摘 要

小说中的性描写是扩充小说内容，提升小说内涵的重要手段。但是由于性这个话题的敏感性，很多人忽视了这一点，且很容易被人误解为淫秽写作并以此为耻。事实上，文学创作中的性描写是有意写“性”，无意引欲，他们将有意性与人物品性，宗教及其他话题混合起来。劳伦斯和厄普代克是两位在小说中运用性的大师，《儿子和情人》及《兔子，跑吧》是他们分别的代表作。本文首先用佛洛伊德的理论分析性的本质，再主要经过逐个场景的列举处理性元素在这两本小说中的角色扮演情况。通过分析，一共有两种性元素：心理上的性和肉欲上的性。更重要的是，它们各自会根据需求和环境表现出不同的性质。通过分析这些异变了的性质，本文将揭示所提及的两位作家的困境，他们对性的态度，以及通过性，他们想达到的终极目标。

关键词：劳伦斯；厄普代克；《儿子与情人》；《兔子，跑吧》；性元素

Abstract

Sexuality is a valuable method to extend the line of content and fortify the implication of the novel. However, many people never notice this point because the issue of sex is so sensitive. They confuse the sexuality with pornography and feel shameful about it. Actually, the sexuality in literary works has its own purpose and usually contains no desire for arousing sexual pleasure. D. H. Lawrence and John Updike are the two masters on using sex elements in their novel-writings. Sons and Lovers and Rabbit, Run are their respective masterpieces. This paper firstly talks about the essence of sex with the theory of Sigmund Freud, then scenes by scenes analyzes the different roles the sexuality plays in these two books. There are two kinds of sexuality: psychosexuality and sensual sexuality. Furthermore, the feature of each sex element will appear different when the demand and background have been changed. By analyzing the altered sexual narration of them, the paper will reveal the different dilemmas of the two writers, their different attitudes and their different ultimate goals they want to achieve through sexuality.

Key Words: John Updike, D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, Rabbit, Run, Sexuality.

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Brief introduction of two writers and their works 1

1.2 The concept of sex 3

1.3 The theory of Freud 5

2 The Sex Elements in Sons and lovers 7

2.1 Outside the novel: the meaning of sex in Lawrence’s mind 7

2.2 Inside the novel: Sex as the key to deconstruct the characters’ psychology 7

2.2.1 Miriam: Sex as an act of sacrifice 7

2.2.2 Mrs. Morel: Her psychosexuality with her sons as the substitution of her husband 9

2.2.4 William: the psychosexuality with the mother as the model of lover and the obstacle 10

2.2.5 Clara: sex as a healing of her wounded pride. 11

3. The Sex Elements in Rabbit, Run 13

3.1 Sexual description as a weapon to revenge the rotten society. 13

3.2 Winning in sex: An androcentric ideology of Rabbit 14

3.3 Sex: A betrayal from religion 16

4. The different answers from John Updike and D. H. Lawrence: 18

5. Conclusion: 20

References 21

Acknowledgements 23

Sex Elements: different roles in Rabbit, Run and Sons and Lovers

1 Introduction

1.1 Brief introduction of two writers and their works

John Updike (1932-2009) is one of the most prolific and significant writers in the contemporary America. Once majoring in painting, he applies his sensibility of art in afterwards novel-writing. “One of only three writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth Tarkington and William Faulkner), Updike published more than twenty novels, more than a dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, art and literary criticism and children’s books during his career.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Updike). The novels of Updike mainly describe the life of “the American small town, Protestant middle class”, dealing with the various issues such as politics, morality, individuality. But among all these issues, Updike, resembling his predecessor Hawthorne, joins in the road of investigating the complex variables among sex, sin and salvation (Donald J. Greiner, 1989). As his masterpiece, Rabbit, Run inclusively is involved in these variables. Harry, the protagonist, the once high-school superstar runs away from his alcoholic wife and their messed-up life, searches his salvation between religion and sex as he runs among family, Ruth( a prostitute) and Eccles (the minister). Then the book inevitably deals with plenty of sexual description, which later on become the so-called testimony for those “moral” critics because it is too naturalistic. Some of Updike’s novels are even required for modification to pass the censorship.

