Psychoanalysis: Dominant-Submissive Relationships and Masochism in D.H.Lawrence`S Lady Chatterlay`S Lover

Psychoanalysis: Dominant-Submissive Relationships and Masochism in D.H.Lawrence`S Lady Chatterlay`S Lover

  • Submitted By: overhaul
  • Date Submitted: 04/28/2013 11:49 PM
  • Category: Psychology
  • Words: 1890
  • Page: 8
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Psychoanalysis: Dominant-Submissive Relationships and Masochism in D.H.Lawrence`s Lady Chatterlay`s Lover
Lady Chatterley`s Lover is a novel by David Herbert Lawrence, which was selected to illustrate the picture of dominant-submissive relationships and masochism among main characters from the point of view of psychoanalysis. Firstly, a brief introduction of the story will be mentioned. Secondly, I will look at the patterns of dominant and submissive behavior in the novel and I will demonstrate the examples of masochism in its classical formulation as a sexual or psychological perversion of achieving pleasure from pain. Lately the summary of the analysis will be commented on.
The story of Lady Chatterley`s Lover concerns a young woman, Constance, whose upper-class husband, Clifford Chatterley is paralyzed during war. Because of his injury there is a distance between the couple. It leads to her sexual frustration, because her husband is impotent, so she starts an affair with the gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. The class difference between the two is very significant, but Constance cannot live with her mind alone, and she wanted to be alive also physically. In A propos of Lady Chatterley`s Lover, D.H.Lawrence draws our attention to one of the main aims pursued in the writing of Lady Chatterley`s Lover. He wanted to persuade his readers of the necessity of speaking openly and honesty about sex, but his work was censured as pornographic. At the time the novel appeared, the topic of sex was controversial, so the work was not accepted positively.
In my analysis of dominant-submissive relationships and masochism in the novel, I will focus mainly on Freud`s theory of masochism. Masochism, which can be applicable on the characters is called moral masochism. According to Freud, moral masochism does not make a pchysical pain. In the case of moral masochism the subject is plagued by the sadistic superego and plagues itself by its own capacity for masochism. As Freud says ̋...

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