On The Gender Ethics And Female Initiation In Alice Munro's Dear Life

Alice Munro,the first Canadian female Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature,is one of the most acclaimed writers of contemporary Canadian Literature.Most of her works are short stories which generally focus on daily life of ordinary women in small-towns.Her stories mainly concern on females' pursuit for love,struggling for life and seeking for self-value,which shows the imprint of traditional ethical concepts in the course of female initiation and reflects those females' tough initiation process and the tragic characteristics of their fate.Based on the theory of ethical literary criticism,this thesis takes Munro's latest collection,Dear Life,as the object to classify characters' ethical identities in stories and analyze females' initiation process of “predicaments-choices-frustration-epiphany” in small-towns with traditional concepts by applying close reading.Through studying their ethical choices in initiation predicaments,the thesis discusses female initiation and their metamorphosis in love,marriage and family life,the awareness and developments of their ethical initiations,which demonstrates readers with enlightenments.The thesis consists of five parts.Chapter One is an introduction to Munro and main critical views on her works.Then the framework is put forward at the end of this chapter.Chapter Two is literature review which mainly summarizes current research achievements on Dear Life at home and abroad,ethical literary criticism and related concepts are illustrated which later lead to the significance of the study.Chapter Three compares ethical identities between male and female characters based on gender ethical relationship so as to understand female's ethical predicaments in traditional concepts as well as their ethical choices in love,marriage,family life and other situations.With the comparison and analysis illustrated in previous chapter,Chapter Four explores the main ethical line for initiation to discuss awareness and development of female ethical consciousness as well as their epiphany on emotion and life.A summary goes into Chapter Five to uncover the edification and inspiration that Dear Life brings to readers,which interprets Munro's profound perceptions.