从劳伦斯及其作品《儿子与情人》看恋母情结毕业论文.doc

【标题】从劳伦斯及其作品儿子与情人看恋母情结 【作者】陈 晓 进 【关键词】俄狄浦斯情结；劳伦斯；保罗；畸形情感 【指导老师】李 雷 【专业】英语 【正文】I. IntroductionDavid Herbert Lawrence is an important and controversial English writer in the 20th century. He is an English author, poet, playwright, essayist and literary critic. He is best known for his novels. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. And he also is a dispute English writer. For a long time, debate continues the characterize discussion of his life and work. But in that time, because of the sexual explicitness of his works, his many books were not allowed to publish. Such as his very great work, Lady Chatterleys Lover. So D. H. Lawrence is a person who expresses his insights in the form least likely to make them acceptable to most of his contemporaries.He is best known as a novelist. His works contain of Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love and Lady Chatterleys Lover. And he is most famous for Sons and Lovers (1913), and Lady Chatterleys Lover (1928).Although Lawrence is a very controversial English writer, many experts like to study his work. Different people have different opinions. Some experts say that Lawrences novels are known for “oedipal anxieties and sometimes-explicit descriptions of sexual relationships, a rarity in literature at the time and shocking to his contemporaries. But others say his fiction concerned the struggle for human fulfillment within a dehumanizing industrialized society.” 1 Especially in his most popular novel is Sons and Lovers.Sons and Lovers is a faithful autobiographical novel. It was a novel by the English writer D. H. Lawrence in 1913. The third published novel of D. H. Lawrence, taken by many to be his earliest masterpiece, tells the story of Paul Morel, a young man and budding artist. Richard Aldington explains the semi-autobiographical nature of this masterpiece:When you have experienced Sons and Lovers you have lived through the agonies of the young Lawrence striving to win free from his old life. 2 Generally, it is not only considered as an evocative portrayal of working-class life in a mining community, but also an intense study of family, class and early sexual relationships. The author develops the story by portraying several characters. The leading characters are Mr. and Mrs. Morel, Paul Morel, Miriam and Clara. In this novel, Mr. Morel drinks, and his children hate him. But Mrs. Morel is a strong-willed, refined and middle-class lady. She is once a schoolteacher. This couple fights constantly and, to a child, frighteningly. And Paul is a light, quick and slender boy. And he is also a quiet, good, and rather religious boy and intensely attach to his mother. Miriam is Pauls first girl friend. And she is a shy, wild, sensitive and beautiful girl with black curls. And Clara is Pauls second girl friend and she is a sensual, slightly older woman.And there are many different relationships in this novel, like Lawrence said that his novels mainly talk about relationship especially the relationship between man and woman.3The end of the relationship is a tragedy. Just like Lawrence said that it was the tragedy of all British youth, nowadays we also can find this kind of tragedy there and here in the world. But what cause this tragedy? Different people have different opinions. Some say the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization caused this tragedy, and some say the mother fixation, thats to say, the Oedipus complex causes this tragedy.In this thesis it will analyze the mother fixation in D. H. Lawrence and his work Sons and Lovers. There are a lot of performances of mother fixation in this novel Sons and Lovers.II. The Understanding of Mother FixationA. The Origin of Mother FixationOedipus complex, also called “mother fixation”, a concept used in psychoanalysis, was a childs unconscious desire for the exclusive love of the parent of the opposite sex. This desire includes jealousy toward the parent of the same sex and the unconscious wish for that parents death.     The term Oedipus complex was first used by the Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. It came from the myth of Oedipus, a Greek hero who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. Freud used the term to describe the unconscious feelings of children of both sexes toward their parents. However, later researchers used the term Electra complex for the complex in girls. According to Greek legend, a woman named Electra helped plan the murder of her mother.     Freud believed that the Oedipus complex was a normal part of human psychological growth. The Oedipal phase of development was commonly considered to last from the age of three to five. During this period, children experience intense feelingslove and hate, yearning and jealousy, fear and angerthat produced emotional conflicts. Most people outgrow the oedipal phase, but some mentally ill individuals had a strong Oedipus complex as adults. According to Freud, the principal reason for the weakening of the complex in boys was the fear of punishment from the father.     