画鸵萌宠网
Contents
摘要…………..………………………………………………….….…………………1 Abstract………………………………………………………………………….…………….2
1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….3 2. The Alienation of Human Nature by Industrial Civilization………………………….3 2.1 A General Introduction to Alienation in Lawrence’s Works……………………….3 2.2 The Alienation of Sexual Psychology………………………………………………….5 2.2.1 Oedipus Complex…………………………….………………..………………………5 2.2.2 Negligence of Bisexual Relationship…………..……………………….……………6 2.2.3 Exhausted Mechanical Love and Rational Sexual Relationship………….….……..6 3. Harmonious Bisexual Relationship……………………………………………………….8 3.1 The Understanding of Sex………………….………………………………………….8 3.2 The Combination of Soul and Body………………………………………………….9 4. The Salvation Conscience Revealed in Lawrence’s Novels…………………………….10 5. Conclusion.....................................................................................................................…....11
外语学院本科毕业论文
摘 要
戴维·赫伯特·劳伦斯是二十世纪英国最伟大的小说家之一。目睹了20世纪英国工业社会的虚伪和衰弱，劳伦斯一生都致力于探讨现代工业文明对人性本能的戕害，特别是两性关系中被扭曲和遮蔽的诸多现代问题。究其根源是资本主义工业文明对人性的压抑，从而导致了对性的变态的憎恨，并使得两性关系丧失了应有的和谐与活力。面对这种境遇，劳伦斯举起了“两性和谐”的拯救大旗，希望以此来恢复人性的完整和独立，救赎病态的社会和人性以及工业文明带来的一系列异化现象。本文旨在通过对劳伦斯几部重要长篇小说代表作《虹》《儿子与情人》《查泰来夫人的情人》《恋爱中的女人》的分析，揭示出工业文明的首要罪恶是它压抑和歪曲了人的自然本性，即对人性的异化尤其是对性心理的异化，进而论述劳伦斯倡导的“两性和谐”理想的内涵，继而讨论劳伦斯小说里流露出的救赎意识。
关键词：工业文明；异化；两性关系；救赎意识
1
外语学院本科毕业论文
Abstract
David Herbert Lawrence is one of the greatest novelists in England. Witnessing the hypocrisy and frigidity of English industrial society, Lawrence had dedicated his whole life to exploring the subject on the harm to humanity which results from modern industrial civilization, especially some distorted and hidden minds in bisexual relationship. It originates from depressed human nature in the modern society and contributes to the abnormal hatred to sex as well as the unharmonious and debilitated sexual relationship. Under this situation, Lawrence proposed a new concept of harmonious sexual relationship in order to recover the well-integrated and independent humanity and salvage the sickness and morbidity of society and human nature and a range of alienations caused by industrial civilization. The thesis tries to reveal the fact that the main evil of industrial civilization is its inhibition, distortion and alienation of human nature, particularly the psychosexual alienation, by the analysis of his several important novels, Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love and Lady Chatterley’ Lover. On the basis of above discussed, it’ll further elaborate the connotation, nature of Lawrence’s harmonious bisexual relationship and then the salvation conscience revealed in Lawrence’s novels.
Key words: industrial civilization; alienation; bisexual relationship; salvation conscience
2
外语学院本科毕业论文
Alienation in Lawrence’s works
Zhu Huajie
School of Foreign Languages 401120
1. Introduction
D. H. Lawrence was born on September, 1st , 1885 in a miner’s family, in Nottinghamshire, Eastwood. He was one of the greatest writers in the twentieth century in England.
During the time when Lawrence lived, in his hometown—Eastwood, the original beautiful countryside landscape had been gradually and brutally destroyed due to fast development of industrialization. Attacked by industrialization, the original pure, natural human nature had been alienated and became the victim of the industrial civilization. Such historical and social environment was full of confrontation and urged Lawrence to start thinking over the universally existing opposites and trying hard to find some ways to solve the serious social problems which were caused by the industrial civilization and of course, also had great impact on the shape of his later philosophical thought, particularly his view of male-female relationship.
In his early life, D. H. Lawrence, not only witnessed the sharp opposition between the two civilizations but also experienced the entirely contradictory ways of living in his family which belonged to his father and mother respectively. Lawrence began to think about the bisexual relationship which he thought was the relationship of a society. During the time when Lawrence lived, the relationship between human beings, particularly, the relationship between man and women had been twisted and eroded by the fast development of the capitalist industry. Thus, Lawrence had always devoted himself to thinking out a method to set up a brand-new bisexual relationship or readjust the original relation, so as to achieve a harmonious relation between man and women, man and nature, and then achieve the real balance and stability of society.
