An Analysis Of The Moral Construction In The Eighteenth-century British Novels

Morality is the eternal category of human existence. England, in the eighteenth century, was an era in deep transition. English novels which set in this period are characteristic of "moralizing".This thesis tends to explore the moral talk in the eighteenth-century novels. Focusing on the characterized literary practice by Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, the author attempts to provide an all-inclusive and in-depth analysis of the female images created by the three great writers, along with the social background in which these novels are set and generated, as well as the great efforts they make to the shaping of the moral construction in the eighteenth century. Moll and Roxana, vividly depicted and described by Defoe in his novels, can be safely considered as the typical representative of the "economic individualism". It is mainly on the two female image that Defoe, a representative of the newly-emerging middle class per se, places his concern and reflection about the moral status-quo in the then British society; while Richardson by shaping the two zero-defect lady image of "chastity", Pamela and Clarissa, is in an attempt to take advantage of the story featured in "virtues of reward" to generate the then "social ethics"; whereas Sophia and Amelia, meticulously created by Fielding, are mainly in the pursuit of the "moral balance of the return of humanity", which makes up a near-perfect "completion" concerning the moral exploration in the eighteenth century British society. All the female images created by the three great writers represent the three different stages of the same strain during the reconstruction of the moral system in the British society deep in transformation.Standing at a new historical height, reflecting on the moralizing investigated by Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, it is obvious that there still remains some limitations, either restricted by the then era or the novelists’individual understandings of the great time, which makes it sound reasonable that some of the writers’ view are not necessarily accepted by their contemporary receivers or even readers nowadays. While there is no denying that their warmly concern about ethics, together with their active exploration of individual existence is in the position to transcend the limitations of span of time and space. In the current China remaining a society deep in transition, shares some commons with the then British society. To put it simple, faced with mountains of challenges and tests brought about by the progressing reform and opening, China may get some hints and inspiration from the moral construction put forward and carried out in the eighteenth-century British novels.