The Ethical Dilemma In The Bonesetter's Daughter

Amy Tan(1952?)is one of the most famous Chinese American writers.She starts her writing career at the age of thirty-three,and wins many literary awards.Her works mostly reflect the emotional entanglements between mother and daughter,focus on the Chinese women and Chinese American's living dilemma,and express the affective ambivalence under the ethical conflicts and the ethical differences between the east and the west.The Bonesetter's Daughter is Amy Tan's fourth novel,which depicts the unusual experiences of three-generation women in Chinese American Ruth's family.It reveals patriarchal oppression to women,and the white-centered society's oppression to minority women.The novel adopts the methodology of ethical literary criticism to analyze the three characters' ethical dilemma.The introduction part gives a brief outline to the life of Amy Tan,and concludes the major features of her writing and reviews the latest research achievement of the criticism of The Bonesetter's Daughter.After that,the research's significance from the perspective of ethical literary criticism is expounded.Chapter one mainly introduces the ethical environment.It demonstrates family ethics and inferior female status in America and China.Chapter two focuses on the ethical dilemma of main characters,the conflicts between mother and daughter and disharmony in martial relationship.Chapter three mainly analyzes the ethical dilemma from the dislocation and confusion of ethical identity.Chapter four presents the main characters' ethical choices when facing up to the ethical dilemma.Some people choose love to reach a reconciliation and some choose to write their own story to reconstruct their ethical identity.The concluding part provides an overview of the major contents and illustrates the academic and practical value in studying the ethical problems by employing ethical literary criticism.Finally,the main characters get out their ethical dilemma by making different ethical choices.Their choices encourage and enlighten the women,who are oppressed by the patriarchy and white-supremacy,to express their ideas,realize self-reconstruction and try to find a way to achieve a harmonious relationship with people.