An Ethical Reading Of Sarah Kane’s Plays

As one of the prominent contemporary British dramatists in the late twentieth century, Sarah Kane is generally regarded as a representative member of the "In-Yer-Face Theatre". The five plays she produced in her short lifetime, namely, Blasted, Phaedra’s Love, Cleansed, Crave and 4.48 Psychosis have changed the landscape of British theatre in the 1990s.Characterized by blatant language, subversive form and shocking content, Kane’s plays mainly deal with the themes of sex, violence, war, love and death. Because of the bloody violence and explicit sex, her plays were once questioned and fiercely criticized as immoral works. In fact Kane’s intention is to put the indifferent audience in shock through an intense and disturbing experience in theatre and force them to feel, to think and to change. People now have realized the deep humanistic concern shown in Kane’s plays in spite of the debate over the ethical values revealed in her works.With the help of some western scholars’ theories of ethical criticism and Chinese scholar Nie Zhenzhao’s ethical literary criticism, this thesis intends to interpret the ethical meaning presented in Sarah Kane’s five plays through three kinds of relationships, namely, plays and society, plays and audience and plays and author. The thesis is divided into three chapters. Focusing on the plays-society relationship, Chapter One shows the plays’ reflection of the ethical reality through the presentation of the chaotic society characterized by violence, cold and indifferent interpersonal relationships and depression felt by disillusioned individuals. Through analyzing the shock that Kane’s plays have brought to the body and mind of the audience, Chapter Two explores the plays-audience relationship from the perspective of ethics and morality. Chapter Three deals with the plays-author relationship to demonstrate Kane’s own sense of ethics through her revelation of ambivalent existence and ethical choice and her pursuit of truth and love reflected both in her works and in her own life. An ethical reading of Kane’s plays will not only reveal her keen insight into the ethical reality and strong moral sense but also indicate the moral warning she sends to all mankind and her appeal for love and truth as weapons to conquer moral deterioration.