The pursuit of desire between life and death

杜 雪

（長春理工大學，吉林 長春130000）

一、Introduction

D.H.Lawrence is a remarkable British novelist in the 20th century.After reading Odour of Chrysanthemums ,I find that most papers analyzed this novel from the perspective of psychology focusing on the mental changes of the Elizabeth Bates.In this paper,i applies the Freud’s theory of personality structure to analyze that what led to the incompatible relationship between the wife and husband and what made them unable to understand each other?

二、The conflicts between wife and husband

Elizabeth Bates was complaining all the time.She just considered the feeling of herself.All the things that her husband suffered were forgot by the anger woman.She felt so anger because that she endured her husband for a long time.Her ego was repressed seriously.She always felt unhappy in the family.Her ego,even superego told that she should understand her husband.She should look after the whole family more patiently.But her ego was too repressed to consider others.She need to release herself.The desire of human nature in her deep mind was evoked.Her id worded.She wanted pleasure and relax.When her mother-in-law came to talk with her about her husband.The first thought came into her mind was that whether her husband was dead or not.When they saw the dead man,Elizabeth and her mother-in-law had the totally different reactions.Comparing with her dead husband,she paid more attention on the vase.From this sentence,we can find that Elizabeth do not care about her husband.

Although he did not actual exist in the home, but the impact that he imposed upon his wife was apparent.He was the man that made his wife repressed herself seriously, desired to release and searched the pleasure of deep mind.The impact came from his absence in the family.From his mother we can know that he wasn’t like this before.But now all the things he did was because his id worked.The desire which were repressed in deep mind aroused.What he did was just for pleasure.This is the pleasure principle.Because he was the only labour to support a family.Many jobs were replaced by the machines.What could a poor man without high education and technical ability do?He was unhappy at work;the only thing he wanted after work was relaxing warm home.But the only thing his wife could give was complaint.The tremendous work pressure could not be released.His desire was repressing time after time.So that he could not tolerate anymore.The only thing he wanted was making himself happy.His id defeated the ego.

三、Conclusion

This paper gives a new angel to study the“Odour of Chrysanthemums.”Using the psychological views can analyze the deep mind of the characters and find out the essential problems in this novel.The desire of human drives the change and development of their personality.And the repression of the desire can transform the principle of ideal into the principle of pleasure.From the Freud’s theory of personality structure,her real immediate master is the desire of life.Then a new conflict appeared： life and death.