A Study Of Ethical Tendency In Emma From The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

Jane Austen(1775-1817)is the brilliant female writer in Britain,most of whose novels are concentrated on love and marriage.Pride and Prejudice is the most famous novel of her,while Emma is recognized as the most mature one.Emma is the only novel named by the heroin,like other novels,which descripts love relationships and marriages.In the novel,Jane Austen highlights Emma's loving matchmaking.And the plots in Emma become ups and downs because of her matchmaking.Although Emma is surrounded by love,ethical considerations can be seen everywhere in the novel Emma.Emma has been studied by many scholars so far and most of them from the perspective of feminism,new historicism,Bildungsroman,speech act theory,translation and so on.However,it is sparse to analyze it from the perspective of ethical literary criticism.Ethical literary criticism is a literary methodology,and to study the various ethical issues that appear in literary texts based on ethics.And it is an ethical and moral objective study of literature and gives a historical dialectical interpretation.This thesis interprets Emma with the support of ethical literary criticism.First of all,this thesis introduces the research status both at home and abroad,and summarizes the researches.Secondly,it introduces the theoretical basis of literary ethics criticism,including its origin,development and features.Then,it researches ethical views of the main characters through analyzing the plots and their conversations.And then the conclusion of ethical tendency in Emma is made by analyzing main character's attitudes towards different matters.Then,the research on ethical tendency of this thesis stretches from Emma to other novels of Austen,which illustrates the Austen's ethical views are not only in Emma.Combined with the ethical environment in that period and Jane Austen's life experience,her ethical views and her ethical tendency in social relations,conjugal relations and interpersonal relations have been analyzed.Finally,the conclusion has been made,which the ethical tendency in Emma and Austen's ethical views are from the same strain.This thesis aims to help and guide readers to have a better understanding of Jane Austen and her literary works by analyzing Jane Austen's ethical views and ethical tendency in Emma through inspecting the main figures' ethical tendency,especially the reason for Emma's growth on ethics.The ethical tendency in Emma is mainly manifested in three parts,aspiring after equality in social ranks and genders in social relations,pursuing love supremacism in martial relations and seeking after harmony in interpersonal relations.