Gaze In Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Lady Chatterley’s Lover, with the delicate and penetrating psychological description, isone of ten classical love novels in the Western literature. The story concerns the relationshipbetween men and women, and the subject of searching for integrity and wholeness. Thisthesis discusses the characters’ mental development and explores the profound meaning of thenovel from the perspective of gaze. At the end, it points out the originality and significance ofthe study from the perspective of Lacan’s gaze.The paper firstly analyzes the male gaze in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Male characters’gazes at Connie’s body project and satisfy their own inner desires. Clifford looks for spiritualdesire, but Michaelis pursues physical desire. While only Mellors gains the balance betweenthe spiritual needs and the physical desires. Clifford tries to control Connie and wishes tokeep the mental combination. When Connie is at his side, he feels himself to be complete, andvery confident. He attempts to seek the perfect spiritual close contact of oneness with Connie.Michaelis has few friends, and does not make friends with others, because he cannot believein others and not truly love somebody. After he becomes a popular playwright, he feels emptyinside. Since he can’t get satisfaction from the friendship, he can only hope love. But he isunable to complete the soul to love Connie, just stays on the physiological needs. His soul isnot complete, but the potential of desire that everything he has done is to be complete.Mellors is not enslaved by industrial civilization, sticks up for his own instinctive feelings,pursues personal integrity and respects for life itself. This is the insistence of Mellors:persistent pursuit of complete independent self, a harmonious gender relationship, and a freshlife. Through gazing at Connie, they get their desires satisfied and selves achieved. In addition,the paper studies Connie’s gaze at the male characters of Clifford, Michaelis and Mellors. Hergaze at different male characters refracts her searching for desire hidden at the bottom of herheart. Connie’s gaze at Clifford and Michaelis reveals her strong physical desire. At last, shemeets Mellors who awakes her absent passion. Through the gaze, Connie reaches a level ofspiritual growth and achieves a fulfillment of inner desire. Moreover, she finds self in these male characters. In fact, Connie loves freedom, and is a living woman of flesh and blood. Sheseeks the whole love between man and woman that is sacred, and improves herself in therelationship with Mellors. Finally, the paper examines the readers’ gaze. The readers’ desirescan be satisfied by gazing at the harmonious relationship between Connie and Mellors. Whenreaders read or see those love scenes between them, they feel the lack of their desire and makeeffort to seek self. Therefore, the idea of squelching desire and denying certain enjoyableaspects of the physical experiences seem to readers like a denial of the totality of self. Itreminds the readers to awaken and update their selves. Through the balance and harmony ofthe relationship between men and women, Lawrence achieves the harmonious coexistencebetween people, at the same time strives for the completeness of humans. The readers’ gazeshows that gaze can remind and help people to set up the harmonious relationship betweensexes, and realize self. An isolated individual doesn’t have the ability to self-improvement,only through the balance and harmony of the gender relationship, he can be complete.To sum up, with the theory of Lacan’s gaze, the thesis analyzes the male gaze, the femalegaze and the readers’ gaze, discusses the realization of self and the desire between male andfemale under their mutual gazes, and appeals people to make great efforts pursue genderharmony. The ultimate purpose of the thesis is to make human beings integral.