Alienation In Sons And Lovers By D.H. Lawrence

As one of the twentieth century's most important novelists, Lawrence remains a significant force in modern fiction, both for his artistic work and his innovative vision. Coming from a poor labor-class family, Lawrence is gifted in observing human nature. One eternal theme threading his work is the exposure of the disastrous influence the modern industrial civilization had on human nature, proposing the necessary connect between human beings. The modern civilization is established at the cost of human nature. High industrialization of the society has made people depend more and more on ration, will and efforts to possess a higher social status and success. Thus, consciously or unconsciously, people have repressed or ignored the necessity of emotional life. Their flesh and spirit tend to split. Modern civilization has deprived people of their happiness and has caused the widely spread sense of alienation among people in modern time. The specific presentation of alienation is the conflict with people and difficult in understanding each other, and the loss of one's real nature.What this thesis focuses on is Lawrence's accusation of modern industrial civilization and the sound presentation is alienation. This essay tries to analyze the alienated relations in Sons and Lovers. By demonstrating the concept of alienation, this discussion hopes to provide an objective comment on Walter Morel, Mrs. Morel and Paul. By adopting alienation theory, readers can know the destructive power the industrialization has and the alienated relation in a working-class family.Chapter One deals with the concept of alienation, containing the precise meaning of alienation and alienation theme in literary works, Marx's contribution to alienation theory, and the alienation concept in literary world, namely in the works of Franz Kafka and T. S. Eliot, etc. In this way, it provides a theoretical basis for the discussion of the alienated relation in the Morel family.Chapter Two is to examine the alienated relations mainly from the perspective of estrangement from others, in other word, the conflict with people. In the discussion, the readers get to know that the characters in Sons and Lovers are largely alienated from others through modern civilization, especially the Morel members. From the day they got married, Morel has never made him understood neither by his wife nor children. Their married life is a battle and conflict with each other, and Morel more and more gets alienated from his wife. He has difficulty in expressing himself in front of the children. All the children hate him and treat him a stranger. Morel is alienated from his children. Morel is alienated from his family and is an outsider of this family. The dealing with his wife and children is always a fierce battle, hurting each one both physically and psychologically. Mrs. Morel is alienated from her husband, her neighbors, largely because of her middle-class supremacy and her frustrated aspirations in life. Paul, the second son of the unhappy couple, is obviously estranged from his father and his women and even from his mother because of his abnormal situation at home. By adopting the alienation theory, the present author will go deeply to analyze the alienated relations of the Morel family from others.The alienated relations from themselves of the Morel members will be discussed in Chapter Three. They are not only alienated from the outside world, but also alienated from themselves. Another aspect of alienation--estrangement from oneself will be presented in this part. Estrangement from oneself means that one has lost his real nature. The Morel family members are common people, they are greatly distorted. It is a tragedy in the family, and it is also a tragedy in the society, like Lawrence himself states in a letter to Garnett:"It is a tragedy, and I tell you I have written a great book. It's the tragedy of thousands of young men in England […]"(Moorer 160).The thesis concludes that the alienation in the Morel family, from the perspective of estrangement from others and estrangement from oneself interact with each other. The former is from the social environment and deepens the latter, while the latter demonstrates and echoes the former. The two presentation of alienation illustrate the distorted relations in the civilized society.