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Analysis of D. H. Lawrence’s Novels

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on April 8, 2019 • ( 0 )

D. H. Lawrence occupies an ambiguous position with respect to James Joyce , Marcel Proust , T. S. Eliot , and the other major figures of the modernist movement. While on one hand he shared their feelings of gloom about the degeneration of modern European life and looked to ancient mythologies for prototypes of the rebirth all saw as necessary, on the other he keenly distrusted the modernists’ veneration of traditional culture and their classicist aesthetics. The modernist ideal of art as “an escape from personality,” as a finished and perfected creation sufficient unto itself, was anathema to Lawrence, who once claimed that his motto was not art for art’s sake but “art for my sake.” For him, life and art were intertwined, both expressions of the same quest: “To be alive, to be man alive, to be whole man alive: that is the point.” The novel realized its essential function best when it embodied and vitally enacted the novelist’s mercurial sensibility. His spontaneity, his limitations and imperfections, and his fleeting moments of intuition were directly transmitted to the reader, whose own “instinct for life” would be thereby quickened. Lawrence believed that at its best “the novel, and the novel supremely,” could and should perform this important task. That is why he insisted that the novel is “the one bright book of life.” One way of approaching his own novels— and the most significant, by general consensus, are Sons and Lovers , The Rainbow , Women in Love, The Plumed Serpent, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover —is to consider the extent to which the form and content of each in turn rises to this vitalist standard.

To be “whole man alive,” for Lawrence, involved first of all the realization of wholeness. The great enemy of human (and of aesthetic) wholeness, he believed, was modern life itself. Industrialization had cut man off from the past, had mechanized his daily life and transformed human relations into a power struggle to acquire material commodities, thereby alienating man from contact with the divine potency residing in both nature and other men and women. Modern Europe was therefore an accumulation of dead or dying husks, fragmented and spiritually void, whose inevitable expression was mass destruction. For Lawrence, World War I was the apotheosis of modernization.

Contemporary history provided only the end result of a long process of atomization and dispersion whose seeds lay in ancient prehistory. In Fantasia of the Unconscious (1922), Lawrence formulates a myth of origins that sheds light on his quest for wholeness in his travels among “primitive” peoples as well as in his novels. He describes a kind of golden age before the Flood, when the pagan world, both geographically and culturally, was a single, unified entity. This Ur-culture, unlike the modern fragmented age, had developed a holistic knowledge or “science in terms of life.” The primal wisdom did not differentiate among body, mind, and spirit; the objective and the subjective were one, as the reason and the passions were one; man and nature and the cosmos lived in harmonious relation with one another. Men and women all over the earth shared this knowledge. They “wandered back and forth from Atlantis to the Polynesian Continent. . . . The interchange was complete, and knowledge, science, was universal over the earth.” Then the glaciers melted, whole continents were drowned, and the monolithic world fragmented into isolated races, each developing its own culture, its own “science.”Afew refugees from the lost continents fled to the high ground of Europe, Asia, and America. There they “refused to forget, but taught the old wisdom, only in its half-forgotten, symbolic forms. More or less forgotten, as knowledge: remembered as ritual, gesture, and myth-story.”

Although this myth of apocalypse and rebirth was fully articulated during Lawrence’s “wander years” after the war, it was clearly anticipated in his earlier works. There the horror of the modern world’s “drift toward death” and the yearning for some “holy ground” on which to begin anew were keenly felt. The initial experience of fragmentation in Lawrence’s life was obviously the primal conflict between his mother and father, which among other things resulted in a confusion in his own sexual identity. In the fiction of this period, the stunting of life by fragmentation and imbalance is evident in the portrayal of such characters as Miriam Leivers in Sons and Lovers , Anton Skrebensky in The Rainbow , and Gerald Crich in Women in Love, just as the quest for vital wholeness is exemplified in the same novels by Paul Morel, Ursula Brangwen, and Rupert Birkin, respectively. If the secondary characters in Lawrence’s novels tend in general to be static types seen from without, his protagonists, beginning with Ursula in The Rainbow and continuing through Constance Chatterley in Lady Chatterley’s Lover , are anything but static. Rather, they are volatile, inconsistent, and sometimes enigmatic. In The Plumed Serpent, Kate Leslie vacillates between intellectual abstraction and immediate sensuous experience; between egotistic willfulness and utter self-abandonment to another; between withdrawal behind the boundaries of the safe and the known, and the passionate yearning for metamorphosis; and so on. There is a constant ebb and flow in Kate’s behavior, even a rough circularity, that creates a spontaneous, improvisatory feeling in her narrative. Lawrence’s protagonists are always in flux, realizing by turns the various aspects of their natures, and this dynamism is largely what makes them so alive. They are open to life: in themselves, in their natural environment, and in other vital human beings.

Lawrence believed that the novel was the one form of human expression malleable enough to articulate and dramatize the dynamic process of living. In his essay “Why the Novel Matters,” he celebrates the novelist’s advantage over the saint, the scientist, and the philosopher, all of whom deal only with parts of the composite being of humankind. The novelist alone, says Lawrence, is capable of rendering the whole of “man alive.” He alone, by so doing, “can make the whole man alive [that is, the reader] tremble.”

The priestly or prophetic function of the novelist is clearly central to this aesthetic doctrine. Lawrence is one of the very few modern writers to assume this role and to do so explicitly. At times, this very explicitness becomes problematic. His novels are quite uneven; most are marred in varying degrees by hectoring didacticism that is less evident in his short fiction. Nevertheless, he needed the amplitude of an extended narrative to give voice to the several sides of his complex sensibility, as if to discover himself in the process. Perhaps that, as much as anything else, was the object of his quest. Collectively his novels represent a restless search for a form capable of rendering that sensibility fully and honestly.

Sons and Lovers

In a letter written a few months after the publication of Sons and Lovers , Lawrence made an admission that suggests that “art for my sake” could have been a cathartic as well as a heuristic function. “One sheds one’s sickness in books,” he wrote, “repeats and presents one’s emotions, to be master of them.” Sons and Lovers , his third novel, was the work that enabled Lawrence to come to terms, at least provisionally, with the traumas of his formative years. The more than two years he spent working and reworking the book amounted to an artistic and psychological rite of passage essential to his development as a man and as a writer.

The novel spans the first twenty-six years in the life of Paul Morel. Because of the obvious similarities between Paul’s experiences and Lawrence’s, and because the story in part concerns Paul’s apprenticeship as an artist—or, more accurately, the obstacles he must overcome to be an artist—the novel has been seen as an example of a subspecies of the bildungsroman, the Künstlerroman. Comparison with James Joyce’s APortrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) suggests, however, how loosely the term applies to Lawrence’s novel. Where Joyce scrupulously selects only those scenes and episodes of Stephen Dedalus’s life that directly contribute to the young artist’s development (his first use of language, his schooling, his imaginative transcendence of sex, religion, and politics, his aesthetic theories), Lawrence’s focus is far more diffuse.

The novel opens with a conventional set-piece description of the town of Bestwood (modeled on Eastwood) as it has been affected by the arrival and growth of the mining industry during the last half century. This is followed by an account of the courtship and early married life of Walter and Gertrude Morel, Paul’s parents. Even after Paul’s birth, the main emphasis remains for many chapters on the mother and father, and considerable space is devoted to their first child, William, whose sudden death and funeral conclude part 1 of the novel. Paul’s interest in drawing is mentioned halfway through part 1, but it is not a major concern until he becomes friends with Miriam Leivers in part 2, and there the companionship itself actually receives more attention. Though the comparison does an injustice to the nature of Lawrence’s real achievement in the novel, perhaps Sons and Lovers more nearly resembles Stephen Hero (1944), the earlier and more generally autobiographical version of Joyce’s novel, than it does the tightly constructed A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

When, in the late stages of revision, Lawrence changed his title from Paul Morel to Sons and Lovers , his motive was akin to Joyce’s when the Irishman discarded Stephen Hero and began to rewrite. The motive was form—form determined by a controlling idea. The subject of Sons and Lovers is not simply Paul’s development but his development as an instance of the pattern suggested by the title; that pattern involves the Morels’ unhappy marriage, the fateful experiences of Paul’s brother William, Paul’s frustrated relationship with Miriam, and his later encounters with Clara and Baxter Dawes, as well as Paul’s own maturation. For Lawrence, the pattern clearly had wide application. Indeed, in a letter to Edward Garnett, his editor, written a few days after completing the revised novel, Lawrence claimed that his book sounded “the tragedy of thousands of young men in England.”

This claim, along with the change in title and the late revisions designed to underscore a theme already present in the narrative, was probably influenced by the discussions that Lawrence and Frieda had in 1912 regarding Freud’s theories, of which Frieda was then an enthusiastic proponent. (There is no evidence of Lawrence’s awareness of Freud before this.) In a more general sense, the “tragedy” was rooted historically, as the novel shows, in the disruption of natural human relationships that was one of the by-products of modernization. Directly or indirectly, the characters in the novel are entrapped by the materialistic values of their society, unable even when they consciously reject those values to establish true contact with one another. Instead they tend to treat one another as objects to be possessed or manipulated for the purpose of self-gratification.

