The Modern People In Search Of Soul

As the most unique and controversial writer in English literature, D. H. Laurence has been studied from many different aspects. However, the research of the male images in his novels is still far from enough. The series of male images serve the inherent connections and logical development in Laurence's ten novels, which form an integrated whole and from which the writer's artistic pursuit can be traced. This thesis, through a comprehensive analysis of the male images in these novels, interprets the splitting and losing of men's self, explores their searching for an integrated self and attempts to find the origin of the searching from the writer's life experiences and social-cultural backgrounds.The varied male images represent Laurence's spiritual exploration. The contradiction between the industrial civilization and the nature results in the dissimilation and splitting of men's self, which causes men to suffer from the lack of identity, the separation of flesh and soul and the mingle of "fixation" and "revolt". After a long and tortuous searching for an integrated self from the family to the society, from love of the opposite sex to the friendship of their own sex, from rationality to instinct, men finally achieve a harmony and unity between people and between man and the nature. The splitting of men's self originates in Laurence's own misbalance and the historical confrontation between the tradition and the modern times. Laurence's description and redemption of the modern people, with strong personal tint and idealist color though, awake in people a concern to their real self and an expand of their own vitality.