A Study Of The Mill On The Floss From The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

George Eliot was a famous novelist in the 19 th Century Victorian England.Known for her meticulous characterizations,sincere religious and moral sentiments,and profound philosophical ideas,her novels had a tremendous and profound impact on Victorian society and subsequent eras.Ethical Literary Criticism is a critical method of studying literature based on the summary of western literary ethics promoted by Chinese literary critics in recent years,and a historical dialectical interpretation of the moral phenomena depicted in various literary works in the history of literature.The aim is to provide a historically accurate interpretation of moral relationships in the context of the social,political,economic systems of the time.This thesis attempts to analyze Eliot’s novel The Mill on the Floss by using the method of ethical literary criticism,and explore the ethical connotations and characteristics of ethical and moral thoughts in this novel from three aspects: social ethics,family ethics,and marriage ethics by taking Eliot’s life experiences into account.The ethics of society is reflected through the analysis of the injustice imposed on Maggie in the Victorian patriarchal society and the change of Maggie’s attitude from rebellion to obedience,in which Eliot expresses her expectation of equality between men and women.The ethics of family,starting from Eliot’s own experience,shows not only the writer’s own family environment,but also Maggie’s sacrifice for her family,emphasizing that women are essentially considered in the patriarchal society as “the angel in the house” in family relations.The ethics of marriage is reflected in a realistic choice of love,an in-depth analysis of Maggie’s character,and an exposition of the duties and responsibilities that Maggie should fulfill in the marriage relationship,which leads Maggie back to reality under the constraints of the ethics of marriage.The different ethical choices in marriage lead to different endings,which also reflect Eliot’s contradictory views on the ethics of marriage.After analyzing the ethical issues in Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss,this thesis summarizes that the heroine Maggie clearly emphasizes the obligations of human loyalty,compassion and responsibility with her self-restraint and devotion to love and high sense of responsibility to others,which shows Eliot’s high sensitivity and a certain degree of criticism to the social reality of her time,with a unique and profound significance.