Self-reconstruction Of Linda Brent In Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl From The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) is an eminent Afro-American women writer in African American literature, particularly in slave narratives of nineteenth century. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself(1861), an autobiography story of Harriet Jacobs based on her own special experiences, is regarded as the self-saving survival handbook for African American women. The narrative has inspired a large number of studies by critics from the perspectives of feminism, psychoanalytic theory, narratology, and cultural criticism to analyze the novels’themes concerning race and gender, language modes, and mostly the narrative strategies. These researches are beneficial for readers to understand the narrative and to study American literature, particularly Afro-American literature.Different from previous studies, this thesis will analyze the narrative from the perspective of ethical literary criticism which aims to interpret literary works by tracing back to the ethical environment of the history and the era, and delving into the objective ethical reasons that influence social affairs and characters’fates. By tracing back to the historical and ethical context of the novel, this thesis will explore the self-reconstruction and survival ethical pursuit of African Americans, especially African American women with the protagonist Linda Brent’s life experiences as a typical example. Through arduous exploration, Brent finally achieves her self-reconstruction, having changed from an enslaved black girl without herself into an independent African-American woman, and having experienced from a physical existence to a spiritual existence in the course of her survival ethic deduction. Her thought-provoking self-reconstruction odyssey indicates that whatever ethical environment they are in, African Americans, Afro-American women in particular, can achieve self-reconstruction to become independent human beings with spiritual freedom if they are brave to explore themselves, overcome the servility ideas, maintain rationality and pursue humanity survival.