The Ecological Ethics In Katherine Mansfield's Short Stories

Katherine Mansfield is an eminent writer at the beginning of 20th century. In recent years studies on her are of various aspects, but mainly focusing on feminism, modernism writing techniques, her language characters, her dual identity and psychology of the protagonists, etc. Some scholars study her ecological thoughts but only connect it with feminism and study on her works from the perspective of eco-feminism. This thesis, from the perspective of ecological ethics, is the first one to do such kind of study on Mansfield. Ecological ethics, short for eco-ethics, is the combination of ecology and ethics. It advocates to expand moral care from human society to the field of nature, to revere nature and to build a world of harmony between man and nature. Many works of Mansfied reflect her eco-ethics thoughts.Mansfield was born in the picturesque New Zealand but she was determined to leave her motherland and went to London to realize her dream of being a writer when she was 19 years old. During that period, London had finished her first Industrial Revolution, and the level of industrialization was so high that it finally caused severe environmental pollution, leading to the seperation of the innate connection between human and nature and the enslavement of humans to machines. However, at that time in New Zealand, the industrial level was not so high and the environment was protected much better than that in England. In the works of Mansfield, there were many descriptions of New Zealand, her dream place, which was not only with beautiful sceneries but was filled with harmonious pictures of human and nature. Meanwhile, Mansfield also wrote the destroy of nature brought by the industrial civilization at her age and its enslavement to humans which she criticized strongly. These all reflected her eco-ethics thoughts.This thesis is divided into six chapters. The first chapter introduces the life and works of Mansfield as well as her literature accomplishments. Chapter Two is literature review. Up to now, many studies have been done on her, but mainly focusing on feminism, her modernism writing technique, her language characters, the psychology of the protagonists, etc. The study on her eco-ethics thoughts is done for the first time. The next few chapters are the main parts of this thesis. Chapter three is a brief introduction to the origin, development and perspectives of eco-ethics and it analyses the reason for the choosing of this theory as a tool to study Mansfield's works. Chapter four discusses the eco-ethics thoughts of Mansfield herself, including the factors influencing the formation of her eco-ethics thoughts and the cores of it. Chapter five analyses the eco-ethics embodied in her works. This chapter studies How Peal Button was Kidnapped, The Fly, etc, to show man's confrontation to nature, which is embodied in man's estrangement from nature, man's plunder, conquer of nature. She indicated further in her works that the confrontation of man and nature was actually caused by the crisis of human nature. Also, In Prelude, At the Bay, The Garden Party, etc, Mansfield discusses the integration of human and nature manifested in man's reverence for nature, their intimacy to nature, and the harmony relationship between them. Eco-ethics holds that nature has values. Such values will help promote the integration of man and nature. Chapter six is the conclusion. The eco-ethics in Mansfield's short stories embodied not only in her critique on the confrontation of human and nature caused by industrial civilization, but also in her description of the integration of human and nature. Today, as the relationship between human and nature is becoming more and more intense, studying Mansfield's works from perspective of eco-ethics has both educational and reality significance.From this thesis, we know that as an insightful writer, Mansfield found the hidden evil side of human nature and pointed out that it was the evil human nature that finally caused the confrontation between man and nature. Nowadays, people have fewer and fewer opportunities contacting nature and spend more time on computers which are not helpful for the healthy development of genuine human nature. Therefore, people today should learn to know nature better and narrow the gap between them. Only in this way can man get themselves improved and be called a genuine human being.