2. The Bisexual Psychological Alienation by Industrial Civilization
2.1 General Introduction to Alienation in Lawrence’s Works
3
外语学院本科毕业论文
Through the observation of the working class Lawrence found a collection of alienations: the alienation of machine—human became the slave of machine; the alienation of labor—the fruits of labor couldn’t be shared by laborers; the alienation of fortune—money dominated people’s behavior; the alienation of personality—soul towered over body; the alienation of nature—pollution of environment. The root of these kinds of alienation was that of human nature. The hot pursuit of fortune and fierce blind competition of capitalists aggravated the exploitation of workers and accelerated the operation of a huge machine—industrialized society, and then speeded up the alienation of human nature. Concerned that, Lawrence cried through Connie’s words in Lady Chatterley’s Lover: “Oh, my God, what mankind has turned themselves into? And what the leaders of humanity have turned their fellow men into? They have eliminated their human nature. At present, people can’t love anymore.” (D. H. Lawrence，2004：214) In capitalists’ eye, the existence of workers was only the insignificant accidental phenomenon. Workers were mere tools to produce coal and even could be exchanged for animals and merchandise! And also in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the Prince of Wales even thought of exchanging harts for miners at a certain price. “Although miners maybe can’t adorn the garden like harts, they are much more profitable.” Gerald in Woman in Love cancelled all sorts of welfare ruthlessly, and thrust out grey haired workers like a pile of junk. During the process of industrialization, trees were cut down, large scales of forests and farmlands were destroyed and rivers were polluted. The industrial civilization caused great damage to our previous lovely and friendly environment. The alienation of Mother Nature and hideous scenes of Midlands are clearly described in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. “Connie was accustomed to Kensington or the Scotch hills or the Sussex downs: that was her England. With the stoicism of the young she took in the utter, soulless ugliness of the coal-and-iron Midlands at a glance, and left it at what it was: unbelievable and not to be thought about. From the rather dismal rooms at Wragby she heard the rattle-rattle of the screens at the pit, the puff of the winding-engine, the clink-clink of shunting trucks, and the hoarse little whistle of the colliery locomotives. Tevershall pit-bank was burning, had been burning for years, and it would cost thousands to put it out. So it had to burn. And when the wind was that way, which was often, the house was full of the stench of this sulphurous combustion of the earth's excrement. But even on windless days the air always smelt of something under-earth: sulphur,
4
外语学院本科毕业论文
iron, coal, or acid. And even on the Christmas roses the smuts settled persistently, incredible, like black manna from the skies of doom.”(D. H. Lawrence, 2004：10-11) And also Connie’s car trip through the mining and iron Midlands in Chapter Eleven is a best example of Lawrence’s denunciation of the industrial England: “The car ploughed uphill through the long squalid straggle of Tevershall, the blackened brick dwellings, the black slate roofs glistering their sharp edges, the mud black with coal-dust, the pavement wet an black. It was as if dismalness had soaked through everything. The utter negation of natural beauty, the utter absence of the instinct for shapely beauty which every bird and beast has, the utter death of the human intuitive faculty was appalling.” (D. H. Lawrence, 2004：155)
2.2 The Alienation of Sexual Psychology
The theme about alienation of human nature can be found in large quantities of works, but the alienation of sexual psychology is an exclusively unique theme of Lawrence’s works. His works in which the bisexual relationship was described to unveil the repression, distortion and then alienation of sexual psychology by modern industrial civilization query the progress of industrial civilization. In an industrialized society, “sex” becomes an ugly word unexpectedly and inscrutably. What a pity! Lawrence thinks what should be blamed for the defamation of sex is the progress of science and social civilization: Science holds a mysterious hatred against beauty, because beauty can’t adjust it to the causality logic. Society also holds a mysterious hatred against beauty, since beauty is always against the rosy plan of making money. And Lawrence regards sex and beauty as consistent and inseparable: “Actually, sex and beauty is a unity, just like flame and fire; sex and beauty is an integrity, just as life and conscience.” （D. H. Lawrence，2004：2-5）
2.2.1 Oedipus Complex
At the superficial level, the emotional chasm between Mr. and Mrs. Morel in Sons and Lovers directly contributes to Paul’s Oedipus complex; however, the underlying cause of emotional chasm is the ferocity of capitalist mechanical civilization. In industrial era, mine workers worked in the damp and dark mines from dawn till darkness, risking their lives in every minute. Under so cruel working condition, they gradually became rude, rough and unreasonable. Only indulgence in alcohol could be a relief from the exhausted miserable real life, and only the rough and coarse vulgarities could be the output of their hatred in the deep
5
外语学院本科毕业论文
hearts. And these miners’ wives, with Mrs. Morel included, lived in ugly, shabby houses, worried about livelihoods. For them, life was nothing but filthy and poverty. Mrs. Morel despised her brutish and hard-drinking husband and became sick of struggle with poverty and ugliness and meanness—that’s their life. The extreme disappointment made Mrs. Morel shift all her love and passion to his son which brought about his spiritual and emotional illness. Paul couldn’t get rid of the specter of his mother on the marriage issue, and he connected lover with mother unconsciously. After experiencing continuous emotional crisis, he failed to find an ideal soul mate in the end.