Thus Mrs. Morel, frustrated by her marriage to her coal miner husband, transfers her affections to her sons, first to William, the eldest, and then to Paul after William’s death. Walter Morel, the father, becomes a scapegoat and an outcast in his own home. Whether consciously or not, Mrs. Morel uses her sons as instruments to work out her own destiny vicariously, encouraging them in pursuits that will enable them to escape the socially confining life that she herself cannot escape, yet resenting it when the sons do begin to make a life away from her. Paul’s fixation on his mother—and his hatred of his father—contributes to a confusion of his sexual identity and to his inability to love girls his own age in a normal, healthy way. In the same letter to Edward Garnett, Lawrence characterized this inability to love as a “split,” referring to the rupture in the son’s natural passions caused by the mother’s possessive love.

The split causes Paul to seek out girls who perform the psychological role of mother surrogates: Miriam, an exaggerated version of the spiritual, Madonna-like aspect of the mother image; and the buxom Clara Dawes, who from a Freudian viewpoint represents the “degraded sex object,” the fallen woman, equally a projection of the son’s prohibited erotic desires for his mother. Because Paul’s feeling for Miriam and Clara are thus compartmentalized and unbalanced, both relationships are unfulfilling, a fact that only reinforces his Oedipal bondage. At the same time, part of the responsibility for the unsatisfactory relationships belongs to Miriam and Clara themselves, both of whom exploit Paul to help them fulfill their own private fantasy lives. The world of Sons and Lovers is populated by isolated, fragmentary souls not unlike the inhabitants of T. S. Eliot’s 1922 The Waste Land (“We think of the key, each in his prison/ Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison”).

A decade after the appearance of Sons and Lovers , Lawrence declared that of all his books, it was the one he would like to rewrite, because in it he had treated his father unfairly. By then, of course, he was overtly committed to finding embodiments of “whole man alive” and, in retrospect, his father seemed to offer such an embodiment. When he wrote Sons and Lovers , however, he had not yet fully come to appreciate the importance of his father’s unaffected male vitality. Although occasionally Walter Morel appears in a favorable light, the novel generally emphasizes his ineffectuality as a husband and father. The Oedipal conflict on which the story hinges perhaps made this unavoidable. In any event, the struggle to attain wholeness is centered in Paul Morel.

Because Paul’s mother is “the pivot and pole of his life, from which he could not escape,” her death amounts to the great crisis of the novel. The terrible spectacle of her agony as she lies dying slowly of cancer torments Paul until, by giving her an overdose of morphine, he commits a mercy killing. Unconsciously, the act seems to be motivated by his desire to release her from her debilitating “bondage” as wife and mother, the roles that have made her erotically unattainable to Paul. Her death is followed by an eerie, Poe-like scene in which the shaken Paul, momentarily imagining his mother as a beautiful young sleeping maiden, stoops and kisses her “passionately,” as if to waken her like the handsome prince in a fairy tale, only to be horrified by her cold and unresponsive lips. It is a key moment, adumbrating as it does the writer’s subsequent shift in allegiances to the “sensuous flame of life” associated with his father. For Paul, however, the loss of his mother induces a period of deep depression (interestingly enough, guilt is not mentioned) in which his uppermost desire is to reunite with his mother in death. This “drift towards death” was what Lawrence believed made Paul’s story symptomatic of the times, “the tragedy of thousands of young men in England.”

Nevertheless, the novel does not end tragically. Paul, on the verge of suicide, decides instead to turn his back on the “immense dark silence” where his lover/mother awaits him and to head toward the “faintly humming, glowing town”—and beyond it, to the Continent, where he plans to continue his artistic endeavors (just as Lawrence did). Some readers have found this last-minute turnabout implausible, a breakdown in the novel’s form, but Lawrence anticipates Paul’s “rebirth” by having him realize, after his mother’s death, that he must finally sever his ties to both Miriam and Clara. For him to have returned to them then for consolation and affection would have meant that, inwardly, he was still cherishing some hope of preserving the maternal bond, even if only through his mother’s unsatisfactory substitutes. When Paul effects a reconciliation between Clara and her estranged husband Baxter Dawes, who has been presented throughout in terms strongly reminiscent of Walter Morel, he is (as Daniel A. Weiss and others have observed) tacitly acting out a reversal of the original Oedipal conflict. If the primary emphasis of Sons and Lovers is on the tragic split in the emotional lives of the Morels, its conclusion finds Paul taking the steps necessary to begin to heal the split in himself. Only by so doing would Paul, like Lawrence, be able to undertake a quest for vital wholeness. That quest would become the chief subject of the novels following Sons and Lovers .

As sometimes happens to a writer after he has successfully struggled to transform autobiography into art, Lawrence reacted against Sons and Lovers almost as soon as he had finished it. The process of reevaluating the influence of his parents, begun in his revisions of the novel and particularly evident in its concluding chapters, continued apace. His nonfiction of the period exhibits a growing hostility to women as spawners of intellectual and spiritual abstraction and the early traces of his interest in the reassertion of the vital male. Lawrence reacted also against certain aspects of the narrative technique used in Sons and Lovers.As he worked on his next novel, initially called The Sisters, he found that he was no longer interested in “visualizing” or “creating vivid scenes” in which characters revealed themselves through dramatic encounters and dialogue. The conventions of plot and the “furniture” of realistic exposition bored him. Moreover, the traditional methods of characterization were positively a hindrance to the kind of novel he felt he must write.

Lawrence had in fact embarked on a long and difficult struggle to create a new kind of novel, unprecedented in English fiction. When his publisher balked, Lawrence defended his experiment in an important letter that clarifies his intentions not only in what would eventually become The Rainbow and Women in Love but in most of his subsequent fiction:

You mustn’t look in my novel for the old stable ego of the character. There is another ego, according to whose action the individual is unrecognizable, and passes through, as it were, allotropic states which it needs a deeper sense than any we’ve been used to exercise, to discover are states of the same radically unchanged element. (Like as diamond and coal are the same pure single element of carbon.)

What all this suggests, and what is implicit in the novels themselves, is that the conventions of realism, which were developed preeminently in the English novel of the nineteenth century, are inadequate tools for use by a writer whose aim is the transformation of the very society whose values were embodied in realism. The “oldfashioned human element,” “the old stable ego,” the “certain moral scheme” prescribing “consistency” and linear development—these were relics of positivism, bourgeois humanism, and other ideologies of a dying culture. Lawrence gropes a bit in the attempt to describe their successors, but it is clear enough that the “other ego,” the “physic” or nonhuman in humanity, and the “radically unchanged element” whose “allotropic” transformations determine a “rhythmic form” along lines unknown, are references to the mysterious source of vital energies capable (he believed) of regenerating both art and society.

The Rainbow

The Rainbow applies these ideas in a most interesting way. It is an elegiac study of the dying culture, written in Lawrence’s revolutionary “new” manner. The story spans three generations of the Brangwen family, beginning with the advent of industrialism around 1840 in the rural Erewash valley—signaled by the construction of canals, the collieries, and the railroad—and continuing up to the first decade of the twentieth century. The theme is the destruction of the traditional way of life and the attempt, by the Brangwens, either to accommodate themselves to that loss or to transcend it by discovering a new basis for being.

The novel opens with a rhapsodic prose poem telescoping two hundred years of Brangwens into archetypal male and female figures living in “blood intimacy” with one another and with the land: “The pulse of the blood of the teats of the cows beat into the pulse of the hands of the men. [The men] mounted their horses and held life between the grip of their knees.” Despite their “vital connection,” however, there are opposing impulses in the male and the female principles that become increasingly important as the story proceeds. The Brangwen men, laboring in the fields of the Marsh Farm, are compared with the rim of a wheel revolving around the still center that is hearth and home; the women, like the axle of the wheel, live in the still center but always direct their gaze outward, beyond the wheel’s rim toward the road, the village, the church steeple, “the spoken world” that is encroaching on the horizon. This tension between centripetal and centrifugal forces, the rim and the axle, is fruitful so long as the Brangwens live in harmony with the land, for it is a reflection of the cyclical processes of nature in which the clash of opposites generates change and growth.

With the second generation, however, the principal Brangwen couple, Will and Anna, leaves the land and moves to the industrial town of Beldover, where Will works in a shop that produces machine-made lace. The seasonal cycle is replaced by the Christian liturgical calendar, in Lawrence’s view a step toward abstraction. The old male-female opposition, having lost its former function as the means by which men and women participate in the dynamic rhythms of nature, becomes a destructive force. The marriage of contraries loses impetus because it now reflects not nature but the mechanisms that are dividing society. Husband and wife settle into a fixed domestic routine, typically Victorian, of piety (on Will’s side) and child rearing (on Anna’s). Anna’s “outward” impulse is thus sublimated, and, like Gertrude Morel in Sons and Lovers , she counts on her children to act out her frustrated quest beyond the pale.

Most important of these children is the oldest daughter, Ursula, who, with her sister Gudrun, will also figure prominently in Women in Love. Ursula has been called “the first complete modern woman” (Marvin Mudrick) and, even more sweepingly, “the first ‘free soul’” (Keith Sagar) in the English novel. It is Ursula, a member of Lawrence’s own generation, who finally breaks out of the old circle of life. As she grows into womanhood she challenges and ultimately rejects traditional views of religion, democracy, education, free enterprise, love, and marriage. She is the first Brangwen female to enter a profession and support herself (as a schoolteacher); she attends the university; she travels to London and the Continent. On several levels, then, her “centrifugal” movement takes her far afield. Despite her explorations, however, she has no sense of who she really is. The traditional order, which formerly provided a living relationship with nature and with other men and women, has all but collapsed. Motivated only by her isolate will and unreciprocated by any meaningful male contrary—as is amply demonstrated by her unsatisfying love affairs with Winifred Inger, her schoolmistress, and the shallow Anton Skrebensky—Ursula’s quest becomes a desperate exercise in redundancy and futility, her vital energies randomly dispersed.

