DH Lawrence

Thank God my "A" Level English tutor dropped it at the last mo!

I haven't read any of his books yet, but I did start one. Only got through the first few pages before I had to put it back (I was at a bookstore and had little money), but it seemed a bit hilarious. In a good way.

I always gave DHL the benefit of the doubt when he was being sexist, or misogynistic or just plain verbose. Then I read The Plumed Serpent and decided life was too short to read his novels any more and that he was, indeed, a misogynist. Shame I realised that after I'd read nearly all his works. :(

I just finished Lady Chatterley's Lover and have decided that I need never ever read another book by Lawrence. I'm fine. His portrayal of Connie reminded me of the way Hemingway portrayed women in his novels. Sexist and annoying - blissfully unaware and uninterested in actually portraying a realistic female character.

Without regard to Lawrence, but writers of earlier eras actually were writing about realistic females, at least their public personnas. Remember that yoiu are reading with today's eyes, and today's women don't behave like that.

W/artisan's caveat, I have to say I really like D.H. Lawrence and thought his depiction of female characters in, for example, Women in love, was very affecting ... 'course, I'm a guy ...

No offence to anyone, but I come from a long line of women (!) and not one of them behaved anything like those in Lawrence's novels, no matter what era. I find Henry James more reliable as a sketcher of women's personalities. DHL's women are almost without exception caricatures of rapacious, blood-thirsty emasculating Furies. Either that or they're 'good' women who are utterly supine and 'submit' to 'The Male' - as His right. A lot of wordy philosophy expended in his novels and short stories, designed to put us in our place, I think.

*getting a bit Millie Tant here, feel free to counter my blast... ;)

I'm caught between defending Lawrence and admitting I don't enjoy his work, but I'll attempt to defend him.

It is easy to forget that Lawrence was a liberating writer, that his subject matter was controversial (and this is before Lady Chatterley's Lover, which is a mess of a novel), focused on areas that fiction hadn't been before. His 'bleak up north' dramas may seen like cliches now but at the time they were ground-breaking.

#7 Hera, I understand what you are saying regarding his attitude towards women but it is known that his wife Freida had a major input into his work. (It was usually when she went AWOL that his work went AWOL as well). Although we look back now are accuse Lawrence, couldn't it be argued that in some ways his female characters were a step forward. They weren't from the narrow social strata of a Henry James or Virginia Woolf, but were drawn from the masses, the people Woolf looked down on.

Um, Jargoneer, I'm definitely 'of the masses' and my forebears even more so! I have an extremely broad London accent that no amount of Further Education has polished, innit. :)

Perhaps my dislike of DHL is that he's a working class writer who didn't get it 'right' (incidentally, where IS the 'Great Working Class Novel'?), although I think he was trying for it in Sons and Lovers, particularly the passages about the father. I think DHL's poetry is extraordinary and love it, his language in the novels is beautiful but I can't get over my violent antipathy to his 'man vs woman' subtext: all that tosh about Ragnorak doesn't help, either. Even a wonderfully crafted and realised short story like 'Odour of Chrysanthemums' has gender wars in it that leave a bitter taste.

Woolf looked down on the masses?! I almost choked on this piece of dried cantaloupe...

I must say, with no intention to offend, that only someone ignorant of her life and work could've made such a statement, and ignorant in a way (presupposing a number of prejudices and misinformation) that makes a simple answer difficult. Can't go on for too long, so just a few points: while she wasn't involved in social politics like, say, Beatrice Webb or Rebecca West, Woolf was perfectly aware of class problems and deeply felt for the poor. As a young girl she even taught evening school for working-class adults, and she made a working-class man a hero of "Mrs. Dalloway". The seriously neurotic situation she had with her servants was due largely to her constant unease in the role of a "mistress", her feeling she neither could nor should order them about. And it's more complicated than that too...

As for her characters, the slightest of them have more life, more authenticity than all of Lawrence's characters put together.

