1、Case Study One,“Tickets, please” by D. H. Lawrence,A Brief Introduction to D. H. Lawrence,Plot and its elements,An Analysis of “Tickets, please”,David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 2 March 1930),An English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H.
2、 Lawrence.,born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England, in 1885. The fourth child of Arthur John Lawrence, a barely literate miner, and Lydia a former pupil teacher who, owing to her familys financial difficulties, had to do manual work in a lace factory.Lawrence spent his formative years in the coal
3、 mining town of Eastwood. His working-class background and the tensions between his parents provided the raw material for a number of his early works. Lawrence would return to this locality and often wrote about nearby Underwood, calling it; “the country of my heart,“ as a setting for much of his fi
4、ction.,Life and career,The young Lawrence attended Beauvale Board School (1891 -1898), later Nottingham High School. He left in 1901, working for three months as a junior clerk at Haywoods surgical appliances factory, but a severe bout of pneumonia, reportedly the result of being accosted by a group
5、 of factory girls, ended this career. 1902 to 1906, Lawrence served as a pupil teacher at the British School, Eastwood. He went on to become a full-time student and received a teaching certificate from University College, Nottingham, in 1908. During these early years he was working on his first poem
6、s, some short stories, and a draft of a novel. At the end of 1907 he won a short story competition in the Nottingham Guardian, the first time that he had gained any wider recognition for his literary talents.,Lawrence was a rebellious and profoundly polemical writer with radical views, who regarded
7、sex, the primitive subconscious, and nature as cures to what he considered the evils of modern industrialized society.Tremendously prolific, his work was often uneven in quality, and he was a continual source of controversy, often involved in widely-publicized censorship cases, most famously for his
8、 novel Lady Chatterleys Lover (1928).,Besides his troubles with the censors, Lawrence was persecuted as well during World War I, for the supposed pro-German sympathies of his wife, Frieda.As a consequence, the Lawrences left England and traveled restlessly to Italy, Germany, Ceylon, Australia, New Z
9、ealand, Tahiti, the French Riviera, Mexico and the United States, unsuccessfully searching for a new homeland. In Taos, New Mexico, he became the center of a group of female admirers who considered themselves his disciples, and whose quarrels for his attention became a literary legend. A lifelong su
10、fferer from tuberculosis, Lawrence died in 1930 in France, at the age of 44.,Viewpoints in Lawrences Writings,Social criticism: DehumanizationPsychological exploration: 1) Human sexuality 2) Oedipus complex,Dehumanization,Lawrence has expressed a strong reaction against a mechanical civilization. In
11、 his opinion, the bourgeois industrial revolution , which made its realization at the cost of ravishing the land, had started the catastrophic uprooting of man from nature.Under this mechanical control, human beings were turned into inanimated being,It is this agonized concern about the dehumanizing
12、 effect of mechanical civilization on the sensual tenderness of human nature that haunts Lawrences writings.The healthy way of the individual psychological development lay in the primary of the life impulse, or the sexual impulse.Human sexuality was a symbol of Life Force.,Human Sexuality,By present
13、ing the psychological experience of individual human life , and human relationships, Lawrence has opened up a wide territory to novel.He declared that any repression of the sexual impulse based on social, religious, or moral values of the civilized would cause severe damages to the harmony of human
14、relationships and the psychic health of individuals personality.,Artistic features,Mainly realism, which combines dramatic scenes with an authoritative commentary.Symbolism + poetic imaginationTraditional realism + psychical meaning,Exposition,Complications,Climax,Falling Action,Resolution,Structure
15、 of Plot,“Tickets, please”,“Tickets, Please“ is one of the short stories in the collection England My England, published in 1922.,Plot of “Tickets, please”,1. Exposition-setting and introduction to the main charactersA. Setting: sterile industrial countryside of central England during the WWI. - All
16、 able-bodied men depart for the trenches, only crippled and delicate men left at home (declining masculinity) -a group of fearless young hussies, empowered women conductors on a tram line , assuming jobs and prerogatives of the departed soldiers. (masculinized girls),B. Characters -Annie: the chief
17、among the women conductors due to her roughness and intelligence -John Thomas: representative of phallic power -In a world deprived of fit suitors, John represents the rare presence of sensual power.,2. Complications,Conflicts: between John and these women conductorsJohns casual way of living: conti
18、nuously flirts with and abandons the women conductors. He has an affair with Annie, the chief of the masculinized girls - Statutes fair at nearby Bestwood. What John intends to remain is just the “nocturnal presence” as he cannot offer the transforming power of love. “intelligent interest” Annie beg
19、ins to take in him, receiving no response. John, threatened by Annies “possessiveness”, decides to break up with her and start another affair.,3. climax,A moment of great tension and finally reach the climax. -waiting-room - The girls use warmth and the charm of feminine culture to disguise their sc
20、heme of revenge. John is overwhelmed by an attack of enraged discarded girls who seek to end his easy way by forcing him to choose one sweetheart. The attack of the angry girls on the “cock-of-the -walk” John has an indication of sexual arousal.,The stripping away of his clothes stirs his attackers
21、into a sexual frenzy. Only John has the power to penetrate, to choose. Hence, woman at her most aggressive conceals her fundamental impotence.,4. Denouement,The conflict is finally resolved as John snatches victory from defeat when he chooses Annie.The battle between the sexes is ended with the mans