The novel ends as it began, symbolically. In the last of a series of “ritual scenes,” in which characters are suddenly confronted with the “physic” or nonhuman “ego” that is the mysterious life force, Ursula encounters a herd of stampeding horses. Whether hallucinatory or actual, the horses seem to represent the “dark” potencies that she has tried so long to discover on her quest and that have so far eluded her. Now, terrified, she escapes. Soon after, she falls ill with pneumonia, miscarries a child by Skrebensky, and lies delirious with fever for nearly a fortnight. All this is fitting as the culmination of Ursula’s abortive, well-driven quest. Her “drift toward death,” more like a plunge finally, is even more representative of her generation’s crisis than Paul Morel’s was in Sons and Lovers . As in the earlier novel, furthermore, Lawrence attempts to end The Rainbow on a hopeful note. After her convalescence, Ursula awakes one morning on the shores of what appears to be a new world, “as if a new day had come on the earth.” Having survived the deluge, she is granted a vision of the rainbow—a symbol related to but superseding the old closed circle—which seems to offer hope for the regeneration not only of Ursula but also of her world.

On both levels, however, the symbolic promise is less than convincing. Unlike Paul Morel, Ursula has not performed any action or had any insight that suggests that her final “rebirth” is more than wishful thinking. As for the modern world’s regeneration, when the novel appeared, in September, 1915, nothing could have been less likely. Lawrence hated the war, but like many other modern writers he saw it as the harbinger of the apocalypse, accelerating the advent of a new age. Before long he realized that he had “set my rainbow in the sky too soon, before, instead of after, the deluge.” The furor provoked by the novel must have made the irony of his premature hopefulness all the more painful. In the teeth of that furor and the public persecution waged against Frieda and himself as supposed German spies, Lawrence set about writing Women in Love, considered by many today his greatest novel and one of the half dozen or so masterpieces of modern fiction. Women in Love

Whatever their differences with respect to the emphasis placed on the operations of the “physic,” or nonhuman, forces in humanity, Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow share several important traits that set them apart from most of Lawrence’s subsequent novels, beginning with Women in Love. For one, they have in common a narrative structure that, by locating the action firmly within a social context spanning generations, subscribes to the novelistic convention of rendering the story of individuals continuous with the larger movements of history. Women in Love takes up the story of the “modern” Brangwens about three and one-half years after the end of The Rainbow but, in contrast to the earlier novel’s sixty-six-year span, concentrates attention onto a series of loosely connected episodes occurring within a ten-month period, from spring to winter of 1909 or 1910.

One result of this altered focus, at once narrower and relatively looser than that of the earlier novels, is that the social background seems far more static than before. The great transformation of society known as modernization has already occurred, and the characters move within a world whose ostensible change is the slow, inward process of decay. The shift of emphasis is evident also in the protagonists’ attitudes toward society. The conclusions of the earlier novels—Paul’s turning away from death toward the “humming, glowing town,” and Ursula’s vision of the rainbow offering hope that a corrupt world would “issue to a new germination”—imply that Western civilization could still respond to the most urgent needs of the individual. In Women in Love that assumption has completely vanished. Thus, although Lawrence originally conceived of The Rainbow and Women in Love as a single work and would later describe them as forming together “an organic artistic whole,” the latter novel embodies a far darker view of the world. As Lawrence once said, Women in Love “actually does contain the results in one’s soul of the war: it is purely destructive, not like The Rainbow , destructive-consummating.”

The phrase “purely destructive” only slightly exaggerates the despairing nature of the novel’s apocalyptic vision. Certainly its depiction of modern society as a dying tree “infested with little worms and dry-rot” suggests that the impetus toward death and destruction is so pervasive as to make the war all but inevitable. In the novel, the working class, far from resisting the dehumanizing mechanism of the industrial system, is “satisfied to belong to the great wonderful machine, even whilst it destroyed them.” The leisure class is seen as similarly deluded and doomed. Hermione Roddice’s chic gatherings at Breadalby, her country estate (modeled on Lady Ottoline Morrell’s Garsington), offer no genuine alternative to the dying world but only a static image of the “precious past,” where all is formed and final and accomplished— a “horrible, dead prison” of illusory peace. Meanwhile contemporary art has abdicated its timehonored role as naysayer to a corrupt social order. Indeed, in the gay artist Halliday, the promiscuous Minette, and the other decadent bohemians who congregate at the Pompadour Café in London, Lawrence clearly implicates intellectual and artistic coteries such as Bloomsbury in the general dissolution of modern society.

That the pandering of the modern artist to the deathdrive of mechanistic society was a general phenomenon and not limited to England is emphasized near the end of the novel with the appearance of Loerke, a German sculptor whose work adorns “a great granite factory in Cologne.” Loerke, who asserts on one hand that art should interpret industry as it had formerly interpreted religion and on the other that a work of art has no relation to anything but itself, embodies the amorality of modernist aesthetics from Lawrence’s viewpoint. Dominated by “pure unconnected will,” Loerke is, like Hermione, sexually perverse, and, like the habitués of the Pompadour, he “lives like a rat in the river of corruption.”

All of these secondary characters in Women in Love exemplify the results of the displacement of the traditional order by industrialization, or what Lawrence terms “the first great phase of chaos, the substitution of the mechanical principle for the organic.” Except for Hermione, they are consistently presented from without, in static roles prescribed for them by a static society. Against this backdrop move the four principal characters: Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen, who are sisters, and Rupert Birkin and Gerald Crich, who are friends. The interweaving relationships of these four, highlighted in scenes of great emotional intensity and suggestiveness, provide the “rhythmic form” of the novel. Notwithstanding their interactions with external society and their long philosophical arguments, they are chiefly presented in terms of a continuous struggle among the elemental energies vying for expression within them. Mark Schorer aptly describes the book as “a drama of primal compulsions.” The “drama” concerns the conflict between the mechanical will and the organic oneness of being, between the “flux of corruption” or death and the regenerative forces of life, as these are variously embodied in the four main characters and their constantly shifting relationships.

Birkin, full of talk about spontaneity and “pure being” and the “blood-knowledge” available in sensuality, is clearly a spokesman for certain of Lawrence’s favorite ideas. Considering this, it is interesting that from the outset the novel emphasizes his involvement in the death fixation of modern society at large. He has been one of the “mud-flowers” at the Café Pompadour. In addition, he has been for several years involved in an affair with the perverse socialite Hermione, an affair that has degenerated into a hysterical battle of wills, sapping Birkin of his male vitality. As he tells Gerald, he wants above all to center his life on “the finality of love” for one woman and close relationships with a few other friends, but his goal is frustrated by the lingering parody of it represented in Hermione and the London bohemians. It is therefore significant that he is frequently ill and once goes to the south of France for several weeks to recuperate. His sickness is as much spiritual as physical. Dissatisfied with his prosaic career as a school inspector and frustrated in his relationships, he often finds himself “in pure opposition to everything.” In this depressed state he becomes preoccupied with death and dissolution, “that dark river” (as he calls it) that seethes through all modern reality, even love. Not until after his violent break with Hermione, during which she nearly kills him, does Birkin begin to find his way back to life.

Unlike Birkin, Gerald does not believe that love can form the center of life. Instead he maintains that there is no center to life but simply the “social mechanism” that artificially holds it together; as for loving, Gerald is incapable of it. Indeed the novel everywhere implies that his inability to love derives from his abdication of vital, integrated being in favor of mere social fulfillment. As an industrial magnate (he is the director of the local coal mines and has successfully modernized them), Gerald advocates what Birkin calls the “ethics of productivity,” the “pure instrumentality of mankind,” being for him the basis of social cohesion and progress. If society is essentially mechanistic, Gerald’s ambition is to be “the God of the machine” whose will is “to subjugate Matter to his own ends. The subjugation itself,” Lawrence adds significantly, “was the point.” This egotistic obsession is illustrated in a powerful scene in which Gerald rides a young Arab mare up to a railroad track and, while Gudrun and Ursula look on aghast, he violently forces the terrified mare to stay put as the train races noisily by them. The impact of this cruel assertion of will to power registers forcefully on Ursula, who is duly horrified and outraged, and on Gudrun, who is mesmerized by the “unutterable subordination” of the mare to the “indomitable” male.

After abortive affairs with other women, Birkin and Gerald are inevitably attracted to the Brangwen sisters. The protracted ebb and flow of the two relationships is tellingly juxtaposed in a series of scenes richly symbolic of the central dialectic of life and death. Meanwhile, not content with the romantic promise of finding love with a woman only, Birkin proposes to Gerald that they form a vital male bond as of blood brothers pledged to mutual love and fidelity. Whatever its unconscious origins, the intent of the offer is clearly not sexual. As the rest of the novel demonstrates (anticipating a theme that becomes more central and explicit in subsequent novels such as Aaron’s Rod and The Plumed Serpent), Birkin is searching for a kind of pure intimacy in human relationships. He seeks with both men and women a bond of blood and mind and spirit—the integrated wholeness of being that for Lawrence was sacred—that when realized might form the nucleus of a new, vital human community. Because of Gerald’s identification with the mechanism of industrial society, Birkin’s repeated offer of a Blutbrüderschaft amounts to an invitation to a shared rebirth emblematic of epochal transfiguration, an apocalypse in microcosm. Because of that same identification, of course, Gerald, confused and threatened, must refuse the offer. Instead he chooses to die.

