Comparison and Contrast "You Touched Me" D.H. Lawrence and "The Boarding House" from James Joyce

Due to the variance of education background, social environment and personality derived from human nature, every individual has his/her distinct standard of living, social sense and emotion. People who have different minds and living objectives interact with each other in every human community, and the morality has been historically obeyed by general public as the calibration of evaluating one's characteristic. Although the social morality gradually alters, most people comply with it either for self mentality pursuit or public reputation. In the early twentieth century, public took the ethicality and morality very seriously, and this arose contradictions with human's free will and instinct for self benefit. "You Touched Me" from D.H. Lawrence and "The Boarding House" from James Joyce each tells a story that ends with one controversial marriage in the conservative Europe. By comparing two stories, it can be seen two have similarity on scenario about emotion development and plot towards benefits, whereas in contrary the characters received different endings after battling under pressure due to morality.

The Roman empire in the time of Hadrian (ruled 117...

Hadrian's Gate, built in the honor of the Roman em...

Daryl Doran

The scenarios about emotion development in two stories are very close. Emotionally love and respect each other is the foundation of marriage. These two marriages mentioned are abnormal but similar, for they have an agreement that the devotion of emotion is unilateral. In "You Touched Me", Hadrian "shan't forget" (Lawrence 423) Matilda's touch even though he knew "it was a mistake" (Lawrence 423), whereas Matilda was more biased and resisted the marriage. In the case of "The Boarding House", Polly was extremely enthusiastic about the relationship with Mr. Doran, whereas Mr. Doran was so passive in this relationship, disliked Mooney's family, and hesitated in making choices between morality and his future till the very end. In order to rationalize the occurrence of the single devoted relationship, each story provides...