英国"黄金时代"道德风尚之流变——英国维多利亚社会阶级与道德关系流变探论

维多利亚时期是英国发展史上的"黄金时代",社会迅速发展转型,并最终确立其世界工业霸主地位,完成了海外拓殖的历程,一举成为世界头号强国。而对英国近现代社会影响深远、为塑造近现代英国民族灵魂、稳定当时的社会局面立下不朽功勋,同时又造成人性与自由严重受压抑的"维多利亚主义"(Victori-anism)道德风尚也是在这一时期形成的。这是一个崇尚道德风尚的时代,"没有人能够逃出被道德审查的命运"1]。正因为道德在维多利亚社会中的特殊地位,对维多利亚道德的研究理应成为维多利亚小说研究的重要焦点。从马克思主义视角出发重新审视维多利亚时期道德观念的流变,从而对维多利亚道德进行重新阐释,可以更好地把握维多利亚小说中人物反映出来的道德风貌。

The Shift of Dominative Moral Trend in Victorian Britain

As one of the Golden Ages in British history,the Victorian age witnessed the swift development of the society and the changing of the social structure,witnessed the process of the Great Britain's forming into the Workshop of the World and becoming the Empire that "the sun never sets down".Meanwhile,it also witnessed the forming of Victorianism,which influenced modern British society and formed the national soul of modern Britain profoundly,which helped smooth the social situation effectively,and which bounded human nature deeply as well.In that case,it is never too bold to say that it was an era of morality,for no one could escape from the censorship of morality.Hence,morality should be an important issue in the study of Victorian novels.Based on that intellectual background,this paper reinterprets the shift of the dominative moral trend in Victorian Britain from the perspective of classical Marxism,thus to understand better the social moral code of that time and the morality reflected in the characters in Victorian novels.