Freud thought that all peoples experience the Oedipus complex. But many anthropologists and researchers in psychoanalysis doubted that the complex existed in certain non-Western societies. They believed it develops as a result of a persons social environment and does not occur in everyone.The Oedipus complex was a universal phenomenon. According to Sigmund Freud built in phylogenetically, and was responsible for much unconscious guilt. Speaking of the mythical Oedipus, Freud put it in these terms: “His destiny moves us only because it might have been oursbecause the oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as upon him. It is the fate fall of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our father. Our dreams convince us that this is so.” 4B. Analysis of Mother FixationIn our daily life, mother fixation is a universal phenomenon. But many people deny the existence of the mother fixation, because they dont find mother fixation on themselves. With the development of human society, Mother Fixation has a great change and it has developed from instinctual impulse into psychological dependence and love. There are several kinds of abnormal love: Father Fixation, Mother Fixation, Brother Fixation and Sister Fixation.We can see that in our daily life the boy children always depend on his mother, also, in the mothers eyes their children are little children forever. Many of the young children have a deep dependence on their mothers on psychology, even when they grow up. They are lack of their own judgment or thought. They do what their mothers ask them to and dont do what their mothers dont allow. What kinds of schools, work and wives they will choose not are not decided by themselves but their mother. They believe that their mothers are the ones love them most and can be relied on that they dont want to leave their mothers and they desire to stay with their mothers forever.In opposite, the mothers put most of their attention to their children. They try their best to protest their children. They decide everything for their children because they believe that they know what their children need. In their childrens life no body can take the place of their mother. They want to control the activity and thought of their children. The fever love will make the mothers have such a sense that they are afraid of losing their children. They prevent their son making so many friends especially female friends. They even interfere in their sons love and marriage. In their hart, they wish that their sons never leave them and marry other women. We can define it as selfish love but in most occasion it can be regarded as abnormal love, Mother Fixation, such kind of love not only distort the normal love between mothers and sons but also affect their life, especially the happiness of the future life of the sons.Generally speaking, the boys adoration towards his mother will be influenced by social education as he grows up and restrained as the formation of his character and the increase of social activity. Later, when he grows up and comes to the age of choosing a spouse, he will always judge and evaluate the others according to his mothers merits.III. Mother Fixation in D. H. LawrenceD. H. Lawrence was born at a mining village in Nottinghamshire. His father was a coal miner with little education; but his mother, once a school teacher was from a somewhat higher class, who came to think that she had married beneath her, and desired to raise the cultural level of her sons so as to help them escape from the life of coal miners. The conflict between the earthy, coarse, energetic but often drunk father and the refined, strong-willed and up-climbing mother is vividly presented in Sons and Lovers. The broken marriage of D. H. Lawrences parents led to an unlucky family. Growing up in a poor and broken family, the young Lawrence was physically weak and full of illness. He had a deep feeling with his mother which was different from normal one. Lawrence was very close to his mother so much that even he admitted that his relationship with his mother interfered with his own relationships with women. Lawrence confessed at one point that he looked at his mother in a sexual way. His relationship with his father was very much like Paulsboth young men sided with their mothers and clung to them. They hated and detested their fathers treated their mothers. As a young boy, he was sickly and weak and preferred to stay at home with his mother and sisters rather than play with the boys. In fact, the picture of Pauls childhood given in Sons and Lovers reflects a picture of Lawrences own boyhood. Unlike Paul, Lawrence had two older brothers, an older sister and a younger sister. So its the novel on Lawrences early life in the