-
The Horse
Dealer’
s Daughter
小组成员：马艳
苗茜茜
王慧婷
邹林妮娜
Modernism
Modernism spans
the period from the end of the
19
th
century to the
middle of
20
th
century.
Modernism is a very vague and confusing term.
It includes imagism, cubism and
existentialism and so on. Difference
from Victorian Age, it emphasizes the
need to move away form the public
to
the private, from the objective to the subjective,
preferring the
subconscious to the
selfconscious, and stress passion and will over
reason
and intellection.
About the author
David
Herbert Lawrence is a Famous British writer and
poet in the
20
th
century. He is Britain?s most unique
and one of the most
controversial
writer who is regarded as one of the greatest
writers in
English literary history
Lawrence thoughts that
man
?
s spirit was thwarted by
industrialized
Western culture,
emphasized his intellectual attributes rather than
his
natural or physical instincts. His
great novels,
Sons and
Lovers
(1913),
The
Rainbow
(1915), and
Women in
love
(1921),concern the consequence
of trying to denying
man
?
s union with nature.
Summary of the story
The story begins with a conversation
between three Pervin brothers
and
their
sister
Mabel
whom
they
call
“bull
-
dog”
.
The
three
Pervin
brothers were asking their sister what
she intends to do with her life after
she
left
the
ranch
house.
But
the
consultation
was
intrigued
by
the
disaster of their life--
their father
?
s death. They
had to find a place to settle
themselves down.
Joe, the eldest brother, was lucky to
find he married a rich woman
and
her
father
could
provide
him
with
a well-paid
job.
Fred Henry,
the
second oldest brother strongly required
Mabel to live with her sister Lucy.
Malcolm, the youngest among the three,
asked Mabel to be trained as a
nurse
while he would go with Fred to the south. They
left no sympathy to
their
innocent
sister,
which
made
their
sister
depressed
about
life
and
herself.
Later, Mabel
went to the ceremony, tending to her
mother
?
s grave
while Dr. Jack Fergusson, a physician
and friend of the brothers, saw she
was
in the ceremony. He followed her to a pond and,
with continuing
fascination, watched
her walk into and finally disappear under the
murky
water. He ran after her, dragged
her out of the pond, and took her home.
There, he undressed her, rubbed her
skin dry, and warmed her next to the
hearth fire.
Mabel awakened
in a daze, recognized the doctor, and asked him
what he had done. Realizing her
nakedness beneath the swaddling
blankets, she asked
him, “Do
you love me, then?” and bec
ame certain
of
the answer herself: “You love me. .
. . I know you love me, I know.” The
doctor, who “had, really, no intention
of loving her,” is horrified at her
words and her kisses, yet he felt
overwhelmed and must embrace her and
admit that her words are really true.
Mabel?s joyful assurance of his love
soon passed, however, and she
sobbed
, “I feel I?m horrible to you.”
“
?No,
I want
you, I want you,? was all he answered, blindly,
with that terrible
intonation which
frightened her almost more than her horror lest he
should not want her.”
Both
Mabel and Fergusson fell in love with each
other. They decided to get married on
the second day.
The end of the
story left uncertainty to the readers because it
was
Mabel
?
s
gratitude ignited the
doctor
?
s love for her.
Fergusson, a physician
doctor, was
accustomed to the naked body. But his love broke
out under
the particular circumstance.
The love was exuberant but transient. No one
knew whether it was the true love or
not. The
“
reality
”
would make them
calm down
and face the
“
real
”
life. Mabel is still lonely and helpless until
the end of the novel.
Character analysis
Joe