And, by the way, yes, Lawrence was a blazing misogynist. You can trace his arguments and even style in innumerable works from fin-de-siecle, especially in the Viennese modernists, who were in turn much influenced by the current medical and scientific views on gender--all insistent on "essential" psychological and characterological differences between men and women, and most absolutely devastating for the women. Lawrence may have picked up the German sources directly, I don't know enough about his biography to be certain, but I'd bet on it. Then there is the Scandinavian nationalism and folk revival, to which he was drawn too for, predictably, the themes of "masculine purity" and "virility" of the Nordic cultures. Epigones of Ibsen (more than Ibsen himself), Strindberg, the German modernists and Lawrence, expressionists in visual art and so on--all have been traumatised by the feminist challenge to masculinity and the old order.

So then you have the proliferation, in art and literature, of the terrifying dark female "vampires", the unholy demons, the sterile man-eating whores, the perverted and degenerate lesbians etc.

Oh dear. Did I say I'd be brief? :) I'll shut up now.

Virginia Woolf--reading a good biography is in order, I think. Quentin Bell and Hermione Lee did the best jobs.

jargoneer may now be one "who's afraid of Virginia Woolf".

#10 Obviously I have stepped on your toes. I was not picking on Woolf but randomly chose her as an alternative modernist viewpoint to Lawrence. I could have just as easily picked Eliot or Joyce.

As to Woolf's attitute to the masses - modernism as a moment was against the idea of popular culture, it was about elitism, protecting the 'tradition values' of culture from the dubious values of the new mass media. Woolf saw her work in this manner, she had nothing but disdain for the unrefined reader, she mocked the overhead conversations of ordinary women for their banality, etc. Look at her attitude to Arnold Bennett, a writer who was writing about the society around him, who was writing for the society around him. To Woolf he was just a jumped-up clerk, incapable of understanding anything of human relations; she even criticised him for describing everyday events, the everyday life of the every(wo)man. She knew nothing of this life and cared less. (The damage she did to Bennett's reputation has been lasting though, which is a disgrace).
You could read The Intellectuals and the Masses, or any other analysis of modernism and mass culture.

I'm not saying that I dislike Woolf's work, I much prefer it to Lawrence, she is a very talented (though limited) novelist. Neither do I disagree that Lawrence was(is) probably a misogynist, I was attempting to mount a defence of his work. The fact that he is the one of the most widely studied, and read, authors of his time period suggests there must be something else to his work than his attitude to women.

#8 - great working class novel, interesting question - perhaps something by Bennett or The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists?

#10 - Regarding Virginia Woolf - I can't get over the amount of special pleading for her work. Whenever I point out that her characters are boring, trivial or even barely existent (what's the most memorable thing about Jacob in Jacob's Room? His SHOES!) I get told that I cannot call myself a lover of literature. I also get told that if only I knew more of the events of her *life*, I would understand why she is so important. To which I have to ask - why can't the works speak for themselves? Surely works which can only be "appreciated" through an understanding of the writer's life are by definition weaker than works that can stand alone?

In the end, I suppose, one either finds her work enlightening or one doesn't. (For instance, I personally disagree that Septimus Smith was the "hero" of Mrs Dalloway: I think he was a minor character sketched in and killed off just to provide a convenient moment of "depth" to what would otherwise have been a shallow work about a day in the life of an upper-class party hostess.) All I resent is being told that if I don't revere Woolf's fiction, I'm a philistine.

And Lawrence - well, I loved certain moments in The Rainbow, chiefly Ursula's journey to maturity. The rest of it I can take or leave.

Lol, jargoneer, you sound like my old professors of Marxism... "But what is the SOCIAL value of this artistic work?"

Woolf didn't theorise about it nor did she make a conscious effort to include it in her works; her revolution was artistic, esthetic, psychological. As for what she thought about the individuals less educated (she had very little formal education), less "refined" or less talented than herself--I must admit I find either blame or praise beside the point. But I obviously read her much differently than you do.

As for the purported damage to Arnold Bennet (why him and not any of the others she wrote about?)... I assume you mean "posthumous", for both of them, because IIRC, Bennet was famous and selling well long before and much longer than anyone knew of Virginia Woolf (whose reputation and accompanying "weight" truly mushroomed long after her death, however well regarded she was in some relatively narrow circles during her life). By the way, are views on someone's literary worth really made simply relying on some other person's criticism? I'd think "the masses" wouldn't care anyway (or such piles of trash would never be produced and consumed), and the "educated", especially those aspiring to literary arbitration, surely know better.