2.2.2 Negligence of Bisexual Relationship
The negligence of man-and-women relationship is another aspect of the alienation of sexual psychology, which is mainly reflected in The Rainbow. When Ursula firstly met Anton, she found he was a passionate colonialist, but it didn’t let her down. What really disappointed Ursula was the failure of the bisexual relationship. When Ursula unleashed her strong resentment against colonial rule, Lawrence was actually expressing the idea that Anton should give priority to pursue the essence of life and to cultivate the vitality of life, to explore the beauty of man-and-woman relationship, not his colonial career.
2.2.3 Exhausted Mechanical Love and Rational Sexual Relationship
Exhausted mechanical love and rational sexual relationship are the two topics discussed in Woman in Love, and it is that the indifference that humanity results in exhausted mechanical love. Gerald is the typical character who is poisoned by industrial civilization. In his childhood, the lovely pure child was fond of nature and desirous of something original and crude. And when he grew up, he became an ambitious young man and visited a lot of places to pursue his ideal life. But later he came home again, frustrated by the cruelty of reality, with his hope evaporating. He began to accept the reality and gradually became one part of it. As the embodiment of mechanical civilization, Gerald has an immense possessive desire. Disguised in the seemly strong outward appearance, he is extremely fragile inside. Frequently one kind of overwhelming inexpressible horror would jolt him out of his dreams. To fill the hollow spirit, he indulged himself into the pursuit of money and women, which turned out to be helpless and even deteriorate his schizophrenia and eventually lead to his suicide. Lawrence thinks that as the servants of industrialization, the capitalists ravage their
6
外语学院本科毕业论文
own human nature and become indifferent when participating in the process of ravages of machine towards workers. After alienated by industrialization, Gerald became indifferent and cruel towards workers and treated animals ruthlessly without even a streak of mercy. His lover, Gudrun is of the same kind. Although not that cruel as Gerald, she is typically indifferent. Lawrence demonstrates that indifferent people’s sex is bond to be a kind of mechanical impulse which is exhausted and unrenewable and will necessarily cause the dissolution of the sexual relationship.
And in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, after that Mr. Chatterley was badly hurt by the bomb on the battle field and his lower half of his body, from the hips down, paralyzed forever and lost the ability to generate, Mr. and Mrs. Chatterley’s life sank into a miserable situation. However, their marriage got worse after they went back to Wragby hall, the legacy from Clifford’s father in the autumn of 1920 which was described as a soulless place of the coal-and iron Midland. Connie loved nature very much, and she was full of life and vigor and fond of thinking, while Clifford was quite indifferent and snobbish. Money was more important to him than love. He preferred to live a spiritless life and enjoyed the feeling of being rich and prestigious. What was extremely ridiculous was that he even agreed with his wife on having a baby with another man and the only precondition was the man should belong to the upper society. Clifford was a phenomenon, a common phenomenon in the industrialized society, but not a normal human being. Connie just had to look after Clifford and Clifford just need Connie’s company. The love between them is exhausted and mechanical.
3. Harmonious Bisexual Relationship
D. H. Lawrence devoted all his life to exploring and studying the relation between man and woman through his literary creation and he insisted that an ideal balanced relationship between man and women was the practical solution to the problems brought by the capitalistic industrial civilization.
