A Study on Great Expectations from the Perspective of Ethical Literary Criticism

Abstract

Charles Dickens was the greatest English critical realist of the nineteenth century with vivid descriptions of the capitalist society he lived in and profound humanitarian feelings towards the poverished group. Great Expectations is Dickens’ masterpiece in his later years, which tells the story of Pip, an ordinary boy who dreamed of becoming a “gentleman” and finally lost and regained his dream. Chinese scholar Nie Zhenzhao put forward the method of ethical literary criticism, aiming at analyzing the ethical connotation of literary works from a historical dialectical perspective. In view of the rich ethical factors involved in Dickens’ works, this paper attempts to explore the ethical themes contained in Great Expectations from three aspects: ethical environment, ethical identity and ethical choice, so as to reveal Dickens’ ethical demands and its important contributions to the construction of humanistic spirit. In terms of ethical literary criticism, Great Expectations depicts the ethical picture of Victorian era and guides readers into a world with unbalanced ethical order, in which ethical choice is the core factor leading to its ethical endings. This paper analyzes the ethical connotation hidden in the works and tries to provide new enlightenment for ethical literary criticism.