Ethical Critique of Female Characters in Pierre, Or the Ambiguities

DOI

10.2991/icedem-17.2017.39How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Melville; Pierre; Feminine Ethics; Ethical Critique

Abstract

Female ethics is one of the key ideas that Melville attempted to convey in his novel Pierre, O, the Ambiguities. In this study, ethical literary criticism is adopted to study the female characters in the novel. It is concluded that overbearing mother Mary carries out wrong education ethics which triggers incest between mother and son. Meanwhile, her deep-rooted traditional hierarchy ethics refrains the development of Pierre's rational ethical conscious and prohibits the construction of right ethics. Seductive and evil Isabel holds ethics of benefiting oneself at the expense of others' interests, which directly contributes to the change of ethical context, ethical identity of related characters in the novel, subsequently lead to ethical tragedy. Pure and noble-minded Lucy undergoes the growth in love and marriage ethics and ultimately becomes a model of female ethics. Melville made a profound study of these female characters and conducted a moral critique of female ethics by means of vividly portraying the ethical consciousness and moral behaviors of these above-mentioned three female characters and further expressed his ethical ideals and ethical concern as well.

Copyright

© 2017, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Qingjuan Nie
PY  - 2017/12
DA  - 2017/12
TI  - Ethical Critique of Female Characters in Pierre, Or the Ambiguities
BT  - Proceedings of the 2017 International Conference on Economic Development and Education Management (ICEDEM 2017)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 150
EP  - 152
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icedem-17.2017.39
DO  - 10.2991/icedem-17.2017.39
ID  - Nie2017/12
ER  -