The choice of death is brilliantly dramatized in Gerald’s impassioned encounters with Gudrun. Despite her earlier identification with the mare he brutally “subordinated,” Gudrun might still have offered him the sort of vital relationship that both so desperately need. At any rate, had they been able to pursue their potential for love, the sort of shared commitment to mutual “being” that Birkin offers Gerald and that he eventually discovers with Ursula, regeneration, however painful and difficult, could have been realized. Rather than accept this challenge, however, Gerald falls back on his usual tactics and tries to subjugate Gudrun to his will. After his father’s death, he becomes acutely aware of the void in his life and turns at once to Gudrun—walking straight from the cemetery in the rain to her house, up to her bedroom, his shoes still heavy with mud from the grave—not out of love but desperate need: the need to assert himself, heedless of the “otherness” of another, as if in so doing he could verify by sheer force of will that he exists. Because this egotistic passion is a perversion of love as Lawrence saw it, however, and because Gerald’s yearning for ontological security is a perversion of the quest for true being, Gerald’s anxieties are only made worse by his contact with Gudrun. For her part, Gudrun, unlike the helplessly dominated mare, never yields herself fully to Gerald. In fact, she does all she can to thwart and humiliate him, and their relationship soon becomes a naked battle of wills. It is redundant to say that this is a battle to the death, for, on the grounds that it is fought, the battle itself is death in Lawrencian terms. In the end, Gerald, whose aim all along as “God of the machine” had been to subjugate Matter to his will, becomes literally a frozen corpse whose expression terrifies Birkin with its “last terrible look of cold, mute Matter.” Gudrun, headed at the end for a rendezvous with the despicable Loerke, arrives at a like consummation.

Whatever Lawrence might say about the “purely destructive” forces at work in Women in Love, in the relationship of Birkin and Ursula he finds a seed of new life germinating, albeit precariously, within the “dark river of dissolution.” After the severance of his nearly fatal tie with Hermione, Birkin finds himself for a time in a quandary. Believing as he still does that the only means of withstanding dissolution is to center his life on close human ties, he casts about him to discover precisely the kind of relationship that will best serve or enact his quest for being. The “purely sensual, purely unspiritual knowledge” represented by a primitive statue of an African woman impresses Birkin but finally proves too remote a mystery for him to emulate; in any event, the modern female embodiments of this “mystic knowledge” of the senses are, like Hermione and Gudrun, willdominated and murderous. A second way is that represented by the proposed bond with Gerald, the “Nordic” machine-god who for Birkin represents “the vast abstraction of ice and snow, . . . snow-abstract annihilation.” When these alternatives both reveal themselves as mere “allotropic” variations of the flux of corruption from which he seeks release, Birkin finally hits upon a third way, “the way of freedom.” He conceives of it in idealistic terms, as

the paradisal entry into pure, single being, the individual soul taking precedence over love and desire for union, stronger than any pangs of emotion, a lovely state of free proud singleness, which accepted the obligation of the permanent connection with others, and with the other, submits to the yoke and leash of love, but never forfeits its own proud individual singleness, even while it loves and yields.

It is a difficult and elusive ideal, and when Birkin tries, laboriously, to describe it to Ursula—inviting her to join him in a new, strange relationship, “not meeting and mingling . . . but an equilibrium, a pure balance of two single beings” dynamically counterpoised as two stars are—she mocks him for dissimulating. Why does he not simply declare his love for her without “dragging in the stars”? She has a point, and Lawrence’s art only benefits from such moments of self-criticism. Still, these paradoxical images of separateness in union, of a bond that finds its strength in the reciprocal affirmation of “otherness,” do express, like the wheel’s axle and rim in The Rainbow , Lawrence’s essential vision of integrated, dynamic relationships. Furthermore, only by actively pursuing such a marriage of opposites, in which the separateness of each partner is necessary to the indissolubility of the bond, can both parties be caught up in something altogether new: “the third,” which transcends individual selves in the oneness of pure being. For Lawrence this is the true consummation, springing up from “the source of the deepest life-force.”

So polluted had the river of life become in modern Europe, however, that Lawrence could no longer bring himself to believe that this transcendence, ephemeral as it was to begin with, could survive the general cataract of dissolution. Moreover, even when Birkin and Ursula do find fulfillment together, it is not enough; for Birkin, at any rate, the new dispensation must involve other people as well as themselves. For both reasons, the quest for integrated wholeness of being, a mystery into which Birkin and Ursula are only new initiates, becomes translated into a pilgrimage through space. They must depart from the old, dying world and, like Lawrence and Frieda after the war, proceed in search of holy ground. The primary focus of subsequent novels, this quest is defined in Women in Love simply as “wandering to nowhere, . . . away from the world’s somewheres.” As “nowhere” is the translation of the word utopia, the social impetus of the search is implicit. “It isn’t really a locality, though,” Birkin insists. “It’s a perfected relation between you and me, and others . . . sothat we are free together.” With this ideal before him, Lawrence was poised at the crossroads of his career.

In the postwar novels, which present fictionalized versions of his and Frieda’s experiences in Italy (Aaron’s Rod), Australia (Kangaroo), and Mexico (The Plumed Serpent), the quest translates increasingly into a sociopolitical doctrine projected onto whole societies. The bond between men and the fascination of powerful male leaders became more and more of an obsession in these novels. Lawrence tried mightily to remain faithful to the notion that the regeneration of societies should correspond to the “perfected relations” between individuals. The analogy presented difficulties, however, and the struggle to express his essentially religious vision in political terms proved fatal to his art. There are brilliant moments in all of these novels, especially in The Plumed Serpent, yet the alien aspects of the foreign lands he visited finally obscured the central issues in what was, at bottom, a quest for self-discovery. Women in Love, still in touch with the real motives of that quest and yielding immediate access to its first (and, as it turned out, finest) fruits, offers the richest rendering of both the modern drift toward death and its Lawrencian antidote, “whole man alive.”

However ill defined the object of his protagonists’ plans for flight from Europe, ever since the cataclysm of 1914-1918, Lawrence himself had determined to relocate in the United States. Florida, California, upstate New York, New Mexico—all at one time or another figured as proposed sites of his American Dream. In one of these areas, apart from the great urban centers, he would establish a utopian colony to be called Rananim. There he would start over again, free from the runaway entropy of modern Europe. In America, and more particularly aboriginal America, he believed that the Tree of Life remained intact, its potency still issuing “up from the roots, crude but vital.” Nevertheless, when the war ended he did not go to America straightaway but headed east, not to arrive in the Western Hemisphere until late in 1922. During this prolonged period of yearning, his vision of America as the New World of the soul, the locus of the regeneration of humankind, took on an increasingly definite form. He was imaginatively committed to it even before settling near Taos, New Mexico, where he and Frieda lived on a mountain ranch for most of the next three years.

After studying the classic works of early American literature, he decided that he would write an “American novel,” that is, a novel that would invoke and adequately respond to the American “spirit of place.” For Lawrence the continent’s daemon was the old “blood-and-vertebrate consciousness” embodied in the Mesoamerican Indian and his aboriginal religion. Because of four centuries of white European domination, that spirit had never been fully realized, yet despite the domination it still lay waiting beneath the surface for an annunciation. The terms of this vision, even apart from other factors having to do with his frustrating contacts with Mable Dodge Luhan and her coterie of artists in Taos, all but made it inevitable that Lawrence would sooner or later situate his American novel in a land where the Indian presence was more substantial than it was in the southwestern United States. The Pueblo Indian religion impressed him deeply with its “revelation of life,” but he realized that for a genuine, large-scale rebirth to occur in America, “a vast death-happening must come first” to break the hold of the degenerate white civilization. It was natural enough that he turned his eyes south to Mexico, a land that actually had been caught up in revolution for more than a decade—a revolution moreover in which the place of the Indian (who constituted more than 30 percent of the population) in the national life was a central issue. Reading pre-Columbian history and archaeology, Lawrence found in Aztec mythology a ready-made source of symbols and in the story of the Spanish conquest an important precedent for his narrative of contemporary counterrevolution and religious revival.

The Plumed Serpent

The writing of his Quetzalcoatl, the working title of what would become The Plumed Serpent, proved unusually difficult, however. Kangaroo had taken Lawrence only six weeks to write; Aaron’s Rod and The Lost Girl were also composed in sudden, if fitful, bursts. In contrast, he worked on his “American novel” off and on for nearly two years, even taking the precaution of writing such tales as “TheWomanwho Rode Away,” “The Princess,” and “St. Mawr” (all of which have much in common with the novel), and the Mexican travel sketches in Mornings in Mexico, as a kind of repeated trial run for his more ambitious project.

