"Poor Lad’s Daydream" Story

The Red and the Black (1830) written by French renowned writer of criticalrealistic Stendhal of the19th century, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) by the Britishcontroversial outstanding novelist D. H. Lawrence of the20th century and Tender Is theNight (1934) by American literary giant F. S. Fitzgerald of the early20th centurypossess a similar motif of poor lad s daydream. This thesis aims to explore thetraditional mode and modern evolution of poor lad s daydream story, as well as thereasons behind its evolution, taking these three novels as instances.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One gives a brief introduction to thethree writers and their masterpiece, and expounds the relevant theory and key termswhich facilitate the later analyses of the evolution of poor lad s daydream story.Chapter Two mainly analyzes the structure and characteristics of poor lad s daydreamstory in folklore. Chapter Three focuses on the evolving poor lad s daydream story inthree modern novels---Julien s daydream that is smashed, Mellors daydream that isnearly achieved, and Dick s daydream that is realized but lost again. Based on feministcriticism, the features of modern poor lad s daydream story is illustrated in ChapterFour. To begin with, the hero s attitude towards the heroines is not out of pure love.What s more, women bravely seek for their social status, successfully changing to theSubject from the Other. In addition, modern editions of poor lad s daydream storyreflect the three writers masculine anxiety, including Stendhal s slight confidence ofmasculine authority, Lawrence s anxiety of masculine authority and Fitzgerald scollapse of masculine authority. Chapter Five is the conclusion part of this thesis,elaborating the evolution of poor lad s daydream story and the reasons behind it:female s social status has been improved, social gender has been reconstructed,marriage values has varied because of the social change, and male writers becomeconfused and anxious towards the change of the relationship and the roles between thesexes after social transformation.The analyses conducted in this thesis reveal the following key points.(1) Modernedition of poor lad s daydream story focuses on how poor lad s daydream becomes disillusioned, and on the various setbacks the poor lad is confronted with, rather thanhow the fancy dream gets realized.(2) In modern edition male s inferior position inmarriage market fails to be improved to superior one as the story develops, and maleauthority does not be further reinforced.(3) Females in modern edition break awayfrom the embarrassing position of the second sex and the Other. They show moreinitiative and independence, and gain more and more power in the relationship betweentwo sexes, instead of being passive, fragile and always needing male s protection asshowed in traditional edition.(4) The traditional poor lad s daydream story displaysthe victory of male authority, while modern edition expresses male s anxiety towardsmasculine authority to various degrees.