The Interaction/Intra-action of People and Things in Different Spaces in Lawrence’s <i>Lady Chatterley’s Lover</i>

Abstract

D. H. Lawrence has always been a controversial writer in literary area when it comes to the modernity, for he was active in the transitional era between realism and modernism. But it is almost accepted that he is more of a modernist writer. When talking about the way he demonstrates his sharp resistance against industrial civilization, the resolution he offers to recover the loss of humanity in his novel <i>Lady Chatterley’s Lover</i>, we cannot bypass the perspectives of symbolism, imagery and metaphors which have been widely discussed by the academic field. Different from other contemporary writers, Lawrence emphasizes the depiction of interactions between human beings and non-human materials, and gives an exquisite description on various spaces in this novel. As a result, this paper intends to analyze the characterization and Lawrence’s vision of modernity from the perspective of New Materialism, focusing on the writing of non-human things, especially the interaction/intra-action between people and things in different spaces, in order to prove how the space changes and how the characters’ interactions with things actively influence or even determine the hero and heroine’s choices, and further result in their alienation and emancipation respectively. By employing the theory of Spatial narrative and thing theory, this paper is going to make it be more plausible that D. H. Lawrence is a great modernist and holds a critical view on industrial civilization, and call for more attention and studies on how non-human things influence and mould human beings and how the plot and theme of novel are driven by the interactions between people and things.