n The House of Earth Trilogy, Pearl S. Buck, with her unique perspective and grand narrative technique, depicts many aspects of Chinese society in the 20th century in detail, and almost realistically reproduces the historical features and images of Chinese people. She describes the stories of the three generations of Chinese farmers Wang Lung, Wang the Tiger and Wang Yuan with affectionate brushwork. Old stories push new stories, sweet sto ries lead to bitter stories. There are troubles for everyone, ups and downs, and unpredictable misfortunes, and then it shows Western readers a real China.[12]45 To a great extent, this has changed the traditional understanding of China in Western society and made Westerners realize China is totally different from the “Orientals” in Orientalism. It can almost be said that she “made” the Chinese for the whole generation of Americans, just as Dickens “made” the people living in the slums of Victorian England for many of us.[13]212 So Zhuang Xinzai once referred to Pearl Buck as our “friend of the nation” in her article.[14] The American scholar Cevasco said that among the more than 250 western novelists with a Chinese background, she (referring to Pearl Buck) is the best in terms of quantity and quality of creation. Although Maugham’s On a Chinese Screen, Hobart’s Oil Painting on a Chinese Lantern, Hilton’s Lost Horizon and Cronin’s The Key to the Central Empire are all outstanding literary works, but all the important British and American novels with China and Chinese as the background are far from what Pearl S. Buck has achieved.[15] The famous American critic Malcolm Cowley said that compared with Pearl Buck, many Western writers who describe China are like tourists who occasionally visit China. They can only reflect some furry things in a glimpse, while Pearl Buck is not. The Chinese in her novels are no longer funny, exotic, yellow-skinned dolls, but ordinary people with complete human nature. Their happiness, anger, sorrow, and their life goals and pursuits are extremely ordinary, without any unimaginable color.
2 Theoretical Framework
2.1 A General Introduction of Ethical Literary Criticism
The ideological basis of ethical literary criticism can be traced back to the ethics of ancient Greece, which is a part of the early philosophy of ancient Greece and develops with the development of philosophy. Although philosophers such as Socrates and Plato had discussed the related issues of ethics before Aristotle, ethics only matured and became an independent subject in the period of Aristotle. Aristotle, the founder of ethics, has three theoretical works up to now: The Nicomachean Ethics, Eud
