Found That Life Will Lose A Life

This study focuses on the female images in three great works: Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native(1878), Thodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie(1900), D.H. Lawrence, Women in love(1921). By analyzing the three modern female images of Eustacia, Carrie and Gudrun in three different period, and interpretating intentions of the three male writes who create them, this study tries to discuss the relationship between female' s desire and male's crisis in the Capitalist consumption society. The emphases are: analyzing the attaching image of female under the male writers in the history with the feminism, the influence of the awakening of the female desire towards the emergence of capitalism and consumerism, the anti-effect of female on male authority in the metropolitan civilization as well as the pressure and crisis of male, the destiny of female as the appendant object.This thesis includes three parts. In the first part, it analyzes the female image through the text. In T he Return of the Native, the emphasis lies on illustrating Eustacia's characteristics which are different from the "family angel", analyzing her vanity and reveal the nature the vanity as the enterprise of becoming a great woman. In Sister Carrie, the emphasis lies on the temptation she faced and her understanding and adaptation ability for the city life, which is the ultimate reason for her substantial success. However, when Carrie has owned everything Eustacia wants, she found the emptiness of this pursuit. Gudrun in Women in Love further manifests the nature of female enterprise: envying towards freedom belonging to male, dissatisfying with limitations loading on female and longing for the power and creativity belong to male, which was interpretated as phallic jealousness by Freud. Under Lawrence, this feeling is the main reason leading to death of Gerald. It further led to the analysis of narcissism of female.In the second part, this study focuses on the intention of writer, to interpretate the characteristics of female under the male writers by analyzingtheir idea towards the female desire and modern metropolitan civiliztion. By comparing the heroines in The Return of the Native and Wuthering Heights, this part reveals the appending position of female and lack of creativity under the male writers. By comparing The Lady's Paradise of Zola and Sister Carrie, this thesis interpretates the writer's tolerance towards female vanity and his understanding towards relationship between man and women in the consumerism society because he was influenced by mechanistic philosophy. By comparing two kinds of images admired and impugned by Lawrence, this part interpretates the writer's conception towards gender and marriage, his denial towards the intellectual women and his conception of perfect female: obedient, appending and admiring man like Ursula.In the third part, this study discusses the conceptions of three writers together to clarify the relation between female desire and male crisis in the modern consumerism society with the authority relation theory of Foucault. It further explores the competition between women striving for the attention of men by starting from the analysis of "lily" and "rose" as the female image in the writing of Hardy and combining with the understanding of other two writers. The authority relationship theory of Foucault could be used to explain the root of the female pursuit for the substance, and the relationship between men and women, to explain how women gain the satisfaction from men as the appendix of men and lost their own creativity. And last but not the least, this study goes deeply into the competition between men, to explain the crisis of men lie in society dominated by men in which men take the women as the their own belongings to prove their ability as to strive for the women but not lies in the female desire.