An Ecofeminist Analysis Of Lady Chatterley's Lover

D. H. Lawrence is one of the most controversial writers in the twentieth-century English literature. Of all his fictional works, Lady Chatterley's Lover has incurred the fiercest censure. It concerns not just with the love affair between Connie and Mellors but with the author's effort at figuring out a way for western culture to wean themselves away from conventional social and hypocritical sexual mores.This thesis aims to reinterpret the book through the viewpoint of ecofeminist criticism, revealing its ecological meaning, the feminist consciousness and the author's profound reflection on the relationship between living things which include human, animals and plants. The adoption of ecofeminist literary criticism has broadened the investigative perspective and helped to gain a more comprehensive understanding of this novel. This thesis is composed of five parts including the introduction and conclusion.The introduction sketches briefly the novelist, his major works, and literature review of Lady Chatterley's Lover together with a brief review of the theory of ecofeminism. By reviewing Lawrence's ideas about nature and woman, readers can see that Lawrence is a writer who is much concerned with the proper relationship between man and woman, human and nonhuman world which bears the same relation with ecofeminism.In chapter one, the author will focus on three kinds of links—the symbolic, experiential and the status, to point out that nature and woman are interconnected and closely related. It works to emphasize the identification of woman and nature—they are mutually represented, mutually supported, experience the same hard humiliating burden and bear the same inferior and subordinated position.In Chapter Two, the analysis is centered on dismantling the patriarchal oppression in the novel. First, the revenge of nature deconstructs the patriarchal means of domination—machine. By careful and comprehensive depicting, Lawrence reveals that if human beings are too self-centered and contemptuous over nature and other beings in nature, human beings will inevitably be punished by nature mercilessly. Second, the deconstruction of patriarchal logic of domination is analyzed mainly through Connie's personal rebellion. Connie boldly casts off her deadness and inhumanness husband and the hypocrisy of Michaelis to pursue the living and warm-hearted gamekeeper Mellors for happiness which coincides with Lawrence's life tenet: that Eden-like life can be achieved by women if they persist in their struggle against the impotent social life to strive for a new independent rebirth.Chapter Three, by means of ecofeminist multivocality dialogue and the ethic of care analysis, tries to prove that Lawrence's ideal world is a holistic and diverse world with feminine principle and ecological principle. Lawrence finds the paradise for his pair—Connie and Mellors escaping from the social mechanism and industrialization, dehumanization and deterioration. They find their passionate love under the shelter of nature, become energetic, vital and confident from their physical contact and extend their care practices to include everything. Therefore the exploration of the fusion of the ideal relationship among nature, woman and man can be fulfilled.The conclusion part, by making a summary of the thesis, gives the affirmative as well as the deficient evaluation about Lawrence's ecofeminist consciousness. It comes to point out the significance in applying the theory of ecofeminism to our lives and some feasible and effective ways to be taken to improve the relationship among nature, woman and man.