D. H. Lawrence is one of the greatest English novelists in the twentieth century. In his short life, he creates a lot of famous novels, such as Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and so on. In addition, he writes plenty of short stories, poems and travel books. These works objectively reflect the oppression that machines bring to human beings, the alienation of human nature caused by overwork, and materialized relations between people under the industrial civilization. “The Rocking-Horse Winner” is a famous short story of Lawrence, which probes into the seriously alienated interpersonal relations that Lawrence pays most attention to. The short story also reflects money’s distortion to health and interpersonal relations as well as materialization of family relations under the mechanical civilization.
The paper mainly discusses the alienation of interpersonal relations and the causes of the alienation in “The Rocking-Horse Winner”. It tries to find the ways of going out of the plight of alienation. The paper consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 introduces Lawrence and “The Rocking-Horse Winner” as well as some people’s researches on them. Chapter 2 exposes the whole alienation of interpersonal relations under the capitalist civilization according to the analysis of the alienation of the relations between the husband and wife, the parents and children, the relatives and the masters and servants. Chapter 3 analyzes the causes of the alienation of interpersonal relations from the aspects of society and the individual. In social respects, it analyzes the historical background, economical causes, cultural causes and educational causes while in individual respects it analyzes the self-alienation of the individual and the alienation between individuals. Chapter 4 tries to explore the ways of going out of the plight of alienation. The author tries to find the solutions through the analysis of the efforts that Lawrence, Sartre, and Eliot make in literary perspective. The conclusion summarizes the content of the paper and elaborates the warning and enlightenment to the alienation of interpersonal relations in modern society.
Key words: Lawrence; “The Rocking-Horse Winner”; interpersonal relations; alienation
Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction1
Chapter 2 Reflections of the Alienation of Interpersonal Relations3
2.1 Alienated Relation Between the Husband and Wife……………………………………….3
2.2 Alienated Relation Between Parents and Children………………………………….……4
2.3 Alienated Relation Between Relatives…………………………………………………….5
2.4 Alienated Relation Between Masters and Servants…………………………………………5
Chapter 3 Causes of the Alienation of Interpersonal Relations7
3.1 Social Causes………………………………………………………………………………7
3.2 Individual Causes…………………………………………………………………………10
Chapter 4 Solutions to the Alienation of Interpersonal Relations13
4.1 Exploration for Going Out of the Plight of Alienation…………………………………….13
4.2 Ways of Going Out of the Plight of Alienation………………………………………….…14
Chapter 5 Conclusion16
Notes.17
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………18
Acknowledgements.19
