2.2 A Sketch of Women in Love

   Women in Love has been studied widely by scholars from all over the world and different scholars have different understandings about it. There have been many literary theories used in the analysis of it.

   Critics on this novel have been developed from the perspective of eco-feminism in that the two groups of love relationship in this novel reveal the embarrassment and happiness of the “New Women” respectively, and frequently depict the sordidness of coal mine, which can be deemed as the disharmony of social ecological environment. “Ecological feminism”, the word first appeared in 1974, the French feminist scholar’s (Francoise D. Eaubonne) view of feminism. She pointed out that the oppression and repression of nature is closely associated with the position of women. To promote it, one needs to rely on the harmonious development of the ecological environment, opposes all forms of confinement, and set liberation and the liberation of nature as her goal. In this novel, we can see that the two sisters disgust the sordid scrambling conflict of the industrial civilization and are desired of a harmonious environment to own the peaceful love with the same status as the same as men.      

And also some literary critics on this novel have been developed from the perspective of life philosophy. They observed that almost none of modern English novels was able to so perfectly fuse the social theme with the inpidual theme under such a complicated environment at that time when it was created. Li Xueshun referred that this novel makes an attempt on a search for the oringinal Garden of Eden and pursues an ideal love and a new rebirth. But few scholars choose Social Darwinism as the starting point to analyze the love relationship reflected in Brangwen sisters’ behaviors. This area was subsequently crowned with the title of “INTERDISPLINARY”, which has been deemed as the ideology of aesthetic consciousness combined with literature and science. On the study of Women in Love, domestic scholars have gotten outstanding achievements among them the NORTHERN FORUM is seen as an important Social Darwinism theory work which was compiled by Qi Hui and his assistants. In recent years, there has been published some research papers on relation about Social Darwinism, such as Ma HaiShan’s Analysis of the Impact of Social Darwinism Upon Human Mind Development. Therefore, this thesis falls on the rough analysis on Women in Love from the perspective of Social Darwinism.

III. The Interpretation of Harmonious Love Relationship from Social Darwinism

A detailed analysis of a text allows readers to examine the workings of it, breaking it down into pieces, and analyzing each component in its own terms in order to get a better understanding of this work. This part provides a detailed and organized analysis of love relationship in Women in Love from the perspective of Social Darwinism. In this novel, Gerald Crich is portrayed as an inhuman industrialist, pursuing a destructive relationship with Gudun Brangwen, who is an indifferent artist. However, Ursula Brangwen, a new woman, falls in an ideal love with Rupert Birkin, who is an alienated intellectual but articulates many opinions associated with the author’s viewpoint of ideal love. The emotionally established relationships are thus given further depth and tension by an intense psychological and physical attraction between Ursula and Birkin. This chapter is to analyze the ideal love from three aspects: human nature, social status and dream.

3.1 Human Nature: Keeping Intact in the Social Environment

   According to Social Darwinism, to some extent, human nature can be naturally selected from the social environment in which one lives. In a society inundated with competition and the squeezing of interest, human are unceasingly misguided by the Jungle Law, conduct a behavior that competes with others and disdains the scholasticism  but abides by the ration exerting effects on the interpersonal relationship, or more specifically, the gender relationship. However, once the ration infinitely dwarfed the sensibility, the stifled will be humanity’s primitive desire and instinct. In this novel, Gudrun and Gerald lost their primitive instinct or desire about love and became the apathetic type because of their unfitness triggered by capitalist industrialization. They were confined by the spiritual shackle and longed for the mutual understanding. Their nature was more or less oppressed and harnessed by the fixed mechanism of social order or the outdated view on sexuality during institutionalized social rule.