Abstract

In 19th century，United Kingdom have taken profound changes in society，a number of outstanding female writers emerged in the literary circles in this period  responsive to this complex social background. Jane, Austin, the Bronte sisters and George Elliot are representatives of the Victorian novelists. Eliot’s literary works have rich connotations and diversified themes, mostly centering on the theme of ethics. It is not easy to discuss ethical problems and analyze the ethical relationships among the characters in her literary works, and few domestic scholars have made efforts on this subject. This article intends to start from the concept of ethical criticism, and then regards George Eliot's novel of the Mill on Floss as a system of ethics, to analyzing the ethical relation and ethics concepts, and a series of important ethical issues including female ethics and family ethics, altruism and egoism in this novel.

KEYWORDS:Eliot; ethical relations; ethical issues

摘　要

19世纪的英国，正处于剧烈的社会变革之中，受这种复杂社会背景的影响，这个时期，英国文坛涌现了大量的优秀女作家。简.奥斯汀，勃朗特姐妹，以及乔治.艾略特等都是维多利亚时代极具代表性的小说家。艾略特的文学作品有着丰富的内涵和多样化的主题，但是绝大多数都是围绕着伦理来展开描写的。其实对于艾略特的小说中出现的任务进行研究和对其中存在的伦理问题和伦理关系进行探讨并不是件简单的事情，国内也鲜见人研究此类课题。本文拟从介绍伦理批评开始，以艾略特的小说弗洛斯河上的磨坊作为一个伦理系统，对其中存在的伦理关系和伦理思想进行梳理，对女性伦理，家庭伦理，利他主义和利己主义等一系列重要的伦理问题展开研究。

关键词:艾略特；伦理关系；伦理问题。

1    Introduction
1.1    Ethical criticism
Ethical criticism refers to the criticism of literary works by the ethical criteria of good and evil focusing on the content of these works. In the Chinese and western cultures, ethical criticism is the earliest and far-reaching mode of art criticism. Ethical awareness and ethical relationship which are often used to evaluate literary works is suitable for analyzing complicated characters in many novels.
Ethical critics believe that the value of literary works lies not only in the way of their expression, but also in their content. They see literature as “the criticism of life ", focus their eyes on the life in literature, including people's behavioral norms, coordinating the relationship between human beings and arousing love among people. Ethical critics are opposed to naturalism which treats life with indifference, and describe people just from the point of physiology and genetics, and reveals the dirty and dark side of society, and deny rationalism and idealism, and some ethics are against the romanticist who is unduly self-centered and tends to treat life as a game and give vent to passion without moderation.