Seeking Paradise In The Tragic World

D. H. Lawrence is one of the most original and controversial British writers of the early 20th century. Women in Love has always been at the top of literary critics'reading lists and lastingly debated on its unique literary values, artistic styles and multiple analyses of themes by scholars and critics all over the world since its publication.The basic theme of Women in Love is that modern industrial society with mechanical civilization repressed and distorted human nature, destroyed human relationships and this led to alienation and dehumanization of people's life and love spiritually and physically. Lawrence was trying to seek paradise in the tragic world of Women in Love to seek for the ideal interpersonal relationship, especially relationship between man and woman. The separated and alienated individual in Women in Love aligned with powerful force of death in a dying world which was filled with darkness and destructiveness. It can only be understood in the context of the destructive social force, and the pressures which produce it, as his ideology and his war experience. During war, he became more and more isolated, and his personal psych and body endured agony, at that time he finally formed his ideology of Women in Love.Lawrence makes Gerald represent society and Gerald's death is the death of the modern industrial capitalism and the society. Lawrence expected that there would be a rebirth and a renewed life after Gerald's death. In fact, Gerald's death was really represented as Lawrence's hopes of a renewed life and his expectation of a new world in England and Europe.Birkin, as Lawrence's ideal model, is to set forth his solution for people in the dying world of Women in Love how to survive the problematic industrialized western society and the western capitalism in the twentieth century.However, in the world of Women in Love, the powerfully destructive force of death together with the destructive and corruptive social force seems to have triumphed the modern industrial society, the tragic characters can do nothing but wrestle with the force of death– the only choice is only between life and death, the only solution seems to be conceivable to Lawrence is to survive themselves by seeking a renewed life and a paradise by means of perfect human relationships, especially men-women relationship.