Degradation And Confusion

In Lawrence's The Rainbow and Women in Love, human nature revealed in male characters has presented an obvious trend of degeneration and weakening, which was brought out by way of illustrating the degradation and confusion of their concept of love in the two novels. The dissertation is intended to explore the degradation and confusion of male characters' concept of love during social transformation. In The Rainbow, male characters' concept of love experienced the degradation from the traditional and instinctive love to the willful love of "Adam" and reached its bottom in Anton's animal desire, which was bereft of human traits. It was a necessary course of degradation brought out by the fast industrialized society. In the sequel Women in Love, male characters attempted to redefine love and resume love's original beauty so as to salvage love from its degradation, however, their attempt was not only a failure, but caused their confusion about love. They were the exponents of the mechanism, and love was mechanically regarded as the possession of woman and love and care was women's function to them—the central piece of the machine; or they were the insistent rebels of traditional love, however, they were only lost in confusion about love when the traditional standard was broken up and their new criterion hadn't been set up yet. Their redefinition of love was disillusioned in the reality, which was more confusion than salvation of love. It proved that the concept of love was in degradation and confusion with the transformation of the society and there were no possibility of salvaging love from its degradation and confusion. The transformation and confusion of male characters' concept of love was Lawrence's exploring and considering his own problems, since he was also confused about love.The thesis included four chapters: Chapter One defines "degradation" and "confusion" in the text and illustrates the relation between the two processes; Chapter Two explores the course of degradation of concept of love in The Rainbow, Chapter Three reveals the confusion about love in Women in Love when tradition was lost; Chapter Four concludes the thesis.