On Father-son Relationship In Arnold Bennett's Clayhanger

Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) is a renowned realist writer in the English literary circles in the early twentieth century. Despite his widely known reputation when alive, for a time he was seldom known after his death. After the publication of The Old Wives'Tale (1908), Bennett said that he would"never be able to do better". However, to his great surprise, most of the British and American critics thought highly of Clayhanger (1910) to which the scholars at home and abroad have paid more attention. However, although a few critics have referred to the intergenerational problems in the novel, they did not proceed to probe into the profound implications of social history within the literary text and its social and ethical meanings behind the intergenerational problems.Intergenerational ethics is a new dimension of ethics which is an ethical form reflecting social relationship and social structure from the vertical angle, i.e. the angle of intergenerational relationship. In a broader sense, intergenerational relationship refers to a kind of societal generational relationship including family intergenerational relationship; in a narrower sense, it is a kind of vertical family relationship based on blood bonds and involving two or more generations. Family intergenerational ethics is just the ethical norms to adjust this kind of intergenerational relationship. Clayhanger, with the father-son relationship as the main thread, describes the life of late Victorian Five Towns people and discloses the social contradictions and intellectual and cultural crises hidden in the crisis of the then traditional family generational ethics.The thesis aims to interpret the theme of family intergenerational ethics in Clayhanger from such three aspects as the son's identification with, rebellion against and subversion of the order represented by his Victorian father, with"order"as the keyword, the father-son relationship as the penetrating point, and social vicissitudes of late Victorian England as the historical context, hence the presentation of family intergenerational ethics in the social transformation. After introducing the literature review and research value in the"Introduction". The thesis first analyzes the son's submission to and compromise with his father. Under the banner of Victorian serious morality, to some extent, the son identifies Victorian order and authority represented by his father. And then it focuses on the conflicts between father and son and their reasons. And their conflicts mean the son's resistance against and estrangement from the order and authority symbolized by his father. Lastly, it is centered on the son's subversion of the ethical and moral order represented by his father. The son subverts his father's miserly way of life and consumption and his selfish and domineering father image."Conclusion"heightens the relationship between father and son, pointing out that this relationship is not only the intergenerational conflicts but also the conflicts of ethical order in the old and new societies symbolized by the relationship. The Industrial Revolution reached its peak in the Victorian age and what Clayhanger has revealed to us is just the intergenerational contradictions and conflicts at the climax of the Industrial Revolution by an account of the evolution of the father-son relationship.