Bibliotheque, I'm not aware of any "special pleading" for Woolf... of course. :)

She's a universal genius of highest intelligence and uncanny insight--and the greatest master of the English language since Shakespeare. But we all have different ears, and it is good so.

She's a universal genius of highest intelligence and uncanny insight--and the greatest master of the English language since Shakespeare.

LOL!!

From LolaWalser, message 14: "As for what she thought about the less educated (she had very little formal education), less "refined" or less talented than herself--I must admit I find either blame or praise beside the point."

Just curious here ... blame/praise for what Woolf thought of the "less refined" is beside the point ... but blame/praise for what Lawrence thought of women is right on point?

Lawrence's misogyny is central to his work; Woolf's private opinions on individuals (I have stressed this precisely because there is no encompassing social critique in her work, and her acts speak for themselves) is a different matter entirely.

I just noticed some words were lost from my previous post because of how I stressed them... :) Must edit.

She was a snob.

An English snob would never have gone bohemian, or married a Jew. People forget how disrespectable Woolf and her gang appeared to the average onlooker then.

I'd concede "elitist", perhaps (although, as I said, it's an odd thing to emphasise when faced with work of that kind), which is a different thing altogether, and far from bad.

She's a universal genius of highest intelligence and uncanny insight--and the greatest master of the English language since Shakespeare.

*cough, cough* I have to say, Shakespeare never made me wince with his forced mawkishness like Woolf did. Have a look at this passage from The Waves:

"And then tiring of pursuit and flight, lovelily they came descending, delicately declining, dropped down and sat silent on the tree, on the wall, with their bright eyes glancing, and their heads turned this way, that way; aware, awake; intensely conscious of one thing, one object in particular."

Lovelily? LOVELILY?

"Lovelily" is the single WORST original coinage in English I have ever encountered. And just count the multiple clauses of this monumental piece of self-indulgence, too. Twelve. Twelve clauses in one sentence. You can almost hear it choking on its own preciousness!

Is it fair to single out one sentence and claim that it's typical? Not at all; I wouldn't claim it is "typical". But I thought it was the most memorable thing I've ever read of Woolf's - and it's memorable for the wrong reasons.

Women in Love is incredible!

Firstly, I have to defend Lawrence here, although he probably would never have done the same for me on account of my female genitalia. However, Women in Love is an amazing piece of literature. I wrote on in at university and explored the theory that it is concerned with the 'end days' before we move from one epoch into another. The main characters all try to move on in whatever way they can, but end up ultimately destructive.
Virginia Woolf is obviously a different writer to Lawrence in terms of style, content, but also her focus is elsewhere. During my MA I studied The Waves and conceded that it is neither a great read nor a page turner. The reason that I adore the work is that it explores so many fundamental issues - who we are, how we try different identities as we grow up like coats until we find our custom made one (if we ever do), how time runs differently for people, and how ultimately life - no matter how important to those living it - is fragmentary and transient in the general scheme of things. The work is interested in exploring new forms of art, stream of consciousness dialogue, and I would argue is in many ways more 'real' than the supposed 'realism' of the Victorian period.
I do not think that Woolf was a snob because, to be a snob, one has to be consciously aware of other classes as having the potential to be equals. Woolf grew up in a world of servants, the elite and the masses. To say that she is a snob makes it seem like a disdainful conscious decision on her part, whereas I guess that she viewed her servants as nice enough people but probably wouldn't want to go about town with her maid! She was also all about doing shocking things, but I don't think within that climate that befriending servants really ever was an issue.

Personally I am a fan of D.H Lawrence, but I have to tell you "Lady Chatterley's Lover" is in my opinion his worst work.
It seems that literature classes often assign an author's worst work to be read, making it no wonder that most people do not read once they get out of school.
I know a lot of people like Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" & "The Karamazov Brothers" which are also frequently required reading in classes, but I always thought that "House of the Dead", "Poor People", or "The Idiot" were better works, not to mention his short stories. I have gotten many people that were never big readers interested in his short stories, & then went on to explore other classic literature from there.