midland coal-mining village of Eastwood. And its the novel about growth, development and human relationships.Lawrence was very intelligent and clever. He attended the Nottingham high School on scholarship. Later, he met Jessie Chambers, whose family he was friendly with, to speak French. Lawrence became friendly with Chambers family when he and his mother began visiting their farm. Jessie was reserved and shy with him, because she felt inferior to him. The Chambers family was impressed by Lawrences knowledge of literature and philosophy. Lawrence cared for Jessie very deeply, but he didnt feel any attraction for her. Jessie Chambers is the “Miriam” of Sons and Lovers. His relationship with Jessie fluctuated between love and hate; he intensely disliked the power she held over him. His sister Ada introduced him to Louie Burrows: all three of them were trained to be teachers at the same school.He ended his engagement with Jessie and began another one with Louie Burrows in the last days of his mothers life. His mother died on December 10th, 1910. Lawrence was ill and grief-stricken for moths. Prior to his mothers death, Lawrence started to write Sons and Lovers, which he called Paul Morel first. Sons and Lovers is his most autobiographical novelLawrence drew upon his own memories and experiences to write the story of Paul Morel. He met Frieda von Weakley, who was six years older than Lawrence and made up for the Mother Fixation of Lawrence. Frieda already married, but she run off with Lawrence to the Continent, leaving her three children and husband behind. They married on July 13th, 1914. They resided in England from 1914 to 1919 because of World War I, in various towns and cities. They were expelled from Cornwall in 1917 because the police believed them to be spies for the enemy. After the war, they left for Italy in November 1919, staying at the Fontana Vecchia until 1922. Such love was reviled by people because it had distorted the moral loveIV. Mother Fixation in Sons and LoversA. Performance of Pauls Mother FixationFor Paul, father is a rowdy and cruel man who indulges in excessive drinking and enjoys violence. Once he is hurt or sick, he will immediately lose the courage to be a true man and become pitiful. Moreover, Mr. Morel does not get along well with the children. His sole hope is that his children would become miners one day to continue his profession. Mother shows her disdain and hatred towards the father publicly. The hatred has begun to influence Paul since he was a little kid and become rooted in his heart. When he is six years old, he begins to secretly pray that his father would die in the mining well. Emotional attachment among family members does not exist between Paul and Mr. Morel. Besides, mother keeps on imparting the dignity of middle class to the children. Father and children become more and more estranged. Later on, the children unite with Mrs. Morel to hate Mr. Morel. For Paul, the image of an ideal father never exists. Paul has begun to be influenced and changed by mothers distorted maternal love without his own awareness. Mrs. Morel is gradually turning her son into the victim of the distorted maternal love.When Paul grows up he falls in love with Miriam, who has the same interests and hobby with Paul. However, they fail to develop normal relations as other lovers because Paul never succeeds to get rid of his mother s bandage that has deeply rooted in his life since he is a little boy. The bandage his mother imposes on him is something with incredible power, mentally controlling Pauls soul even when he is thousands of miles away. As he stays with Miriam, he never enjoys happiness that love endows, considering that what he has done betrays his mother and will definitely hurt her. Thus he thinks that he is guilty. The mental bandage directly leads to break-down between him and Miriam. Mrs. Morel doesnt take her son Paul as a real lover, but her psychological snare is real and immense. She loathes Pauls Miriam from the start, understanding that the girls deep love for her son will oust her: “Shes not like an ordinary woman, who can leave me my share in him. She wants to absorb him.” 5 Meanwhile, Paul plays his part with equal fervor, incapable of committing himself in either direction: “Why did his mother sit at home and suffer. And why did he hate Miriam, and feel so cruel towards her, at the thought of his mother. If Miriam caused his mother suffering, then he hated herand he easily hated her” 6 Soon thereafter he even confesses to his mother: “I really dont love her. I talk to her, but I want to come home to you” 7. The result of all this is that Paul throws Miriam over for a married suffragette. Moreover, Paul builds his powerful image before Miriam and indulges in using his authoritativeness by losing temper to Miriam and saying crude words. Besides, Miriam just wants to have a pure and spiritual relationship with Paul and is