A Reading Of The Joy Luck Club With The Greatest Happiness Principle

The Joy Luck Club is the maiden work of the Chinese-American woman writer Amy Tan, published in 1989. It was on the best seller list for up to 9 months since its publication. The publication of the novel has raised an upsurge of Chinese American Literature Study, which opens the door of the American mainstream literature for Chinese American literary works.This thesis aims to analyze the ethic and moral ideas presented in The Joy Luck Club with the Greatest Happiness Principle through closing reading of the text. The Greatest Happiness Principle holds that the happiness is the only goal of human beings; actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. The Principle tries to seek the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Besides the Introduction and Conclusion, the thesis is divided into three chapters. Chapter 1 points out that the different understandings of the way of pursuing happiness between mother and daughter is the cause of mother-daughter conflict, and the harmonious mother-daughter relationship is the inevitable result of the pursuit of happiness. Chapter 2 discusses the reason of women's unhappy marriage lives and their efforts for pursuing happiness. Chapter 3 describes the war in order to disclose the war as an action of "devil" for it produces not happiness but suffering. The conclusion maintains that the in the novel, the mother and daughter will eventually move toward reconciliation and get their own happiness; women in the novel acquire the harmonious marriage life through their own efforts; the Japanese military invasion is against humanity and the greatest happiness principle, the display of the war scene in The Joy Luck Club vividly discloses Amy Tan's harmonious ethic thoughts.