Font Size: a A A

A Semiotics Interpretation Of Symbols In Sons And Lovers

Posted on:2003-10-28Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y YangFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360092995180Subject:English Language and Literature
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
D. H. Lawrence is one of the great authors in early 20th-century Britain. The innovative nature of his novels lies in the way it traces the psychological development of his characters to show Britain's industrialization and in the crash of the modern civilization, people's restlessness, turbulence and eagerness.Lawrence's works reveal modern society's inhibition and twist to the natural humanity, reflecting the destruction of industrial civilization to the relationship between people and the harmony between people and nature. He saw it as a threat and a betrayal of the human spirit. He feels that it caused in many people the "utter death of the human intuitive faculty", killing off the emotions and the capacity to respond to natural beauty and the loveliness in other human beings.Therefore he suggests that a new society be built and new things be brought forth to people's life, asserting that everything must be pulled down or blown up so that a new start might be made. He is concerned always with human relationships, with the relation of the self to other selves, with the possibilities of fulfillment of personality, trying to build a kind of "perfect relationship between man and woman" to cast off the inhibition to the humanity caused by industrial civilization. This is a universal theme in Lawrence's novels, also a fundamental defect in Lawrence's world outlook. Inhuman industrialization does destroy the natural humanity, but only try to return the personality of people could not overcome the evils of capitalism.Sons and Lovers is an earlier works that reflects both penetrating social problem and psychological problem. The theme of the novel is Paul Morel's relationship with his mother and her influence upon his development. Though considered by some critics to be an autobiography, the novel was intended by Lawrence himself as a great book to show a tragedy of a youth who looks for emotional freedom that has been choked by the distorted relations between people. Lawrence tries to prove one of his ideas in this novel, that is the industrialization of England ruined people, weakened their humanity, and made them frustrated. People could be saved only by building a harmonious relationship between man and man and between man and woman. Otherwise they are doomed to death. As a result, Lawrence plays an emphasis on "blood consciousness" so as to make natural and perfect sexual relations for people to obtain a new life.This paper consists of five chapters.Chapter One is the introduction, which surveys the philosophy of Lawrence, the theme of the novel and the Semiotics approach that will be used for analyzing the meanings of symbols. Through the study of the main characters in the novel, the thesis indicates its theme in the criticism of the capitalist society.Chapter Two mainly deals with the symbol meanings of the main characters, or the semiosis of the main characters, to show the relationship between the husband and the wife, the relationship between sons and the mother and the relationship between Paul and his women. In this part, Peirce and B hler's semiotics theory are used to analyze the semiosis of the main characters. Mrs. Morel, the signifier is the mother, its signified is "the reason". Her reason ruins his husband and controls the emotion of her sons; The semiosis of Walter shows the process how an energetic handsome young man becomes an injured drunker. Miriam is a pure girl, but she is strongly affected by religious ideas so that she cannot give Paul a perfect love. In the process of seeking for a perfect love, Miriam is a split person. Contrary to Miriam, Clara is a woman who lives separately with her husband. She is passionate, but Paul thinks that they have nothing in common and casts her at last. Then Todorove's grammar approach is taken to give a comprehensive account to the relationship to offer a further study of the novel.Chapter Three will talk about the symbol meanings of the flowers (the semiosis of the flowers). In this novel, different flowers symbolize the three...
Keywords/Search Tags:Interpretation
PDF Full Text Request
Related items