One reason the novel proved recalcitrant was that Lawrence became increasingly aware during his three journeys into the Mexican interior that his visionary Mexico and the real thing were far from compatible. The violence of the country appalled him; its revolution, which he soon dismissed as “self-serving Bolshevism,” left him cold; and most important, its Roman Catholic Indians were demonstrably uninterested and seemingly incapable of responding to the sort of pagan revival called for by Lawrence’s apocalyptic scheme. So committed was he to his American “Rananim,” however, that he was unwilling or unable to entertain the possibility of its failure. Rather than qualify his program for world regeneration in the light of the widening breach between his long-cherished dream and the disappointing reality, he elaborated the dream more fully and explicitly than ever, inflating his claims for it in a grandiose rhetoric that only called its sincerity into question. Had he been content with a purely visionary, symbolic tale, a prose romance comparable in motive with William Butler Yeats’s imaginary excursions to “Holy Byzantium,” such questions would probably not have arisen. Lawrence, however, could not let go of his expectation that in Mexico the primordial spirit of place would answer to his clarion call.

At the same time, the realist in Lawrence allowed evidence to the contrary to appear in the form of his extraordinarily vivid perceptions of the malevolence of the Mexican landscape and its dark-skinned inhabitants. Even these, however, were forced into the pattern of New World apocalypse. In his desperation to have it both ways, doggedly asserting the identity of his own spiritual quest and the course of events in the literal, external world, he contrived a kind of symbolic or mythic formula in which sexual, religious, and political rebirth are not only equated but also presented as mutually dependent. The result, according to most critics, is a complicated muddle in which the parts, some of which are as fine as anything he ever wrote, do not make a whole. For Lawrence, however, the muddle itself would ultimately prove instructive.

In a sense, The Plumed Serpent begins where Women in Love ends. The flow of Birkin and Ursula’s relationship in the earlier novel is directed centrifugally away from England toward a nameless “nowhere” of shared freedom in pure being. In The Plumed Serpent, the protagonist, Kate Leslie, having heard the death knell of her spirit in Europe, has arrived at the threshold of the New World of mystery, where a rebirth awaits her “like a doom.” That the socialist revolution has addressed only the material needs of Mexicans and left their dormant spirit untouched suggests that Mexico is also in need of rebirth. Disgusted by the tawdry imitation of a modern European capital that is Mexico City, the seat of the failed revolution, Kate journeys westward to the remote lakeside village of Sayula. Sayula also happens to be the center of a new-Aztec religious revival led by Don Ramón Carrasco, who calls himself “the living Quetzalcoatl.” The boat trip down the “sperm-like” lake to Sayula begins Kate’s centripetal movement toward her destiny, and also Mexico’s movement toward an indigenous spiritual reawakening; both movements are directed, gradually but inexorably, toward an “immersion in a sea of living blood.”

Unlike Birkin and Ursula of Women in Love, Kate, a middle-aged Irish widow, wants at first only to be “alone with the unfolding flower of her own soul.” Her occasional contacts with the provincial Indians inspire in her a sense of wonder at their “dark” mystery, but at the same time she finds their very alienness oppressive and threatening. She feels that the country wants to pull her down, “with a slow, reptilian insistence,” to prevent her “free” spirit from soaring. Since Kate values her freedom and her solitude, she retreats periodically from the “ponderous, down-pressing weight” that she associates with the coils of the old Aztec feathered serpent, Quetzalcoatl.

Don Ramón explains to her that she must submit to this weight on the spirit, for by pulling her down into the earth it may bring her into contact with the deep-rooted Tree of Life, which still thrives in the volcanic soil of primordial Mexico beneath the “paleface overlay” on the surface. This injunction is aimed not only at Kate but also at contemporary Mexico itself, which, beckoned by the pulsating drumbeats and hymns of the Men of Quetzalcoatl, is urged to turn its back on the imported white creeds (Catholicism and Bolshevism) and rediscover its indigenous roots. Only by yielding their hold on the conscious will can the “bound” egos of the Mexicans as well as of Kate achieve a transfiguration, symbolized in the novel by the Morning Star. Indeed, as a representative of white “mental consciousness,” Kate is destined to perform an important role in the new dispensation in Mexico. Ramón’s aim is to forge a new mode of consciousness emerging from the dynamic tension between the white and dark sensibilities. The new mode is embodied by Ramón himself, in his capacity to “see both ways” without being absorbed by either, just as the ancient man-god Quetzalcoatl united the sky and the earth, and as the Morning Star (associated with Quetzalcoatl) partakes of both night and day, moon and sun, yet remains itself.

Thus described, this doctrine may seem a welcome elaboration of the star-equilibrium theory of human relationships advanced by Birkin in the earlier novel. The transcendent emergence of “the third,” at best an elusive idea of divine immanence inWomenin Love, seems to be clarified by the Aztec cosmogonic symbolism of The Plumed Serpent. Undoubtedly the latter novel is the fullest statement of Lawrence’s vitalist religion, yet there is something in the very explicitness of the religion in the novel that renders it suspect. As if in tacit acknowledgment of this, Lawrence, impatient with the slow progress of Don Ramón’s appeal to the spirit, introduces a more overt form of conquest. When both Kate and Mexico fail to respond unequivocally to the invitation to submit voluntarily, Ramón reluctantly resorts to calling on the assistance of Don Cipriano Viedma, a full-blooded Indian general who commands a considerable army. Although Lawrence attempts to legitimate this move by having Ramón induct Cipriano into the neo-Aztec pantheon as “the living Huitzilopochtli” (the Aztec god of war) and by having Kate envision Cipriano as the Mexican Indian embodiment of “the ancient phallic mystery, . . . the goddevil of the male Pan” before whom she must “swoon,” the novel descends into a pathological nightmare from which it never quite recovers.

It is not simply that Cipriano politicizes the religious movement, reducing it to yet another Latin American literary adventure that ends by imposing Quetzalcoatlism as the institutional religion of Mexico; nor is it simply that Cipriano, with Ramón’s blessing, dupes Kate into a kind of sexual subservience that puts Gerald Crich’s machinegod efforts with Gudrun (in Women in Love) to shame. The nadir of the novel is reached when Cipriano performs a public execution, stabbing to death three blindfolded prisoners who have betrayed Ramón. This brutal act is given priestly sanction by Ramón and even accepted by Kate, in her new role as Malintzi, fertility goddess in the nascent religion. “Why should I judge him?” asks Kate. “He is of the gods. . . . What do I care if he kills people? His flame is young and clean.Heis Huitzilopochtli, and I am Malintzi.” Their “godly” union is consummated at the foot of the altar in the new temple of Quetzalcoatl. At this point, if not before, the threefold quest for “immersion in a sea of living blood” ceases to serve a metaphorical function and becomes all too chillingly literal.

With its rigidified “mystical” doctrine, its hysterical rhetoric, and its cruelly inhuman advocacy of “necessary” bloodshed and supermasculine dominance, The Plumed Serpent offers what amounts to a perfect Lawrencian hell but persists in celebrating it as if it were the veritable threshold of paradise. The novel has found a few defenders among critics enamored of “mythic design,” but Harry T. Moore is surely correct in calling it “a tremendous volcano of a failure.” Though for a short time he thought it his best novel, by March, 1928, Lawrence himself repudiated The Plumed Serpent and the militaristic “leader of men” idea that it embodies.

Nevertheless, The Plumed Serpent marks a crucial phase in Lawrence’s development, for it carries to their ultimate conclusion the most disturbing implications of the ideas that had vexed his mind ever since the war. Submersion in the “dark blood,” as the novel demonstrates, could lead as readily to wholesale murder in the name of religion as to vital and spontaneous relations between men and women. By courageously following his chimerical “Rananim” dream through to its end in a horrific, palpable nightmare, Lawrence accepted enormous risks, psychological as well as artistic. The effort nearly cost him his life, bringing on a severe attack of tuberculosis complicated by malaria. In the few years that remained to him, however, he was in a real sense a man reborn, able to return in imagination (in The Virgin and the Gipsy and Lady Chatterley’s Lover , among other works) to his native Midlands, where he could once again take up the quest for “whole man alive,” happily unencumbered by the grandiose political imperatives of world regeneration. Purging him of this ideological sickness, the writing of The Plumed Serpent proved as salutary to his later career as Sons and Lovers had been to his period of greatest accomplishment.

When Lawrence settled in southern Europe after leaving America in late 1925, he began to reshape his spiritual map in ways suggestive of his shifting outlook during his last years. The problem with the United States, he decided, was that everyone was too tense. Americans took themselves and their role in the world far too seriously and were unable to slacken their grip on themselves for fear that the world would collapse as a result. In contrast, the Europeans (he was thinking chiefly of southern Europeans rather than his own countrymen) were freer and more spontaneous because they were not controlled by will and could therefore let themselves go. At bottom, the European attitude toward life was characterized by what Lawrence called “insouciance.” Relaxed, essentially free from undue care or fret, Europeans were open to “a sort of bubbling-in of life,” whereas the Americans’ more forthright pursuit of life only killed it.