3.1 The Understanding of Sex by Lawrence
Firstly, the prerequisite of building up brand-new balanced bisexual relationship is the correct and full understanding of sex. Sex is the basis point of balanced man-and-woman relationship. In Lawrence’s eye, compared with the cold and abstract rationality, lively life is
7
外语学院本科毕业论文
far more precious. “Nothing is more important than life”“,life is everything”. And the core of life is sex and intuition. “The most basic thing of human is sex and reproductive life—strong instinct and flowing intuition depend on sex and reproductive life.” Thus sex does not represent “filthy”, “shame”, or “guilty”, but a symbol of “nature”, “health” and “sheer vitality”. Lawrence had praised it as “sunshine of a gloomy day”, “Every time we feel it flow through our bodies warmly and naturally like sunshine, we would appreciate it.”(D. H. Lawrence, 1992: 34) Lawrence suggests that the universe is an entity of all lives and each single life is a component of the entity, with an important part—human being included. Man and woman are the two polar of the universe, and bisexual relationship is the greatest and most intrinsic one among all human relationships—the basis of all other relationships. Sex is not the opposite side of virtue. On the contrary, “the only virtue is letting man adhere to his masculinity and woman adhere to her femininity and make their relationship formed naturally. For both man and woman, it is the life itself”. (D. H. Lawrence, 1988: 217) Lawrence hopes people consider “sex”—the serious and intrinsic thing honestly and virtuously and make sexual relationship valuable and healthy, not degradation. He calls upon people to treat the existence and desire of sex with brave and sincere attitude. Therefore in the preamble of Lady Chatterley’s Lover Lawrence proclaimed that it is a genuine and healthy novel that people need at present. (D. H. Lawrence, 1992: 100)
3.2 The Combination of Soul and Body
Secondly, the bisexual balance demonstrated by Lawrence refers to the genuine integration and fusion of two independent and integral people’s souls and bodies. The combination of soul and body can’t focus on one side and neglect the other. In addition, the way of the fusion isn’t conquest, occupation and sacrifice either, but the balanced state of each side. The contrast between mind and body can be seen in the dissatisfaction that each has with Connie’s and Mellors’s previous relationships in Lady Chatterley’s Lover: Constance's lack of intimacy with her husband who is \"all mind\" and Mellors' choice to live apart from his wife due to her \"brutish\" sexual nature. These dissatisfactions lead them into a relationship that builds very slowly and is based upon tenderness, physical passion, and mutual respect. As the relationship between Lady Chatterley and Mellors develops, they learn more about the interrelation of the mind and the body; she learns that sex is more than a
8
外语学院本科毕业论文
shameful and disappointing act, and he learns about the spiritual challenges that come from physical love. After Connie and Mellors begin to truly communicate with each other more and know each other more, till at last they achieve a harmonious merging both physically and spiritually. During this whole process, they grow into joint participants in a mutually transformative relationship. Connie reborn and this was attributed to Mellor’s masculinity and femininity, the dualism of his character. Neither Mellors nor Connie was dominant in the sexual relationship and they gradually achieved the combination of body and soul. On the basis of the integration and fusion, body and soul can be combined into one—the state called interstellar balance: “Man must combine himself with other people forever, that is not losing oneself but acquire ego in a mysterious balance and refinement, just like a star which keep balance with other stars. (D. H. Lawrence, 1987: 195) This combination wouldn’t strangle the individual independence and block individual development, but would give it a boost in a much better balanced environment. Richard Hoggart argues that the main subject of Lady Chatterley's Lover is not the sexual passages that were the subject of such debate but the search for integrity and wholeness. And key to this integrity is cohesion between the mind and the body for \"body without mind is brutish; mind without body...is a running away from our double being.\"(Hoggart. R, 1961)
4 The Salvation Conscience Revealed in Lawrence’s Novels
For a long time，the critics thought the main reason that Lawrence had become an outstanding contemporary writer did not lie in his innovation in the art of novel, but in his exploration of various problems concerned alienation under the capitalist industrial civilization, especially in his deep exploration of the man-and-woman relationship, which can be found in almost all his works. Lawrence witnessed the hypocrisy and the decline of the British industrial society in the twentieth century, believing that science and machinery were responsible for the destruction of the civilization and thought that civilization could be completely overthrown by human instinct. Only by restoring to the harmonious interconnection of body and soul between man and woman can the body killed by Plato, Christ and machinery come back to life. The adjustment of the sexual relationship can be regarded as the key to regenerating life and spirit. So the adjustment of sexual relationship,
