Ethical Conflicts And Ethical Choices:A Study Of The Children Act From The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

Ian McEwan is a prestigious novelist and dramatist in contemporary British literature.His works mostly reflect the severe realistic problems of contemporary British society.The Children Act is a novel written in 2014.Once being published,it immediately attracted keen attention of the British literary and academic circles at home and abroad.This novel is set in British courts as the narrative background.It describes the paradox of religion and law that a female judge encounters and how to make beneficial judgement to protect the welfare of children by ethical standards.Based on ethical literary criticism theory of Nie Zhenzhao,this thesis explores the ethical conflicts faced by main characters represented by Fiona in the novel and the ethical choices they made to solve the ethical conflicts.The thesis analyzes the novel from two major ethical conflict lines,which are the ethical conflicts in family and the ethical conflicts between religious practices and the implementation of law.In the main line of ethical conflicts in family,Jack proposed the request of having an affair overtly.His disloyalty conflicted with the standard of family ethics.Fiona avoided family responsibility due to heavy work,and also fell into the ethical conflict in family.In addition,in the cases that Fiona processed,religious doctrine had a decisive effect on clients.So under certain situations,religious dogmas conflicted with the welfare of children that the law intended to protect.Judge Fiona should consider the religious dogmas that religious believers strictly obeyed,and also she must take into account the benefits and welfare that law entitled to believers.She faced ethical conflicts in her work.When Fiona and Jack had ethical conflicts,they tried to find a way to solve ethical conflicts and made the right ethical choices.In the family,Jack and Fiona both reflected on themselves and positively made changes.Jack came back to his family and rebuilt his wife’s trust in him through emotional care,solving the ethical conflict successfully.Fiona forgave Jack’s fault and tried to sincerely communicate and negotiate with him to get rid of the marriage crisis.In legal practice,Fiona made judgments from the ethical point of view,and eliminated the conflict between religious practices and implementation of law through two criteria of life taking precedence over God’s righteousness and giving priority to the child’s welfare.As a result,her judgments brought the best interest to children and prompted complement and advocation of the child’s welfare in entrenched law.From the perspective of ethical literary criticism,the thesis demonstrates the conflict between religion and law and its ethical value,and reveals the process of main characters making the ethical choices.It provides the way to solve ethical conflicts for the contemporary people who are involved in ethical conflicts,and guides them to make correct ethical choices.In the meantime,to a certain extent,it has a guiding significance on the establishment of harmonious society nowadays.