Whether this distinction between America and Europe has any validity for others, for the post-America Lawrence it meant a great deal. In The Plumed Serpent, his “American novel,” instead of realizing the free and spontaneous life flow made accessible by insouciance, he engaged in an almost hysterical striving after life writ large, resorting to political demagoguery and a formalized religion fully armed with rifles as well as rites. Apparently aware in retrospect of his error, he eschewed the strong-leader/submissive-follower relationship as the keynote to regeneration. In its place he would focus on a new relationship: a “sort of tenderness, sensitive, between men and men and men and women, and not the one up one down, lead on I follow, ich dien sort of business.” Having discovered the virtues of insouciance and tenderness, Lawrence began to write Lady Chatterley’s Lover , one of his most poignant, lyrical treatments of individual human relations.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

As always in Lawrence, the physical setting offers a crucial barometer of sensibility. In this case the treatment of setting is indicative of the novelist’s loss of faith in the “spirit of place” as a valid embodiment of his quest. In comparison with his other novels, Lady Chatterley’s Lover presents a scene much reduced in richness and complexity. Wragby Hall, the baronial seat of the Chatterleys, is described as “a warren of a place without much distinction.” Standing on a hill and surrounded by oak trees, Wragby offers a view dominated by the smokestacks of the mines in and around the Midlands village of Tevershall. Like Shortlands, the Criches’ estate in Women in Love, Wragby and its residents attempt through formal artifice to deny the existence of the pits from which the family income derives. The attempt is futile, however, for “when the wind was that way, which was often, the house was full of the stench of this sulphurous combustion of the earth’s excrement,” and smuts settle on the gardens “like black manna from skies of doom.” As for Tevershall (“’tis now and ’tever shall be”), the mining village offers only the appalling prospect of “the utter negation of natural beauty, the utter negation of the gladness of life, . . . the utter death of the human intuitive faculty.” Clearly Wragby and Tevershall are two sides of the same coin minted by the godless machine age. Between the two is a tiny, ever-diminishing remnant of old Sherwood Forest. The wood is owned by the Chatterleys, and many of its trees were “patriotically” chopped down during the Great War for timber for the allies’ trenches.

It is here that Constance (Connie) Chatterley and her lover, Oliver Mellors, the gamekeeper, find—or rather create—life together. As Julian Moynihan has observed, the little wood symbolizes “the beleaguered and vulnerable status to which the vital career has been reduced” at the hands of modern civilization. The old centrifugal impulse for a faraway “nowhere” has yielded to a desperate centripetal flight toward refuge from the industrial wasteland. Try as they might to find sanctuary within the wood, however, the lovers must recognize that there is no longer any room in the world for true sanctuary, much less for a “Rananim.” “The industrial noises broke the solitude,” Lawrence writes. “The sharp lights, though unseen, mocked it.Aman could no longer be private and withdrawn. The world allows no hermits.” The geographic focus of the Lawrencian quest is no longer able to provide a modicum of hope and so yields to a new, scaled-down, more intimate image: the human body.

The sterility and spiritual paralysis of the modern world are embodied by Clifford Chatterley, Connie’s husband.Aparaplegic victim of the war, Clifford is both literally and symbolically deadened to the life of the passions. All his energy is directed to verbal, abstract, or social undertakings in which actual contact is minimal. Clifford believes in the form and apparatus of the social life and is indifferent to private feelings. A director of mines, he sees the miners as objects rather than men, mere extensions of the pit machinery. For him, “the function determines the individual,” who hardly matters otherwise. Clifford also writes fashionably shallow stories and entertains other writers and critics to curry favor. He modernizes the coal mines with considerable success. Thus in broad outline he resembles Gerald Crich of Women in Love, but in the far simpler world of Lady Chatterley’s Lover , Lawrence chooses not to cloud matters by giving his antagonist any redeeming qualities. The reader is never invited to sympathize with Clifford’s plight. Motoring around Wragby Hall in his mechanical wheelchair, Clifford coolly urges Connie to have a child by another man—the “sex thing” having been of no particular importance to him even before the war—so that he can have an heir to Wragby. By the end of the novel, he turns to his attendant Mrs. Bolton for the only intimacy left to him: a regressive, perverse form of contact. Such heaping of abuse onto Clifford, far in excess of what is needed to establish his symbolic role, undoubtedly detracts from the novel.

So long as she remains with Clifford, Connie finds herself in a condition of static bondage in which her individuality is circumscribed by the function identified in her title.A“lady” by virtue of her marriage, she is not yet truly a woman. Sex for her is merely a “thing” as it is for Clifford, an instrument of tacit control over men. She is progressively gripped by malaise. Physically she is “old at twenty-seven, with no gleam and sparkle in the flesh”; spiritually she is unborn. Her affair with Mellors is of course the means of her metamorphosis, which has been compared (somewhat ironically) with the awakening of Sleeping Beauty at the handsome prince’s magical kiss. Less obvious is the overlapping of this fairy-tale pattern with a counterpattern of male transformation such as that found in the tale of the Frog Prince. For Mellors, too, is trapped in a kind of bondage, alone in his precarious refuge in the wood. The “curse” on him is his antipathy to intimate contacts, especially with women, after his disastrous marriage to the promiscuous Bertha Coutts.

The initial encounters between Connie and Mellors in the wood result only in conflict and hostility, as both, particularly Mellors, cling to their socially prescribed roles and resist the challenge of being “broken open” by true contact with another. When they finally do begin to respond to that challenge, however, it is Mellors who takes the lead in conducting Connie through her initiation into the mysteries of “phallic” being. With his “tender” guidance she learns the necessity of letting go her hold on herself, yielding to the “palpable unknown” beyond her conscious will. She discovers the importance of their “coming off together” rather than the merely “frictional” pleasures of clitoral orgasm (a notion acceptable within Lawrence’s symbolic context if not widely endorsed by the “how to” manuals of the Masters and Johnson generation, of which Lawrence would no doubt have disapproved). When she tries to get Mellors to tell her that he loves her, he rejects the abstract, overused word in favor of the earthier Anglo-Saxon language of the body and its functions. On one occasion he even introduces her to sodomy so as to “burn out the shames, the deepest, oldest shames, in the most secret places.” The result of all this, paradoxically, is that the couple arrives at the state of “chastity.” Having broken their ties to the sterile world, they are able to accept an imposed separation until it is possible, after a period of waiting for Mellors’s divorce to occur, for them to live together in hope for their future.

In an aside in chapter 9, Lawrence, asserting that it is “the way our sympathy flows and recoils that really determines our lives,” affirms that the great function of a novel is precisely to “inform and lead into new places the flow of our sympathetic consciousness” and to “lead our sympathies away in recoil from things gone dead.” As a statement of intention, this will do for all of Lawrence’s novels. Of course, even the best of intentions do not necessarily lead to artistic achievement. Lady Chatterley’s Lover , though in many respects a remarkable recovery after the dead end that was the “leadership novels,” is nevertheless flawed by the very directness with which it follows the “flow and recoil” idea. For one thing, the deck is too obviously stacked against Clifford. Lawrence never takes him seriously as a man; by making him the stationary target of so much scorn simply for what he represents, Lawrence in effect replicates Clifford’s own treatment of people as mere objects or functions.

Because the “recoil” against Clifford as a “thing gone dead” seems facile and almost glib, Connie’s counterflow toward Mellors seems also too easy, despite Lawrence’s efforts to render her conflicting, vacillating feelings. Another part of the problem lies in the characterization of Mellors, who, after his initial reluctance, proves to be a tiresomely self-satisfied, humorless, “knowing” spokesman for the gospel according to Lawrence. Connie, however, is a marvelous creation, far more complex than even Mellors seems to realize. She is a worthy successor to Lawrence’s other intriguing female characters: Gertrude Morel, Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen, Alvina Houghton (of The Lost Girl), and Kate Leslie.

At his best, in Sons and Lovers , The Rainbow , and especially Women in Love, Lawrence manages to enact the flow and counterflow of consciousness, the centrifugal dilation and the centripetal contraction of sympathies, in a far more complex and convincing way than he does in his last novel. Notwithstanding his battles with Mrs. Grundy, the underlying impulse of all his work is unquestionably moral: the passionate yearning to discover, celebrate, and become “whole man alive.” The desperateness with which he pursued that elusive ideal in both his life and his art sometimes led him to resort to a bullying, declamatory didacticism, which took the chance of alienating his readers’ sympathies.

Lawrence’s moral vision was most compelling when embodied and rendered in dramatic or symbolic terms rather than externally imposed by “oracular” utterance and rhetorical bombast, but “art formysake” necessarily involved him in these risks, of which he was fully aware. At a time when aesthetic objectivity and the depersonalization of the artist were the dominant aims of the modernists, Lawrence courageously pursued his vision wherever it might lead.

Through his capacity for outrage against what he considered a dying civilization, his daring to risk failure and humiliation in the ongoing struggle to find and make known the “vital quick” that alone could redeem humanity and to relocate humankind’s lost spiritual roots, Lawrence performed the essential role of seer or prophetic conscience for his age. Moreover, because subsequent events in the twentieth century more than confirmed his direst forebodings, his is a voice that readers today cannot afford to ignore. While many are decrying the death of the novel amid the proliferation of the muchballyhooed “literature of exhaustion,” one could do worse than turn to Lawrence to find again the “one bright book of life.”

