Dualistic Masculinity In D. H. Lawrence’s Short Stories

D. H. Lawrence is an outstanding British writer in the20thcentury, who has created abundant literaryworks. More than70short stories show the great achievements of Lawrence and attract much attention ofcritics and academic researchers. These short stories shed light on Lawrence’s distinctive view on thewriting theme and skill. They also reveal the contradictions and struggles of British people in the20thcentury which witnessed the rapid industrial development of the country. The change of the society leads tothe shift of people’s view on the relationship between man and woman. These short stories, on the one hand,echo the themes and settings in Lawrence’s novels, and on the other hand, reflect his profoundphilosophical thought, which means the dualism in the thesis. This thesis tries to explore the change ofmasculinities under the related background from the perspective of dualism, and discusses the differentappearances of the three types of masculinities which are called hegemonic masculinity, complicitmasculinity and subordinated masculinity.The thesis consists of three parts. The first part is the introduction. it briefly introduces the literaturereview of Lawrence’s fictional works, the research motivation, methodology, questions and theorganization of the whole thesis.The second part shows the main body of the thesis and it includes four chapters. It mainly introducesthe masculinity theory, Lawrence’s dualistic thinking and features of three masculinity types in differenttexts. Chapter one brings in the definition, formation of masculinity and its literary applicability. Then itdiscusses the masculinity theory of Connell. The formation and feature of Lawrence’s dualistic thinking arealso the research objectives of chapter one. At last, this chapter proves the feasibility of the related theoriesto the short stories.Chapter two concretely analyzes the weakened hegemonic masculinity in “The Horse Dealer’sDaughter” and the strengthened hegemonic masculinity in “You Touched Me”. Additionally, it analyzeshow the referred masculinity features form; chapter three mainly illustrates Lawrence’s another two shortstories, namely,“England, My England” and “The Lovely Lady”, which present the eliminated complicitmasculinity and the regained complicit masculinity; chapter four focuses on the distorted subordinated masculinity in “The Prussian Officer” and the reconstructed subordinated masculinity in “The Thornin the Flesh”.The conclusion comes to the third part of the thesis. It is clear that there exists a dualistic characteristicof masculinity in Lawrence’s short stories, which reflects the true condition of British society at that time aswell as the writer’s philosophy of dualism. The dualistic thinking of Lawrence presents not only theantagonistic reality but also the harmonious unification in the deep heart of Lawrence.