# 22 ans 23: I'm curious as to what it is you love about Women in Love. I've read several of your reviews, MrsRadcliffe, and while I don't always agree, you don't seem crazy, and based on my recollections of Women in Love, only a crazy person would like it. Since it might be easier if I explain what I disliked, here goes:

The misogyny, of course, though I forgive that to some extent due to the time period, etc.

The monotony. I only remember about 5 things from the books- one was the image of the fierce rabbit, which I loved, since I had very fierce killer-rabbits myself and thought it was a great image; another was the scene in which one of the male characters says of one of the females characters 'she looks like a macaw!' because she wore yellow stockings shortly after a death; another is when one of the male characters asks one of the female characters (I think) to 'stop with your meretricious persiflage' (both this and the last became common phrases for my best friend and me, for many years, hence the quotes); and the last was the incessant rambling about 'two stars, balanced, equal, stars in balance, in balance, equal' (not an actual quote). IE certain phrases/scenes struck me as either funny (bunny) or bizarre (macaw) or pretentious (persiflage), but the bulk of the book seemed to drone on endlessly.

The characters also seemed so incredibly unlikable- I kind of wanted them all to get hit by a bus. The 'bad' ones are just self-absorbed and unwilling to communicate, while the 'good' ones seemed two-dimensional, almost. Maybe not quite the right word, but there was something unreal about them. To be fair, I read this while lonely, living abroad, at the age of 20, and just for fun, so I didn't have any outside analysis. I just remember that my friend and I both thought it was some of the worst drivel we has ever read, and I'd love to know more about why people like it. I actually enjoyed Lady Chatterly's Lover for what it was (I LOVE Fanny Hill too, for what it's worth), so I'm potentially willing to give ol' DH another shot.

HI Kplatypus, I'm not entirely sure why I like it so much. Perhaps it's because I had read a bit about Lawrence's beliefs about the three epochs and the transitional periods. I was concious of this throughout the novel and perhaps that made it for me more interesting than if I was just reading the novel straight.
I think it's interesting to take a group of people - none of which I find particularly likeable either - and see how they try to make the transition into the next 'epoch.' Some don't - they end up destroying each other. The ones that do only do so because they lack a lot of humanity (passion for one thing.)

I know you're not supposed to read too much into the author's life by the works s/he writes, but it is interesting to explore how women in love shows that the author must have some sort of problem with the concept of marriage. For a marriage to be successful in his opinion, the two parties must remain as two separate entities entirely - surely more of a companionship than a marriage. Conversely, those relationships where the two become one end up as a fight for the dominant personality to win out and end up ultimately as a destruction.

One of my favourite bits is Birking rolling in the grass in a very paganistic way, the only way that he can vent his true feelings.

The portraits of the women are misogynistic but then so was Lawrence. The men hardly fair much better.
He was it seems deeply troubled. But for me, still one of the most engaging writers that I have ever read.

One of the recurring things about even trying to talk about DHL is that he is held with such cultish veneration by some of his readers that it impedes a conversation. I confess that I'm not in the rolling-in-the-grass, paganistic camp. But it would still be fruitful to be able to talk.

My personal guess is that until one can avoid certain political and ersatz new-age agendas, people will be talking at, instead of with, each other.

I was just expressing a valid viewpoint as was KPlatypus. 'Cultish veneration' indeed! I'm British, we don't hold with that sort of thing ;)

OK, let`s talk about him, not at each other.

I think you need to consider his background more fully to understand him. He grew up in a `two up, two down` house in the mining town of Eastwood.

The mines in his day were privately owned. His father was known as a `butty` - he was a miner but it was his role to act as a kind of self-employed `team leader` - he would recruit a gang of miners and go the `big house` in search of work. The owners would deal with him directly and hand him a sum of money on a `payment by results` basis, which he would share out with the others as he saw fit. Such a person would obviously be a very strong character indeed, probably a rather hard and over-bearing individual.

(`Butty` - it means a sandwich - was probably a miners` joke, possibly implying the `butty` was caught in the middle between `miners` and `masters` - a `shot by both sides` situation).