Photograph of D.H. Lawrence and Frieda Lawrence in Chapala, Mexico, 1923

Bibliography Balbert, Peter. D. H. Lawrence and the Phallic Imagination: Essays on Sexual Identity and Feminist Misreading. NewYork: St. Martin’s Press, 1989. Bell, Michael. D. H. Lawrence: Language and Being. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Black, Michael. D. H. Lawrence: The Early Fiction. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Burack, Charles Michael. D. H. Lawrence’s Language of Sacred Experience: The Transfiguration of the Reader.New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Ellis, David. D. H. Lawrence: Dying Game, 1922-1930. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Jackson, Dennis, and Fleda Brown Jackson, eds. Critical Essays on D. H. Lawrence. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988. Kinkead-Weekes, Mark. D. H. Lawrence: Triumph to Exile, 1912-1922. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Moore, Harry T. The Priest of Love: ALife of D. H. Lawrence. Rev. ed. NewYork: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,1974. Schneider, Daniel J. The Consciousness of D. H. Lawrence: An Intellectual Biography. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1986. Worthen, John. D. H. Lawrence: The Early Years, 1885- 1912. NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 1991. _______. D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider. New York: Counterpoint, 2005. Wright, T. R. D. H. Lawrence and the Bible. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

D. H Lawrence’s Why the Novel Matters Analysis

D. H. Lawrence (1885- 1930) is a prolific modern writer. He wrote novels, short stories, poetry, plays and essays. His fame rests chiefly on his novels like Sons and Lovers (1913), The White Peacock (1911), The Tresspasser (1912), Women in Love (1921), The Plumed Serpent (1926), Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1929). As a short story writer he published the following collections of short stories. The Prussian Officer (1914), England, My England (1922), The Ladybird, The Fox, The Captain’s Doll (1923), The Virgin and the Gipsy (1930), The Lovely Lady (1930) etc. His following essay and travelbooks are also of good reputation : Twilight in Italy (1916), Sea and Sardinia (1921), Reflections on the Death of Porcupine (1925), Mornings in Mexico (1927). Through his literature, Lawrence presents his own interpretation of life. He is very much concerned with basic problems of human existence, man’s relations with man and the universe beyond himself.

The present essay by Lawrence is very short and precise. It shows minute observation of the human life. Accuracy in writing is an important feature of the essay. His concentration is on the importance of the novel in the human life and the importance of human life in the novel. His sole effort is to highlight the relationship between the novel and the life. By using the examples of the parson / saint, philosopher, scientist and novelist, he emphasizes the superiority of the novelist over all others. Life as it is, becomes the very subject of a novel. His style is somewhat clumsy. The striking element of this essay is his love for life. According to him the novel describes man alive and his life. Change is an important aspect of life. It is this change which makes our life interesting and live. And hence, for him, the novel matters much.

Lawrence describes the importance of the novel in our life. He believes in the principle of ‘sound mind in sound body’. He says that both the mind and the body are alive and equally important. As the novel describes alive man and his life, man’s relations with others and the universe, become the most important themes of the novel.

He says that every parson / saint, philosopher, scientist and novelist has different attitudes towards life. No doubt that all these persons are related with the human life, but each one looks at it in a different way. The parson saint talks about the souls in the heaven after death. The philosopher talks about the infinity and the pure spirit which knows all things. Even the saint like Francis of Assissi wishes to offer spiritual food to the people. For the scientist, the body is a dead thing for his experiments and dissection. But the novelist knows that the paradise can be found anywhere in the life, and not in the life after death. Lawrence denies that he is a soul, body, drain etc. because he believes himself as a man alive.

For Lawrence, the novel is a bright book of life. It is more important than any other book, it makes whole man alive. The Bible, Homer and Shakespeare, in a way, are also supreme novels. About the Bible he says that it is a great confused novel. It is not only about God, but even about man alive. Even the grass and the flower have life, and so, more important than the Word of the Lord. He explains that though the grass withers, after rain it comes up all greener; the flower fades but because of it, the bud opens. But the Word of the Lord becomes staler and staler and boring because it is man – uttered.

Characters in the novel are living. They may be good or bad. If they are not living, the novel is dead. The novel helps us not to be a dead man in life. Life is full of change. It is the change in the human life, which keeps it moving and interesting continuously. If there is no change in the life it will become dull, stale and lifeless. Hence life itself is the reason for living. Right and wrong is an instinct. It is the whole consciusness in man. And it can be found powerfully in the novel.

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Études Lawrenciennes

Accueil Numéros 51 “The novel is […] so incapable of...

“The novel is […] so incapable of the absolute.” D. H. Lawrence’s Evolving Views on the Relative and the Absolute in the Novel

Entrées d’index, keywords: , texte intégral.

1 Early on in his 1925 essay “The Novel” Lawrence wrote: “The novel is the highest form of human expression so far attained. Why? Because it is so incapable of the absolute.” ( STH 179) That essay was one of a number of essays written in the 1920s about the function of the novel. This essay will examine Lawrence’s evolving views about the relative and the absolute in the novel, culminating with an essay little discussed in this context, “A Propos of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”

2 A good number of studies have already been written about the development of Lawrence as a novelist and how his philosophy evolved in his novels, for example Alistair Niven’s 1978 study, D. H. Lawrence: The Novels, John Worthen’s 1979 survey D. H. Lawrence and the Idea of the Novel and Michael Bell’s D. H. Lawrence: Language and Being, published in 1992. The latter sees Lawrence’s novels as “summative milestones” marking “the phases of his career” (10), in a way that would not be so productive with other genres. These studies tend not to examine in any great detail the essays on the novel itself. Yet Lawrence’s thinking about the novel was a mainstream part of his philosophy, often referred to by him. For example, in his correspondence, his famous letter to Edward Garnett of 5 th June 1914, written from Lerici, set out what Frank Kermode in his study of Lawrence’s novels called “as radical a departure from the classic conventions as any proposed since; for it rejects ‘character,’ ‘development’ and so forth as so many shibboleths, customary but not essential attributes of the novel, having no necessary place in it” (28). Having rejected what Lawrence called the “certain moral scheme” he found in Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy he went on to explain:

You mustn’t look in my novel for the old stable ego of the character. There is another ego, according to whose action the individual is unrecognisable, and passes through, as it were, allotropic states which it needs a deeper sense than any we’ve been used to exercise, to discover are states of the same single radically-unchanged element. (Like as diamond and coal are the same pure single element of carbon. The ordinary novel would trace the history of the diamond –but I say “diamond, what! This is carbon.” And my diamond might be coal or soot, and my theme is carbon.) […] don’t look for the development of the novel to follow the lines of certain characters: the characters fall into the form of some other rhythmic form, like when one draws a fiddle-bow across a fine tray delicately sanded, the sand takes lines unknown. ( 2L 183-4)

3 Conscious of the fact that even David J. Gordon’s full-length study published in 1966, D. H. Lawrence as a Literary Critic, has a relatively short and incomplete account of Lawrence’s theory of the novel (62-74), and noting Joan Douglas Peters’ novel deconstructive analysis of a number of passages in the essays, in her article “Rhetoric as Idea: D. H. Lawrence’s Genre Theory,” published in 2000, I will review each of the essays in turn and aim to draw out a clear pattern from them. The schedule accompanying this essay summarises the chronology of their composition, publication and themes.

4 Lawrence’s essays on the novel should be set in the context of his literary criticism generally. As well as his book reviews he wrote single author essays on writers such as Rachel Annand Taylor (this essay dating back to 1910), Thomas Hardy and John Galsworthy, plus of course his Studies in Classic American Literature, with individual chapters devoted to now well-known American writers. The essays on the novel were written relatively late, from 1923 onwards, bearing in mind his longstanding concerns about the novel, the philosophy in the novels themselves developing in a clear way from the publication of The White Peacock in 1911 to that of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1928. Although not apparently conceived as such, the essays do form a body of writing on their own, and collectively follow a loose but clear logical argument, a pattern evolving over their period of composition. That logic is in the sequence, not in general in the essays themselves, where arguments go off in all directions, rely heavily on a wide variety of references and metaphor, and as Peter Preston described it are “explosive and polyphonic” (Preston, Logic and Emotion in Lawrence’s Late Literary Criticism,” 63) and “subversive and challenging” (Preston, Working with Lawrence , 251). Equally they should not be seen as divorced from his earlier literary criticism, nor the more confrontational style appearing in his later novels, Mr. Noon, Aaron’s Rod and Kangaroo.

5 The most important conclusion from the essays is that the novel is the book of life, and should be centred on the relative and avoid absolutes that determine a novel’s course. If characters in a novel follow a pattern, it is bound to fail –as Lawrence put it succinctly in Kangaroo, “Life is so wonderful and complex, and always relative” ( K 267). This thinking had a contemporary parallel in physics. In 1921 Lawrence read Albert Einstein’s Relativity: The Special and General Theory and wrote that he liked him “for taking out the pin which fixed down our fluttering little physical universe” ( 4L 37), reflecting his understanding of the Special Theory, a clear contrast to the more fixed or absolute theory of Isaac Newton in his First Law of Motion. These ideas are discussed further in Fantasia of the Unconscious ( FU 72:3-23 and 167:5-17).

