The Call Of Resuscitation Of Humanity

David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930) is one of the greatest and the most controversial figures in the 20th century English literature. Leavis, the famous English critic, evaluates that "Lawrence is the greatest creative novelist of his generation" (Leavis 18). The theme in many of his works is to criticize the destruction that the so-called industrial civilization causes to nature and humanity. Lawrence thinks that the industrial civilization destroys nature, brings about society disasters, intensifies class contradictions, and causes human's life attitude of utilitarianism and values of commercialism, and all these finally result in the separation of human and nature, and the loss of close relationships of human-other and human-nature, which also betrays human's inmost thoughts. He inquires into the inner world of human being profoundly and persistently, and he believes that only through setting up harmonious sexual relationship between men and women and reverting the humanity can it achieve the harmonious society.Lady Chatterley's Lover is Lawrence's most controversial novel, and perhaps the first serious masterpiece in literature history to explore human sexuality in explicit details. The novel portrays the oppression on humanity from the capitalist industrialism in details, exposing the hypocrisy and selfishness of capitalist marriage. Besides, Lawrence tries to revive complete humanity through establishing harmonious relationships between body and soul, human and nature. The novel contains rich ethical thoughts, so the author of this thesis tries to study the complicated ethical relations in Lady Chatterley's Lover from the perspective of the ethical literary criticism. The ethical literary criticism is a research method based on the literary works, aiming to analyze literature and the ethical phenomenon in literature. Li Dingqing, one of the Chinese experts on ethical literary criticism, advocates that critics should analyze the ethical thoughts contained in works from the relationships of human-society, human-self, human-nature and human-other. This thesis has studied the novel profoundly and delicately from the relationships of human-nature, human-society, and human-other especially the relationship between men and women, to present Lawrence's deep concern for human destiny.This thesis can be divided into six chapters to analyze the ethical thoughts contained in Lady Chatterley's Lover.Chapter one is an introduction of this thesis. The author of this thesis firstly introduces the background of writing this thesis; then a brief introduction of Lawrence and the novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, containing the life experience of Lawrence, the main themes of his novels, and the plot of Lady Chatterley's Lover. The last part of this chapter is the framework of the thesis. Chapter two is about literature review and theoretical base. This chapter focuses on the researches of ethical literary criticism at home and abroad, and studies of Lady Chatterley's Lover from different aspects.Chapter three analyzes the ethical relationship between human and nature. The author of this thesis presents Lawrence's ruthless criticism on the industrialization and his love for nature through analyzing the description of the destruction of nature by human and the close relationship with nature of Mellors and Connie in the novel. Lawrence's idealism of establishing the harmonious relationship between human and nature and returning to nature to revive the vital human nature can also be clearly known.Chapter four concentrates on the ethical relationship of human-society reflected in Lady Chatterley's Lover. The analysis of Clifford and the miners displays Lawrence's bitter criticism on the industrialized society. And the analysis of Mellors, who preserves his tenderness and humanity in the dirty society, presents Lawrence's ethical thought of reviving the humanity.Chapter five discusses Lawrence's love ethic of man-woman by analyzing the ethical relationships between Connie and Clifford, Connie and Michaelis, Connie and Mellors in the novel. Lawrence criticizes the modern unhealthy relationship between men and women, that is the relationship of the split between body and soul, and he advocates the perfect union of body and soul to achieve the harmonious relationship between men and women.Chapter six is the conclusion of the thesis. This chapter summarizes the content and the significance of the thesis and the great literary achievement of Lawrence. Lady Chatterley's Lover is full of ethical thoughts. Through analyzing the ethical relationships of human-nature, human-society and man-woman contained in the novel, people can know Lawrence's ethical thoughts deeply and clearly. Lawrence shows concerns for the destiny of human being, and he advocates establishing the mutually-beneficial relationship between man and nature, the healthy and positive relationship between man and society, and the harmonious sexual relationship between men and women in order to revive the humanity. Although his thought of achieving the perfect union of body and soul between men and women to save the whole degenerating human is too unearthly, it also has some heuristic meaning for the construction of the harmonious society.