The Love Ethic in Selected Works of Gustave Flaubert, Leo Tolstoy, and D. H. Lawrence
Kasprzykowska, Marta Beata
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/71476
Description
Title
The Love Ethic in Selected Works of Gustave Flaubert, Leo Tolstoy, and D. H. Lawrence
Author(s)
Kasprzykowska, Marta Beata
Issue Date
1987
Department of Study
Comparative and World Literature
Discipline
Comparative and World Literature
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Literature, Comparative
Literature, Romance
Literature, Slavic and East European
Literature, English
Abstract
The "love ethic" is the term which embraces the following relating topics: the solution of gender roles, sexual morality, reproductive practices, and the psychology of love. The three writers present their love ethics both directly and indirectly. However, we can always deduce their ideas and attitudes towards the concepts of femininity and masculinity; pre- and extra-marital sex, and sexual practices within marriage; parenting, contraception, and managing of childbirth; as well as their theories of the psychology of love. This last concept will explain Lawrence's theory of star equilibrium, Flaubert's fantasy of an ideal, unattainable love and its consequences, and the dichotomy in Tolstoy between his view of physical passion and Christian love of a married couple.
The authors' interest in the love ethic was the result of rapid, cultural changes and shifts of traditional roles in man-woman relationships, which were taking place through the nineteenth century to the First World War. These social changes prompted many writers to analyse these relationships. Flaubert's, Tolstoy's and Lawrence's views on love were, therefore, not only their personal concern, but the outcome of the questions asked by the age.
This thesis presents many links between Flaubert, Tolstoy and Lawrence. Although there is a vast number of studies on the three authors respectively and a smaller one on Lawrence's response and indebtedness to Tolstoy, this volume offers for the first time, a comparative examination of the works of the three writers together. The chief novels on which I am concentrating my attention are: Sentimental Education, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, The Rainbow, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley's Lover. However, in the course of my thesis, I am also referring to other relevant works by these authors in order to better explain their views on love.
The analysis of Flaubert's, Tolstoy's and D. H. Lawrence's love ethics includes, in the first chapter, some general remarks on the interactions among the three writers. The following four chapters bring in the connections between love, religion and nature, a more intimate acquaintance with three famous wives and mistresses and their husbands and lovers, and a struggle of other characters for fulfilment.
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