Despite this, the family lived in some hardship, they were certainly not affluent. Being `of the masses` in that time in that area would be very different to being `of the masses` in the south (no insult intended, heera !). Employment locally would be in the mines or in some enterprise providing services to the miners (food shops etc). For Lawrence to even consider teaching or writing was a step almost beyond the comprehension of his peers and certainly of his father, who never regarded such activities as `work`.

Regarding relationships, I`d wager that concepts such as `romantic love` or an `equal partnership` as we might envisage would be quite alien to the people around Lawrence. A concept of `companionship` would be as good as it got.

Form what judgements you like as to Lawrence the man or Lawrence the writer, but you won`t get a rounded view of him without considering his background.

I actually found your analysis quite helpful, MrsRadcliffe. I had never heard of the three epochs or transitional periods before I read the book and even now don't know very much. If you had some kind of context to put this book in, I could see how it would make more sense.

As far as "read too much into the author's life by the works s/he writes" goes- I don't know. I think that, while it's easy to get carried away and ignore the work for the life, or vice versa, using one to deepen your understanding of the other can be very fruitful. Knowing about Dostoevsky's past certainly helped me put Crime and Punishment in perspective- I imagine the same would be true for Mr. Lawrence. And when someone harps on about relationships as much as he does, and creates characters as (self)destructive as his are, I think it's safe to assume that he had some issues with the ladies ;)

Are there any books dealing with Mr. Lawrence's background that you (or anyone else, of course) would suggest? I must admit that, fun as my hatred of DHL can be, I've always meant to give him another try- never even cracked his other books, and if I want to finish this 1001 book list, I'm going to have to delve back in. I think I even have a copy of Sons and Lovers somewhere around the house, though I may have chucked it. Hmm. Anyway, yes. Suggestions of background reading would be appreciated.

I agree actually about reading the author's background alongside their works - however, I am now a product of the educational system and throughout my degree it was drummed into us that the words on the page and the socio-political climate matter, not the author's life. Indeed, an author can never know for sure what compells her to write blah blah death of the author blah blah birth of the reader ho hum. Hence my decision not to follow an academic path! I just found the reluctance to even consider the author as a factor maddenning.

Right, as for DHL, I've only read women in love and lady chatterly's lover - I always meant to read the rainbow as it fits somehow with WIL but never got round to it.

DHL believed in an obscure doctrine called something like Jaco- (something), sorry I can't remember. It stated that there were 3 epochs, and at the time WIL was set, we were in an apocalypse not of ending but of transition to the last age - the age of the holy spirit. Those who went on were saved. It is possible to see WIL as post-apocalyptic within that content, i.e. the characters are those that have been left behind which is why they are so vile!

"I think DHL's poetry is extraordinary and love it" - now there's some sense being talked (message 9). I haven't read one of the novels for years, and I don't feel like rushing back to them, but the poems ... fantastic.

Also thanks to nickhoonaloon for a very judicious contribution.

#30

I`ll see if I can find out if there are any books you might be interested in, though you may have to be patient.

If you (or anyone else) fell like googling relevant subjects, the local authority for Eastwood is Broxtowe Borough Council, and they maintain a number of Lawrence-related sites. The surrounding area is Amber Valley.

#31

Hello again, mrsradcliffe. I agree, looking at the work without looking at the author`s background is cobblers, basically.

#32

...and hello again, desultory. I don`t think I`ve ever been called judicious before. I`ve been called a lot of other things though !

Hey man. Yeah, I know - I wondered, even as I was typing it. Doesn't sound like you at all. Still, we're bound to get to some of those other things later.

Interesting thread. I've read neither Lawrence nor Woolf, but on reading this I'd rather start with Lawrence and put Woolf off for a good long bit...

Anything that the hoi polloi read (hoi polloi defined as the many) is bad? Should we just not allow them (us) to read at all? Is it your assumption that the hoi polloi only ready "popular" books?

Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned when I was growing up and when I finally got to read it I didn't get very far and I didn't find it at all enteresting, erotic or exciting. I didn't bother to finish it.