On D. H. Lawrence's Concepts On Women In Lady Chatterley's Lover

D. H. Lawrence is one of the most important writers in early 20th-century Britain, and he is also the writer arousing international controversy. In this thesis, I will concentrate my efforts on Lawrence's concepts on women exhibited in his most controversial novel Lady Chatterley's Lover and its progressive significance.Lady Chatterley's Lover has been stirring much controversy in literary circle and readers. The disputes focus on whether the novel has shown the stark "male-centered" idea. Most feminists are critical of Lawrence, they think that the explicit description of sexual intercourse obviously betrays his "phallus-worship" tendency and his consciousness of male superiority. In this thesis, I make my efforts to analyze objectively Lawrence's view on female from the historical perspective.The thesis falls into three chapters. Chapter one discusses the status of female in the patriarchal system. In this chapter, I will exhibit, from the traditional cultural conception and the female code defined by man in literature, that the female in the west is looked on as "the second sex". The second Chapter centers on, through analysis of the text, Connie, a new woman being endowed with subjective female consciousness. In this chapter, I will chronicle the process of Connie's metamorphosis from a traditional woman of "the second sex", who was influenced much by social culture, to a new woman, who was conscious of her female consciousness and who had her own idea, that is, the process of Connie from death to rebirth. Lawrence's attitudes towards Connie actually reflected his view on female. The discussion of Chapter three focuses on D. H. Lawrence's concepts on women exhibited in Lady Chatterley's Lover and its progressive significance as well as its limitation. After demonstrating Lawrence's elucidation to his concept of harmony between two sexes, and analyzing its presentation in the novel, I analyze the significance as well as the limitation of Lawrence's view on female in Lady Chatterley's Lover from historical perspective. The analysis contends that Lawrence's concepts objectively dismantle the cultural concepts of sex hierarchical order and that his description on sex and his view on sexual love transform people's conventional conceptions on sex.On the whole, in Lady Chatterley's Lover, Lawrence portrayed the image of a new woman of flesh and blood. His conceptions on the awakening of subjective female consciousness, especially of sex consciousness are from woman's perspective and transcend his times. From the historical perspective, his concepts on women are primarily progressive, and are obviously significant to the liberation of female themselves.