Back To Nature

D. H. Lawrence is one of the greatest English novelists in the 20th century. His masterpiece, Women in Love, is considered to be the most profound and obscure one among his novels, but at the same time, the very representative of his highest achievement in novel creation. The thesis interprets Women in Love from three perspectives, namely, natural ecology, social ecology and spiritual ecology, which reveal the unbalanced ecology respectively through three basic relationships: man-nature relationship, men-women relationship and man-self relationship. Only when these basic relationships are in harmony with each other can humankind build a beautiful garden with balanced ecosystem.Chapter one analyzes Lawrence's natural ecology view embodied in the novel. He gives a magnificent description of the natural world and thinks deeply of the relationship between man and nature, which reveals his deep love and unique understanding of nature. Chapters two and three explore Lawrence's concern for social ecology and spiritual ecology embodied in the novel. Lawrence directly criticizes the destruction brought about by the Industrial Revolution, showing his typical ideas of anti-anthropocentrism. Industrial civilization not only destroys beautiful nature, but also ruins humanity and causes painful split of human relationship. People can not achieve self-fulfillment and consequently lose themselves in life. Lawrence holds that man is the child of nature and cannot be isolated from nature. Therefore, human beings should return to nature and set up harmonious man-nature relationship to save themselves.