在布蘭文家族祖孫三代人的命運這一背景上,勞倫斯對現(xiàn)代人的性愛進行了廣泛、深入的探索。第一代湯姆·布蘭文是個勤勞樸實的農民,因在l9歲時和一個妓女睡過覺,因而對性產生了厭惡,在妻子莉迪亞的幫助下逐漸獲得和諧美滿的性生活,但兩個人僅僅停留在這一階段,他們一輩子都是陌生人。第二代安娜與威爾之間的婚姻充滿了強烈的占有欲,從而導致無休止的沖突。第三代女主人公厄體拉愈加邁進了一步,她身上既有放蕩的一面,同時又追求靈與肉、生命與自然的融合統(tǒng)一。
在“愛情三部曲”中,《虹》與《戀愛中的女人》是姊妹篇,雖曾在英國遭禁l1年之久,但近年來一直受到各國評論家的高度贊賞,被稱為是勞倫斯創(chuàng)作的高峰。小說大量地運用象征、比喻和意象描寫的手法,語言充滿了激情,同時又含蓄深刻,富有哲理。
D.H.LAWRENCE(1885-1930),one of the greatest figures in 2oth-century English literature.Lawrence saw sex and intuition as ways to undistorted perception of reality and means to respond to the inhumanity of the industrial culture.From Lawrence's doctrines of sexual freedom arose obscenity trials,which had a deep effect on the relationship between literature and society.
In I9I2 he wrote:"What the blood feels,and believes,and says,is always true.Lawrence's life after World War I was marked with continuous and restless wandering.
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I
HOW TOM BRANGWEN MARRIED A POLISH LADY
CHAPTER II
THEY LIVE AT THE MARSH
CHAPTER III
CHILDHOOD OF ANNA LENSKY
CHAPTER IV
GIRLHOOD OF ANNE BRANGWEN
CHAPTER V
WEDDING AT THE MARSH
CHAPTER VI
ANNA VICTRIX
CHAPTER VII
THE CATHEDRAL
CHAPTER VIII
THE CHILD
CHAPTER IX
THE MARSH AND THE FLOOD
CHAPTER X
THE WIDENING CIRCLE
CHAPTER XI
FIRST LOVE
CHAPTER XII
SHAME
CHAPTER XIII
THE MAN'S WORLD
CHAPTER XIV
THE WIDENING CIRCLE
CHAPTER XV
THE BITTERNESS OF ECSTASY
CHAPTER XVI
THE RAINBOW
The child ceased to have so much anxiety for her motherafter the baby came.Seeing the mother with the baby boy,delighted and serene and secure,Anna was at first puzzled,then gradually she became indignant,and at last her littlelife settled on its own swivel,she was no more strained anddistorted to support her mother.She became more childish,not so abnormal,not charged with cares she could notunderstand.The charge of the mother,the satisfying of themother,had devolved elsewhere than on her.Gradually the cluld was freed.She became an independent,forgetful little soul,loving from her own centre.Of her own choice,she then loved Brangwen most,or most obviously.For these two made a little life together,theyhad a joint activity.It amused him,at evening,to teach her to count,or to say her letters.He remembered for her all the little nursery rhymes and childish songs that lay forgotten at the bottom of his brain.At first she thought them rubbish.But he laughed,and she laughed.They became to her a huge joke.Old King Coleshe thought was Brangwen.Mother Hubbard was Tilly,her mother was the old woman who lived in a shoe.It was a huge,it was a frantic delight to the child,this nonsense,after her years with her mother,after the poignant folk-tales she had had from her mother,which always troubled and mystified her soul.She shared a sort of recklessness with her father,a complete,chosen carelessness that had the laugh of ridicule in it.He loved to make her voice go lugh and shouting and defiant with laughter.The baby was dark-skinned andas had driven him almost mad with trammelled passionat first.She came to him again,and,his heart delirious indelight and readiness,he took her.And it was almost asbefore.
Perhaps it was quite as before.At any rate,it made himknow perfection,it established in him a constant eternalknowledge.
But it died down before he wanted it to die down,She was finished,she could take no more.And he was not exhausted,he wanted to go on.But it could not be.
So he had to begin the bitter lesson,to abate himself,to takeless than he wanted.For she was Woman to him,all other women were her shadows.For she had satisfied him.And he wanted it to go on.And it could not.However he raged,and,filled with suppression that became hot and bitter,hated her in his soul that she did not want him,however he had mad outbursts,and drank and made ugly scenes,still he knew,he was only kicking against the pricks.It was not,he had to learn,that she would not want him enough,as much as he demanded that she should want him.It was that she could not.She could only want him in her own way,and to her own measure.And she had spent much life before he found her as she was,the woman who could take him and give him fulfilment.She had taken him and given him fulfilment.She still could do so,in her own times and ways.But he must control himself,measure himself to her.
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