A Study On Great Expectations From The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

Charles Dickens, one of the most remarkable critical realism masters within the history of British literature, inveighs against the inequities in capitalist society and implicates concentrated humanitarianism in his works through the authentic reflection of the society of his age. Great Expectations, a markedly significant creation in Dickens’s late period, tells a common boy Pip’s great expectation of becoming a gentleman and its final disillusion. On the basis of the ethics, a Chinese professor Nie Zhenzhao puts forward ethical literary criticism, a new critical method for literature study, aiming at analyzing the ethical connotation of literature works from dialectically historical perspective. Considering the abundant ethical and moral factors involved in Dickens’s works, this thesis takes ethical literary criticism as the entry point to make a thorough analysis of the ethical theme implicated in Great Expectations from three layers, man and society, man and others and man and himself. Included in this thesis is also the exploration of Dickens’s ethical pursuit and his crucial contribution to the construction of humanistic spirit.The thesis is divided into five parts. The introduction part briefly summarizes Dickens’s life and works, the outline of Great Expectations and both domestic and foreign studies on this novel as well. Together with the related research achievements of ethical literary criticism, presented in this part are also the connotation, the development history.Chapter One explores Dickens’s ethical pursuit of truth from the relationship of man and society. Through describing the negative influence from capitalist society of money and social status worship as well as the retroaction of the influenced people on society, Dickens expressed his aspiration of the harmonious and shared growth relationship between man and society.Chapter Two analyzes Dickens’s ethical pursuit of goodness through the relationship between man and others. The relationship of an individual and other people in the society in Great Expectations falls into three categories, parents and children, lovers, and friends. Through the shaping of different families, marriages and friends, as well as the according contrastive life courses, the work manifests Dickens’s pursuit of the harmonious interpersonal relationship of mutual love, respect and equality.Chapter Three studies Dickens’s ethical pursuit of sublimation through the relationship between man and himself. Pip and Miss. Havisham realize self salvation through the ethical choice of self-reflection and repentance; Compeyson’s sustained concentration on self interest coupled with his ignorance of basic ethical morality lead to his final miserable death. The striking different life paths brought out by different ethical choices indicate Dickens’s ethical pursuit of sublimation through self-recognition, self-reflection and self-repentance in terms of the relationship between an individual and himself.The conclusion part briefly summarizes the ethical crisis reflected in the work as well as Dickens’s corresponding suggestion of pursuit of truth, pursuit of goodness and pursuit of sublimation. Pointed out in this part is also the significance of this novel towards the construction of human ethical consciousness.