| Graham Swift(1949-),a winner of the prestigious Booker Prize,is one of the most highly regarded writers in contemporary Britain.Waterland is nominated for England’s Booker Prize and Swift wins 1996 Booker Prize for Last Orders.Moreover,Wish You Were Here(2011)is selected as one of the Best Foreign Novels of the Year in the 21 st Century.The three novels are often regarded as the most representative works of Swift.In Swift’s works,most of the protagonists are males and the chapters allotted to female roles are much fewer.Thus,research on his novels usually centers on male characters.Furthermore,scholars mainly focus on Swift’s view of history,and investigate intertextuality,genre mixture,narration as well as narrative techniques in his fictions,etc.However,they seldom probe into ethical identities and ethical choices of the characters in his novels.Moreover,the moral function of novels Swift persistently stresses echoes with the moral instruction of ethical literary criticism,which paves the way to employ ethical literary criticism to explore confusions about ethical identities and evolution of ethical choices of the heroines in Swift’s three representative novels.Outwardly,the three heroines own three ethical identities,including the identity as a daughter,the identity as a wife,and the identity as a mother.However,the patriarchal ethical environment breeds heroines’ confusions about their ethical identities.As daughters,their fathers to some extent regard them as the alternatives to their mothers and they assume the ethical responsibilities belong to mothers because of their mothers’ absence,which gives them confusions about their identities as daughters.Marriage grants them the ethical identities as wives.Superficially,their ethical identities are wives;nevertheless,they are quite confused about their wife identities because their husbands escape from ethical responsibilities with the result that they become wives in name only.Furthermore,their love to husbands is more like love to children.Moreover,since they are unable to sustain patriarchal lineage,a demand imposed by patriarchal society,they are addicted to quasi-mother-child relationships in order to perform as mothers.They bend over backwards to fulfill the ethical responsibilities and obligations of mothers,placing themselves in the confusion of their identities as mothers step by step.Bewildered by their identities,the female protagonists are obliged to make their ethical choices respectively.In Waterland,Mary chooses to deny herself,and finally is considered insane,and is confined to a mental asylum.Amy in Last Orders makes the choice of self-awakening.At the end of the novel,Amy says goodbye to her husband,to her family,to her friends and particularly to her former self.She embarks on the journey of reconstructing her ethical identity.Ellie in Wish You Were Here opts for self-reformation.Persistently using her ethical consciousness to suppress her libido and desire,Ellie strives to take good care of her father and stands with her husband to pull through predicaments.The external reason that the ethical contexts of the three novels are patriarchal,coupled with the internal cause that female self-consciousnesses are gradually evolving,explains heroines’ confusions about ethical identities and the evolution of their ethical choices.The detailed descriptions of confusions and evolution articulate Swift’s affection and concern for females as well as his gradually-polished view of females.Notwithstanding their different personalities and distinct experiences,all the three female roles possess good virtues such as a sense of responsibility,bravery,perseverance,goodness and filial piety,in sharp contrast to the irresponsible male protagonists.Therefore,Swift’s deep ethical concern for females can be discerned which dispels the myth that Swift has bias against women and provides a new perspective for the research of Graham Swift. |
