A Comparative Study Of Sons And Lovers And Of Human Bondage From The Perspective Of Initiation Story

Sons and Lovers,published in 1913,is a masterpiece of British novelist David Herbert Lawrence.Of Human Bondage,published in 1915,is a novel written by British writer William Somerset Maugham.Both of these two novels have been well received since they were published.And many specialists and scholars at home and abroad have interpreted the two works from different perspectives,such as psychoanalysis,feminism,gender relationship and archetypal criticism.However,there have been few studies comparing the two novels as initiation fiction.This current thesis intends to make a comparative study of the two novels from the perspective of initiation story.There are similarities of the two literary works from the perspective of initiation story.On the one hand,the protagonists of both stories have experienced difficulties in growth.Being influenced by Oedipus Complex,Paul has suffered love affair failures,class identity confusion,and career fruitlessness.Philip was bonded by religious,emotional,physical,and financial bondage.On the other hand,the protagonists in both books grew up by escaping from obstacles to their growth.Paul gained independence after having two love affairs and the symbolic gesture of killing his mother,while Philip lived a meaningful life in his eyes during his travel from Heidelberg to London and then to Paris.There are also differences between the two novels,mainly reflected in two aspects.The first difference is that the protagonists have different goals in life.Paul in Sons and Lovers pursued the union of spirit and flesh in sexual love while Philip in Of Human Bondage sought after the meaning of life.The second difference is that the protagonists' growth processes are different.Paul grew up through love affairs while Philip grew up in travels.The causes of these difference are that the two protagonists have different family backgrounds and live against different social backgrounds.Paul was born in a father-absent family whereas Philip became an orphan at the age of nine and grew up in a family dominated by a stern clergyman uncle.Absence of the fatherrole model gave rise to Paul's Oedipus Complex while being ignored to take care of himself together with book reading tempered Philip's decisiveness and predilection for thinking.Paul belongs to the working class whereas Philip was born into the middle class environment.Different social classes give the protagonists different goals in life and different paths of growth.The two books were published only two years apart.It can be seen that this thesis is written as a synchronic rather than a diachronic study.The purpose is to reveal the impact of family and social factors on the growth of the young protagonists as well as British society,culture and ideology in the early twentieth century.Referring to the synchronic study of this thesis,future scholars can make a diachronic comparison of initiation stories set in different historical periods to examine the impact of internal factors on an individual's growth.Besides,comparative studies of initiation could be done across cultures to see how the pains inherent in the growth is viewed judging by different sets of cultural values.