The paper is pided into five main parts：The first part offers a brief introduction of Women in Love, and explains the significance of this research, and presents an outline. The second part is an account of literature review on relevant theories and issues. The third part is a detailed analysis of this novel with Social Darwinism to illustrate the ideal love relationship from three aspects: human nature, social status, and dreams. The fourth part is a further analysis of another two aspects in love relationship: social power vs. spiritual creativity, and carnal sexuality vs. rational knowledge. The last draws a conclusion.

II. Social Darwinism and Women in Love

   Combined with the theoretical research on Women in Love and Social Darwinism theory from Chinese and foreign scholars, this paper attempts to objectively reflects its  research history status, and points out the direction for further study.

2.1 An Introduction to Social Darwinism

Social Darwinism is a term derived from Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory which emerged in the United Kingdom, and then comes to North America, and through Western Europe in the 1870s, and which claims to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology and politics.

According to the critics, at least, Social Darwinists observe that those who fail to adapt themselves to the environment will perish and argue that the strong should be measured with their wealth and power increase while the weak should see their wealth and power decrease. They also believed that man has evolved from the lower forms of life and human are special not because God created them but because of their social nature and because they have successfully adapted to the changing environment.

What is meaning of “social Darwinism”? It involves the organic natural world where there is a process of “evolution” in “species” and “ life”, and the iron law, “natural selection” plays an dominant role in this process in which exists a “resource shortage” pressure between species and there needs the “ struggle for existence”. In this struggle, those who have good mental and physical endowment are the best ones to adapt to the environment and survive and their excellent talents won through “adaptation” will be abidingly inherited so that they can form the rudiment of adaptation by the nature improved from the “simple” to the “complex” , and from “lower” to “advanced” . In the middle of the 19th century, the evolution of Darwin’s view as it were a bombshell, permeated the field from “nature” to “socio-politics” and is transplanted from “natural philosophy” to “socio-political philosophy”, accordingly, the “Social Darwinism” is the product of this process, it not only directly destroyed many old faith once and for all that has been bound to the human mind, and also built up a brand-new modern thought. In this sense, this term has currently gained a widespread currency from sociology to politics and from technology to literature, more or less, has been deemed as a method and applied into the creation of literary works to further the explanation of human nature and social society.

   The historical significance of Social Darwinism is that it not only fostered the progress of natural science, but also exerted a huge influence on the development of humanities and social sciences. It reasonably interpreted biological persity and adaptability with the evolution of the natural selection theory so as to effectively bring attacks upon the theory of the special creation and teleology using biological persity and adaptability to propaganda god’ s purposefully designed creation over a long period of time, this is the great victory of the material world outlook, which has been highly praised by Marx and Engels and they put it as the foundation of their theory of natural history.

The effects of Social Darwinism on literature cannot be ignored. It not only developed in literary creation, but also provided a new perspective for literary criticism. Many writers implant theory of Social Darwinism into their creation and produced a large number of naturalistic works, which treat human beings as animals (but not equal to animals), good or evil, decided by the environment. It enlightened writers that animality is a basic human characteristic reflected by the shared concept of human nature under the influence of Darwinism in 19th century of European. Many western literary works reshape the literary concept, focus on the new “realness” of human nature, and record social values changed from the idealized and human culture to the very physical world, and reveal the nature of the social psychology during the capitalist production, namely, the production of desire and consumption of socialization process, ultimately, unfold people’s emotional behavior and material demand entwined as an integration of the animal nature.