A Study Of The Kitchen God’s Wife From The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

Amy Tan (1952-) is one of the most distinguished Chinese-American writers in the20th century who starts her writing career at the age of thirty-three. She has got variousprizes for literature. Her works usually explore the relationship between mother anddaughter, concern about Chinese women’s living dilemma in the feudal society andexpress the emotional ambivalence under the ethical conflicts and the obvious culturaldifferences between the East and the West. She is a writer with a sense of moral andethical pursuit, engaging in writing from her own emotions and beliefs. Her secondnovel The Kitchen God’s Wife is a classical representative. Through describing Wen Fu’ssex abuse to his wife and the whole family’s fleeing life during the period of Japaneseinvasion, the novel deeply reveals the presence of patriarchal consciousness in oldChina and the persecution for women and the tribulations to the Chinese brought by theJapanese invasion. Critics and scholars from both at home and abroad have interpretedher work from various perspectives, such as multiculturalism, post-colonialism,feminism, bildungsroman and etc, but very few researchers or critics have applied theapproach of ethical literary criticism to The Kitchen God’s Wife.This thesis adopts the methodology of Ethical Literary Criticism to analyze TheKitchen God’s Wife from the relationship between man and others, man and society, manand oneself. Through the close-reading of the novel, the author of the paper aims toexplore the ethical and moral phenomena and illustrate the ethics thoughts, hoping toenlighten the modern society.This thesis consists of seven parts including an introduction and a conclusion.Introduction briefly involves the main plot of The Kitchen God’s Wife and the literaryreview in and outside China.Chapter One respectively introduces the concepts of Ethics and Ethical LiteraryCriticism in order to lay a solid foundation for the following analysis. This part alsodiscusses the differences between Ethics and Ethical Literary Criticism and theinfluence of author’s ethical experience to the novel’s creation.Chapter Two interprets the relationship between man and others. This novel puts an emphasis on the relationship between husband and wife. There is no true love andequality between them. As a husband, Wen Fu takes his wife as a tool to meet his sexualdesire which is actually a sex abuse to his wife. He also has extramarital sex incest withdifferent women behind his wife, resulting in some deaths. As a father, he is ruthless tohis children. As a son-in-law, he threats his father-in-law in order to obtain the wealth.As for the relationship between mother and daughter, they keep secrets to each other sothat they often misunderstand each other.Chapter Three makes a study of the relationship between man and society anddemonstrates Chinese people’s mental and physical sufferings brought by the JapaneseInvasion. This chapter also reveals the Kuomintang’s hypocritical politics and somenations’ hypocritical rescue operation. Britain, France, the United States and othercountries pretended to support China, however, in fact they sold munitions to Japan tomake a fortune.Chapter Four explores the relationship between man and oneself, which is the mostintrinsic and complicated one. Men pursue the relationship constantly and make everyeffort to learn about themselves. In the novel, Winnie and her mother try their best to getrid of past and go all out in the pursuit of self-value, love and their happiness in thefuture.Chapter Five summarizes the roots of these unharmonious ethical relationships. Asfor the unharmonious relationship between husband and wife, it is due to malechauvinism and the traditional perceptions, including “Three Obedience and FourVirtues” in the feudal society. The lack of sexual knowledge results in the death ofseveral innocent women. The cultural differences between China and America cause themisunderstanding of the mother and daughter.The Conclusion is a summary and overview of the thesis. This part sums up theethical and moral problems in this novel from three perspectives and points out thatethical literary criticism provides a different way to understand Amy Tan’s humanisticideas. The part also summarizes and interprets the significance of the novel.