Laughing Medusa

Lady Chatterley's Lover has been a controversial novel by Lawrence ever since its publication. It tells of the love affair between Constance Chatterley and the gamekeeper—Mellors, through whom Lawrence suggests that only by the way of Lawrentian harmony can save industrial life from the danger. In contrast with Connie, Bertha Coutts becomes the woman who deconstructs the harmony.This thesis is to justify what the literary criticism has neglected so far, to show the true marginalized woman through the aspect of deconstructive reading, to give the other a chance of revealing and to deconstruct the pseudo harmony constructed by Lawrence through Bertha Coutts. Inheriting Simone De Beauvoir's and Kate Millett's thought, the thesis analyzes Bertha's deconstructive power in Lady Chatterley's lover through the aspects of patriarchal discourse, female subjective consciousness, absence, and difference as well.Firstly, Bertha is deprived of language in the novel. She is constructed by the mode of patriarchal discourse, reducing to a character who is absent in the written novel. Language is a double-edged knife. When conveying the message, it also covers some truth distorted by the social reality. Bertha, therefore, can be understood as a distorted figure, and as a nontransparent character stained by patriarchal language. She is not only narrated, replaced and symbolized by the mode of patriarchal language, but also endowed with Mellors' subjective intention, and is therefore, twisted by him.Secondly, Bertha is taken as a Medusa who is a devil in men's eyes, but a symbol of female wisdom in some of legend. Bertha shares the same characteristics such as activity, resistance and female subjectiveness with Medusa, which afflicts Mellors all the time as it makes Mellors and the whole village Tevershall defines her as a wanton, a lesbian-like figure through the patriarchal language and thoughts.At last, according to the author's studies, the thesis discovers that there are two types of women in Lawrence's novel. One is the good woman; the other type is the bad woman. The good woman is humble, submissive and mild, but the bad woman such as Bertha is independent, self- conscious, and active. Lawrence himself dislikes Bertha; therefore, he buries Bertha under the patriarchal language and makes her absent in the novel.The thesis thus indicates how Bertha silently decenters the phallus centrism and the pseudo harmony constructed by Lawrence. Although she is absent in the written novel, she replaces the position of Connie by founding a new sign—différance. She not only takes the place of the opposite by her own will, but also attacks the dualism by her subjectiveness, smashing the pseudo harmony between Connie and Mellors. The ordered, deep rooted patriarchy was deconstructed, and the shine cover of the patriarchy was shucked off by Bertha at last.