9
外语学院本科毕业论文
the loving theme between man and woman, the pursuit of the healthy sexual relationship and the probe into the ideal marriage all very naturally become Lawrence’s focus in his writing. Sons and Lovers criticizes the old abnormal sexual love which focused sole either on soul or on body. Both Rainbow and Women in Love focus on the probe into the new and perfect sexual relationship and the ideal marriage—a star-like balancing relationship. However, Lady Chatterley’s Lover not only intensifies the loving theme, but also reveals the saving effects of the sexual love on the alienation of the twentieth century. Lawrence’s main strategy of tackling sexual problems is to take the harmony and star-like balance as a remedy for the exhausted and lifeless man-woman relationship as well as the alienated psychology. Based on this, in Lawrence’s works he tries to save the waste land of humanity. In a letter to his friend, Lawrence frankly writes: “I sincerely believe we can save England from the present dispirited situation only by adjusting the sexual relationship and making it healthy and free.” At the ends of The Rainbow and Sons and Lovers, both Paul and Ursula face a new and prospective future. Although they rose and fell in the aliened society, they seemly have already broken away from the past, faced with bright probabilities to acquire happiness because of exploration of sex. Among these bonds and novel sex salvation strategy, it could be easily found that there is an interesting discipline, that is, Lawrence unprecedentedly survey the private issue in a public level and bring it into public area to draw public attention to sex salvation. Lawrence’s sex salvation strategy is not only a narrow remedy for the unhappiness of miserable marriage but also an ark to save beautiful humanity from the raging flood of industrial civilization. The ban on The Rainbow is not because of only the bold and undisguised description about sex but also explosion of the decadence of capitalist countries in the war. And the publication disturbance of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the theme of which is sex salvation, is also caused by not only the so-called obscenity but also the plot that a noble lady elopes with a humble park keeper which defies and overthrows the English class consciousness. On the surface, Lawrence takes sex as the salvation strategy; however the underling aim is to break down the iron tower made of industrial civilization and hypocritical morality and save people out of living predicament.
5. Conclusion
10
外语学院本科毕业论文
Lawrence’s works concentrate on the relationship between man and man, man and nature, unmask the evil of industrial civilization which represses and twists human nature, aliens human relationship, bisexual relationship in particular. Therefore, he thinks, the only way to solve the numerous and complicated social problems is to rebuild healthy harmonious and balanced man-woman relationship. And then human will reacquire vitality of life and the ultimate harmony of man and man, man and society, man and nature. In Lawrence’s opinion, industrialization castrate mankind, especially men, just like a sharp sword, ripping original natural vigor of life off them. No matter whether Lawrence’s sex salvation strategy is appropriate, and no matter whether the ideal balanced bisexual relationship can have an ideal effect, his pursuit of all kinds of balanced relationships has its positive side：He bitterly criticizes the cruel ravages of modern industrial civilization on humanity. He ferrets out how mechanized civilization devastates human nature whose core is sexual psychology, and also how industrialization ruins the balanced man-and-woman relationship. Although it is an definite exaggeration that takes harmony bisexual relationship only as a remedy for adjusting and settling all the social problems, one flaw can not obscure the splendor of a jade. And the emphasis on harmonious bisexual relationship—the combination of soul and body and the praise of the vitality and vigor reflected in sex is absolutely credible and estimable
11
外语学院本科毕业论文
References
Hoggart, R. Introduction to Lady Chatterley's Lover [M]. 1961(2)
D. H. 劳伦斯. 查特莱夫人的情人 [M]. 赵苏苏 译. 人民文学出版社，2004: 214 D. H. 劳伦斯. 性与可爱——劳伦斯散文选 [M]. 姚暨荣 译. 花城出版社，1988: 217 D. H. 劳伦斯. 安宁的现实——劳伦斯哲理散文选 [M]. 姚暨荣 译. 三联书店，1992:
100
D. H. 劳伦斯. 恋爱中的妇女 [M]. 梁一三 译. 中国文联出版公司，1987: 195 D. H. 劳伦斯. 安宁的现实——劳伦斯哲理散文选 [M]. 姚暨荣 译. 三联书店，1992:
34
D. H. 劳伦斯. 查特莱夫人的情人. [M]. 上海: 上海外语教育出版社，2004. (1):10-11 D. H. 劳伦斯. 查特莱夫人的情人. [M]. 上海: 上海外语教育出版社，2004. (1):155
12
因篇幅问题不能全部显示，请点此查看更多更全内容