A Study Of Female Dilemmas In Alice Munro’s The Love Of A Good Woman From The Perspective Of Narrative Ethics

Alice Munro, a famous Canadian woman writer known for her short stories, is regarded as "Chekhov" in Canada. The Love of A Good Woman is one of Alice Munro’s magnum opuses, which explores the various ethical dilemmas faced by ordinary women in their daily lives, the conflicts and deceptions under the surface of society, and the strange desires of human nature. It expresses her concerns to ethical problems of modern females.This thesis draws on the theory of narrative ethics, and from aspects of narrational ethics, representational ethics and hermeneutic ethics, attempts to examine the female ethical dilemmas reflected in The Love of A Good Woman and discuss Alice Munro’s ethical thought and its enlightenment to us readers today. It holds that in the aspect of "the Telling", Alice Munro, through the ethical dialogues among main characters, the ethical interventions from various narrators and the ethical projections from changing focalizors, demonstrates ethical communication in narrative communication and unique narrative art. In the aspect of "the Told", by examining female moral dilemmas in "The Love of a Good Woman", "The Children Stay" and "My Mother’s Dream":love or righteousness, freedom or family, and art or child, the thesis demonstrates that Munro establishes no standards of a "good woman", but she reveals the ambiguity and complexity of ethics and shows great respect to the life experience of every female individual.