«Cultural Regeneration» in the Novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence

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The transitional shift in the Modern epoch away from knowing into a realm of “unknowing” occurred on multiple fronts—socially, philosophically, culturally, and religiously. Modern writers and philosophers served as the wobbly bridge between rational realism, concrete ideals, and parametrically designed boundaries of thought and perception on one side, and on the other, notions of formless, spiritual transcendence in a godless universe, breakdowns in moral systems, and ideologies that suggested that existence—and therefore, individual perception—was not only metaphorically meaningless, but more importantly, missing the point. While Freud and Darwin both deduced theories suggesting animalistic tendencies in human beings, Nietzsche went one step further in dictating that human beings are consumed by the “primal irrational”—that is, human beings are not driven by rational, cognitive processes, but rather are more or less reduced and defined by natural drives and instincts in a universe devoid of any meaning or purpose other than for life struggle. Moreover, modernist writers were essentially disillusioned by a train of chaos, which carried the death and dying of World War I and the rising machine of industry and innovation. Therefore, they were conditioned to resort to existentialism, or submerge themselves in the absurdity of life and death, a realization of a perceived nothingness or dread in themselves and the freedom with which to live as they chose, casting any spiritual association or reverence for a higher being aside.