The influence of Rabbit, Run is great around the world, but critics are more concerning about the act of running, evading mentioning of sexual elements, which they think would make the novel somehow pornographic. Like CS Burhans Jr expresses in his article Things Falling Apart: Structure and Theme in "Rabbit, Run"(1973): Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom moves, like his namesake, in the closing trap of ever more frantic and tightening circles. The novel is built on such circles, beginning with a wide geographical one and ending in the disappearing point of a subjective one.

Or they may take out little of them, praising the advancement of it just as they did to the remained nude sculptures. And there are some reviewers like Changbin luo who in his review (2006) on Rabbit, Run states clearly the role of the sexual element in literature and situation of it: the bold expression of sex is intolerable among the worldly people, because they never see the particular meaning the sex possesses in reality and arts.

D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) is one of the most controversial writers in the history of Britain. As a Modernist writer, he boldly mixes realist techniques with some experimental ones. For instance, Sons and Lovers as his masterpiece, appears to be half-Victorian and half-Modernism. The first part of Sons and Lovers, which depicts the early life and situation of Mrs. Morel, is, we can say, deliberately to be Victorian style, cause Mr. Morel can be easily found trapped in the past and regretful for the life change. Then when the story goes on up to the end where Paul feels derelict in the darkness of the night, the tone is all changed. And writers seldom write things for themselves. What Lawrence faces is the puzzle the industrialization and first-world-war brings to the people of the world. It was then that the epitaph of the nineteenth century is pronounced by Grey of Fallodon: "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." “his work expresses not only his individual tensions but also those of the age.” (Moore Harry, 1951) So, the perplexity is universal. And what antidote is more universal than the question? Lawrence points out that it is sex. Only the resilience in sex can free people from the rigidity of the industrialization, can save individual from homogenization of the public. But his ideas were restricted by “the grey guardians” (Lawrence, 1966) who still remained in the modern society. Later on, it came the famous Lady Chatterley trial. Lady Chatterley’s lover was once published in a form of heavily-censored abridgement. After Lawrence’s death, Penguin Books published an unexpurgated edition of this book. The frequent appearance of the F-word, its derivates and the word “cunt” in the re-issued version put the publisher in the trial under the Obscene Publication Act of 1959.

And on Sons and Lovers, it tells us a story that when a mother despises her husband and put all her love upon her sons, a morbid relationship would kill the sons’ capacity to find natural love. Alfred Booth Kuttner in his critic review “Sons and Lovers”: A Freudian Appreciation (1916) just considers this “bizarre and unnatural” situation is caused by the overwhelming love of the sons and because the mother is lavishing her love upon the son. And Ahmed, Sofe in his paper "Sigmund Freuds psychoanalytic theory Oedipus complex: A critical study with reference to DH Lawrences Sons and Lovers."(2012) critically analyzes the Oedipus complex which lying in the structure of the whole fiction and points out the flaws in this illustration of Sigmund Freud’s theory.

The problem now is that we have realized the relations between sexuality and literature, and understood the difference between pornography and literary works like Rabbit, Run, that we have seen the overwhelming love Mrs. Morel gives to her sons and the Oedipus Complex illustrated in the fiction, but we still can’t notice what sexuality has brought to the interpretation of these two novels, what is the difference between the respective sex elements depicted in the two novels. Sexuality varies in different contexts, and needs to be categorized. Why this paper doesn’t choose Lady Chatterley’s lover to do the comparison with Rabbit, Run? Because, when the F-word shows too often, it shares too much common with Rabbit, Run and loses the point to analyze. Sons and Lovers belongs to the first phase (1909-1912) of Lawrence’s writing where he positively searched for the divinity of sex. And there is seldom any direct description of sex in it. So, it seems in the opposite side of sexuality compared with Rabbit, Run. They are just like the id and super-ego in the theory of Sigmund Freud. When Rabbit has sex with women by instincts, Paul cherishes his spiritual love with Miriam. He can see the death and feel the peace after sex, but only nightmare follows Rabbit’s sex. This paper will tell us the different sex elements the two books apply respectively and what they represent and work in the theory of Sigmund Freud, the psychoanalysis.