22、 victory.The girls, especially Annie, are forced to recognize the limits of their power.The single source of the defeat is their failure to be a man.,Possible Themes,Dubious progress A fierce battle between sexes Dehumanization (Industrialization),1. General statement New Social Role of Women during
23、 the WWI;newly-acquired identity for the girls At the time, that new social role of women was regarded as a form of progress by the male-dominated society and by some women;. Lawrence makes it clear that the price to pay for social progress is the loss of gender differentiation.,Dubious Progress: lo
24、ss of gender differentiation,2. Progress A. Traditional female image womens fight for social recognition and the vote3. Dubious Progress The so-called progress is made at the cost of the loss of gender differentiation and harmony between sexes.,A. Loss of gender differentiation A parallel can be dra
25、wn between the drivers loss of manhood and the conductresses loss of womanhood.B. Loss of hormony between the sexes A fierce battle between the sexes,“This, the most dangerous tram-service in England, is entirely conducted by girls, and driven by rash young men, a little crippled, or by delicate you
26、ng men, who creep forward in terror. The girls are fearless young hussies. In their ugly blue uniform, skirts ip to their knees, shapeless old peaked caps on their heads, they have all the sang-froid of an old non-commissioned officer.” (Para.4),The drivers are “men unfit for active service: cripple
27、s and hunchbacks“ who compensate for their physical deficiencies by taking foolish risks while others, effeminate, “creep forward in terror.“,They lack the “sang-froid“ (calmness) which characterizes the girls, as if they might just as well swap jobs with them.,the girls assume a new authority, whic
28、h turns them into sham soldiers (“non-commisioned officer”) with a masculine, sailor-like behaviour (“they fear nobodyeverybody fears them.”);“this roving life aboard the car gives them a sailors dash and recklessness. What matter how they behave when the ship is in port? Tomorrow they will be aboar
29、d again.” (Para. 16),The girl conductors are “fearless young hussies“ who bravely face the dangers of the tram journeys and the male passengers advances; as such, they belong to a different class of women whose job is exceptional: “This is entirely conducted by girls“. Such a positive and indirectly
30、 self-congratulatory statement is immediately tempered with the grimly humorous description of the girls, tranformed into hybrids:,“In their ugly blue uniform they have all the sang-froid of an old non-commissioned officer.”the devalued official uniform worn by the girls, Resembling transvestites in
31、 their ugly uniforms, the conductors retain only a bawdy sort of feminity with their “skirts up to their knees.“,In “Tickets, Please“, the incidental effects of progress on humanity are shown through the Lawrentian central theme of the relationship between men and women. Here, the weaker sex and the
32、 stronger sex are respectively and ironically embodied by Annie Stone and John Thomas Raynor.,A fierce battle between the sexes,Change in womens status and its psychological consequences : - the change in womens status resulting from employment and following their fight to be given social recognitio
33、n and the vote.,The girl conductors benefit from their new status in the microcosm of the tram system before becoming aware of their real second-rate status when it comes to direct human relationship. Socially promoted by their job, Annie and her likes are only able to play their part fully while on
34、 the tram; in the general outside movement of society, men remain in control, as the scene at the Statutes shows.,Living under the delusion of being real actors recognised as fully responsible human beings, they are brutally shown by the chief inspectors offhand attitude how wrong they have been. Th
35、eir subsequent violent reaction reveals their deep frustration and the ambiguous relationships between the sexes, marred and warped by progress.,Johns victory rests on Annies realization that while she can force him to the ground, only he can “exact more”, and his choice of Annie vindictively remind
36、s her of the realities of sexual politics.Annie is not horrified because she has lost love through her possessive ways; rather “something was broken in her”, and she is tormented by the realization that she is too weak to wreak vengeance on her enemy. Women can never be the one to choose, but only b
37、e the one to be chosen.,The brutal ending of the short story is the result of the combined effects of the environment and dubious progress: the conductors reenact the mechanical violence that surrounds them; John Thomas crystallises mens social domination; The girl conductors have been contaminated
38、by the superficial order of social progress and the disorder it finally brings about.,4. Conlcusion For Lawrence, this social progress is dubious: instead of promoting order and harmony, it causes degeneration and regression by altering natural relationships between people.,A. The title “Tickets, Pl
39、ease” announces the girls deep desire for real reciprocity in their relationship with men; in the reality of their daily routine aboard the tram, because they embody regulation, the conductors “peremptory” (强制的) request is their “ticket“ to respect and consideration.,The Title,B. The title may sugge
40、st womens inferiority: men pay a price to get in the gate. The masculine power remains in the word “please.” No matter how strengthened by the freedom brought by WWI, women can never be the equals of men. Annies essential failure in her own eyes, the cruelest element in her humiliation, is her failu
41、re to be a man. Beaten but undefeated, John reassembles the cloak and cap and Annie herself produces the key to unlock the door of the escape, and he returns alone to his mist-filled darkness to await a better day.,In “Tickets, Please“ Lawrence clings to the cultural primitivism that informs his works, showing through the story of Annie and John Thomas Raynor the authentic sadness he deeply felt as he witnessed the disfigurement of his country England my England and the perverted relationships between people as a consequence of misused progress.,Summary,
