Lawrence's View Of Nature In The Rainbow

With the tremendous development of modern civilization, the degradation of the natural environment, the tense relation between nature and human beings,'nature'has become one of the chief concerns all around the world. Ecocriticism which has prospered since 1990s, examines the topic of nature in literary works, interprets the inner relation between humans and the nature and explores into the effective ways to alleviate the ecological crisis. Under this circumstance, it is of great significance to reinterpret classical writers and their works from the perspective of ecocriticism.David Herbert Lawrence is one of the greatest British writers in the early 20th century. His works remain being researched by numerous readers from different perspectives owing to their peculiarity and deep connotation. However, for a long time, Lawrence researchers draw more attention to the theme of sexuality, class consciousness and religion, and few people have noticed the description of nature in those works. In reality, Lawrence is a writer with strong ecological consciousness. As early as in the late 19th and early 20th century, he has realized the degradation of the natural environment and the evil result from it. The issue of human-nature relation has been mentioned in more than one of his classical works.This thesis discusses Lawrence's view of nature in The Rainbow from the perspective of environmental ethics. Lawrence's view of nature is elaborated in terms of human-nature relation and nature-culture relation. In the relation between nature and human beings, Lawrence realized the intrinsic value of nature as well as the inseparable relation between mankind and the natural world. In the relation between nature and culture, Lawrence sees deeply into the damage of nature caused by the rapid development of human civilization especially industrial civilization and its effect on human nature. Lawrence believes it is the industrialized society that results in the alienation of human nature, turning vital and energetic individuals into thoughtless and passionless walking corpses.Lawrence suggests his own solution of this problem, that is, the recovery of "blood consciousness"in humans through close association with the natural world to achieve"individual fulfillment". Just like environmental ethicists call for a change of world view to alleviate the conflict between humans and nature, Lawrence attempts to solve the crisis of nature in a psychological way.