically analyzes the main reasons for Pollits family tragedy from the perspectives of human-society relationship, human-other relationship and human-self relationship by using the method of ethical literary criticism, hoping it can do some help for the readers to better understand Christina Stead and The Man Who Loved Children.