On Pastoral Consciousness In Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D. H. Lawrence’s last novel, embodies his most mature thoughts. In this novel, emotions are straightforwardly depicted, confusions and disorder of protagonists are thoughtfully manifested and arranged, all of which being taken as the cores of artistic expressions. Sex is closely connected with people’s emotions, with their ways of thinking, their philosophy of life, and even with the potential crisis of human civilization.According to D. H. Lawrence himself, "one must for the moment withdraw from the world, away toward the inner realities that are real:and return, maybe, to the world later, when one is quiet and sure." In this sentence, Lawrence, perhaps unconsciously, struck upon the pastoral pattern that he was to embody imaginatively in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which is the focus of this thesis.The main body of the present thesis is divided into three chapters:The first chapter is about the influence of industrialization on people at that time. On the industrial effects, the distorted Clifford stands for the industrial societv:the miners has become half-corpse:and whole communities had gradually become mechanized, their spirit made docile by its discipline. The second chapter discusses the living universe. In Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the turbulent outer ring is. of course, the modern mechanistic society, epitomized by Clifford Chatterley’s collieries, the pastoral circle is Wragby Wood, and the sacred centre is the pheasant hut. The third chapter concentrates on Connie’s pursuit of love. Her fears of mechanical process and of Clifford’s exertion of his machine-will increase Connie’s sense of isolation and alienation. The love between Mellors and Connie is centripetal power that there may be the possibility in post war Britain of new kinds of relationships which will transcend class divisions and which, ultimately, will be the basis of a revitalized social order.