Narrative Ethics In Jerusalem The Golden

Margaret Drabble has established herself as one of the most famous women novelists in the contemporary literary world. Concerned with her female identity and writing themes, western scholars often study her novels from the perspectives of feminism and realism. They give her lots of titles, such as "the maternal novelist", "the chronicler of Britain" and "the spokesperson of intellectual women". In China, however, the study on Drabble is just at the starting stage and most of the articles follow the trend of the western study. In order to open a new horizon for Drabble study, this dissertation, without considering the female identity of the author and the heroine, explores the universal humanistic spirit in Jerusalem the Golden through employing the theory of narrative ethics.As a relatively new notion in literary criticism, narrative ethics endows the account of individual with the prime position. It concentrates on the personal feelings in particular moral situation and embraces the individual's unfortunate life. In fact, some critics have noticed the moral theme in Drabble's novels. However, more frequently than not, the morality they are concerned with belongs to rational ethics, which emphasizes general moral codes that characters should obey. This present study finds that Jerusalem the Golden has the meaning of individual narrative of ethics and its compound ethical narrative mode endows readers with the freedom to feel Clara's life on their own, which is helpful to convey the author's moral appeal, that is, the protection of human being's dignity. In another aspect, some writing techniques also play important roles in causing the ethical effect, such as the complicated moral situations, the narrator's commentary, nonfocalization and so on. Besides, reader's participation in text meaning construction is also essential to realize narrative ethics in Jerusalem the Golden.