6 The first essay in the series was “The Future of the Novel,” published in the Literary Digest International Book Review in April 1923 under the title “Surgery for the Novel –Or a Bomb.” Thomas Seltzer, Lawrence’s American publisher at that time, asked him to write an article, following on from his disappointment with James Joyce’s Ulysses. The essay is a well-structured and in places mocking critique of the novels of many of his contemporaries, from the modernist to the popular, from Joyce, Proust and Dorothy Richardson to Zane Grey and Sinclair Lewis, a typical sentence reading:

Through thousands and thousands of pages Mr Joyce and Miss Richardson tear themselves into pieces, strip their smallest emotions to the finest threads till you feel you are sewed inside a wool mattress that is being slowly shaken up, and you are turning to wool along with the rest of the woollyness. ( STH 152)

7 There is a serious point in the essay though and in a passage anticipating the first page of Lady Chatterley’s Lover he wrote: “Some convulsions or cataclysm will have to get the serious novel out of its self-consciousness. The last great war made it worse. What’s to be done?” ( STH 152)

8 Lawrence’s solution was for books to be written that “put a new impulse into the world” ( STH 154) such as the Gospels, the problem being that “philosophy and fiction got split” as he put it ( STH 154). In his conclusion he stated that:

The novel has got a future. Its future is to take the place of gospels, philosophies, and the present-day novel as we know it. It’s got to have the courage to tackle new propositions without using abstractions; it’s got to present us with new, really new feelings, a whole new line of emotion, which will get us out of the old emotional rut. ( STH 155)

9 This essay reflects concerns about the contemporary novel expressed only months before in Kangaroo, particularly in chapters XIV and XV. There Lawrence included a discussion about relativity ( K 109:36-110:4), and numerous references to the relative and the absolute (e.g. K 280:14). It was clearly a novel that Lawrence thought met the new criteria he described in the essay. In one of his letters he called it a “thought adventure” ( 4L 353), a phrase used in the novel. Interestingly it would appear that Seltzer picked this up as his dust jacket for Kangaroo emphasises how new the content of the book was and that (in a probable allusion to the title of the essay) “[p]erhaps this is the beginning of the novel of the future.”

10 By the end of 1923 Lawrence was planning a series of six articles for John Middleton Murry’s new journal Adelphi ( 4L 549). The two with the working titles “On Writing a Book” and “On Reading a Book” were probably combined in one called “Books.” It was not taken by Murry and was unpublished in Lawrence’s lifetime. The article repeatedly refers to the concept of man being a thought-adventurer. As Lawrence saw it though, man has lost his way and proposes that books might be nothing more than “printed toys” to amuse himself with. Man has only survived periods of decay such as the Dark Ages because of monasteries, “the little arks keeping the adventure afloat […] The monks and bishops of the early Church carried the souls and spirit of man unbroken, unabated, undiminished over the howling flood of the Dark Ages.” ( RDP 199-200). Lawrence concluded his argument by saying that man should not leave everything to fate and must “never give up the adventure” ( RDP 200). As he saw it the “Christian venture is done […] We must start on a new venture toward God.” ( RDP 200). Although there are few references to books in the article, the inference to be drawn is that the novel is not a toy and must be used wisely to further this thought-adventure.

11 Lawrence further developed his theme of the value of the novel in a series of three articles about its nature and significance, completed by June 1925. They were entitled “The Novel,” “Art and Morality” and “Morality and the Novel.” The last two of these were published in the November and December 1925 issues of the Calendar of Modern Letters. The central argument of “Morality and the Novel” is that the novel is the perfect medium for describing the changing relationships of man and woman, but writers should respect those changes and not force any conclusions. To do otherwise would be immoral. Some might argue that this is exactly what Lawrence did in The Plumed Serpent, a novel clearly full of dogma and directed towards a particular outcome. But in this article Lawrence wrote:

Now here we see the beauty and the great value of the novel. Philosophy, religion, science, they are all of them busy nailing things down, to get a stable equilibrium. Religion, with its nailed down One God, who says Thou shalt, Thou shan’t , and hammers home every time; philosophy, with its fixed ideas; science, with its “laws”: they all of them, all of the time, want to nail us on to some tree or other.

But the novel, no. The novel is the highest complex of subtle interrelatedness that man has discovered. Everything is true in its own time, place, circumstance, and untrue outside of its own place, time, circumstance. If you try to nail anything down, in the novel, either it kills the novel, or the novel gets up and walks away with the nail. ( STH 172)

12 Lawrence expressed very clearly his views on the novel and the relative and the absolute, going on to say that “The novel is a perfect medium for revealing to us the changing rainbow of our living relationships. The novel can help us to live, as nothing else can: no didactic Scripture, anyhow.” ( STH 175). The importance of this is reinforced in “Art and Morality,” an essay mainly focused on the visual arts, where Lawrence noted that:

What art has got to do, and will go on doing, is to reveal things in their different relationships […] Nothing is true, or good, or right, except in its own living relatedness to its own circumambient universe; to the things that are in the stream with it. ( STH 166-7)

13 The essay “The Novel” first appeared in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine, published in December 1925 by the Centaur Press. It had suggested that Lawrence write an essay on the novel. The essay continues the theme of relational aesthetics, the focus on human relations and their social context. The essay can be summarised in the following passage:

The novel is a great discovery: far greater than Galileo’s telescope or somebody else’s wireless. The novel is the highest form of human expression so far attained. Why? Because it is so incapable of the absolute. In a novel, everything is relative to everything else, if that novel is art at all. There may be didactic bits, but they aren’t the novel. ( STH 179)

14 In Lawrence’s view many novels and novelists fail because of their insistence on absolutes, or didactic principles that control the development of the novel and what happens to the characters in it. The essay condemns Tolstoy, Flaubert, Conrad and Joyce among others for these failings and again praises the Bible as “the purpose and the inspiration were almost one” ( STH 181). He continued:

Everything is relative. Every Commandment that ever issued out of the mouth of God or man, is strictly relative: adhering to the particular time, place and circumstance. And this is the beauty of the novel; everything is true in its own relationship, and no further. ( STH 185)

15 Tolstoy came in for extended criticism. For Lawrence the novel should have three great merits. First, it should be “quick,” not dead: Pierre in War and Peace was “so limited,” “[t]he really quick, Tolstoi loved to kill them off or muss them over” ( STH 184).

16 Secondly “the novel [should contain] no didactive absolute” ( STH 183) and should be “[i]nterrelated in all its parts, vitally, organically” ( STH 186). But as Lawrence said of Tolstoy: “Count Tolstoi had that last weakness of a great man: he wanted the absolute: the absolute of love, if you like to call it that” ( STH 187). So having been inspired to approve of the relationship between Vronsky and Anna Karenina, social convention required him to disapprove of it.

17 Thirdly the novel must be ‘[h]onorable’ ( STH 186), the novelist being true to himself and not self-conscious. But Lawrence saw War and Peace as “downright dishonourable, with that fat, diluted Pierre for a hero, stuck up as preferable and desirable, when everybody knows that he wasn’t attractive, even to Tolstoi” ( STH 186).

18 The last two essays in the series, both probably written in November 1925 and published posthumously in Phoenix , were “Why the Novel Matters” and “The Novel and the Feelings.” In the first, taking his argument in stages, Lawrence stressed the utmost importance of life and why:

being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, the scientist, the philosopher and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man-alive, but never get the whole hog.

The novel is the one bright book of life. ( STH 195)

19 Lawrence considers that novels should not contain any “dazzling revelation” or “supreme Word,” “All things flow and change, and even change is not absolute” ( STH 196). As he saw it, the novel has a great therapeutic and educational purpose, demonstrating to us how to live, concluding:

only in the novel are all things given full play, when we realise that life itself, and not inert safety, is the reason for living. For out of the full play of all things emerges the only thing that is anything, the wholeness of a man, the wholeness of a woman, man alive, and live woman. ( STH 198)

20 Turning to “The Novel and the Feelings,” this fairly short essay addresses the problem of how relatively little we know about ourselves as opposed to the world around us. In Lawrence’s view we have “no language for the feelings” ( STH 203) and need to educate ourselves. As with “Art and Morality” in which Lawrence dismissed the then modern technology of the Kodak camera, here he cast aspersions on the radio:

Now we have to educate ourselves, not by laying down laws and inscribing tablets of stone, but by listening. Not listening-in to noises from Chicago or Timbuctoo. But listening-in to the voices of the honourable beasts that call in the dark paths of the veins of our body, from the God in the heart […] If we can’t hear the cries far down in our forests of dark veins, we can look in the real novels, and there listen in. Not listen to the didactic statements of the author, but to the low, calling cries of the characters, as they wander in the dark woods of their destiny. ( STH 205)

21 In this final paragraph of the essay is the only reference to the novel, but the overall message is clear: in the modern world we have lost touch with our feelings and novelists need to write in a language that connects us with our inner selves. Our “knowledge […] never gets there” ( STH 201) is a central theme of this essay, developed in the 1928 article “Hymns in a Man’s Life” where Lawrence stated that “the great and fatal fruit of our civilisation, which is a civilisation based on knowledge, and hostile to experience, is boredom.” ( LEA 131)

22 “À Propos of Lady Chatterley’s Lover ” was probably written late in 1929 and is an extended version of the introduction to the Paris Edition of the book, published in May 1929 and called there “My Skirmish with Jolly Roger.” The shorter version focuses on the immediate background to the publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover , the pirated copies of the book he was trying to compete with and the justification for its explicit content. In addition, in the extended version, Lawrence bemoaned the absence of “real feelings” in the world ( LCL 311) as referred to in the earlier essays, feelings including sexual feelings. Interestingly, he singled out the Catholic Church, especially in the south, as having an understanding of sex provided that it is the foundation of marriage. And marriage Lawrence considered here to be the Christian church’s greatest contribution to the world. But there are other parallels with the earlier essays on the novel. He recorded further his thinking about the great purpose of the novel and what it can achieve. For example, he stated that:

And in spite of all antagonism, I put forward this novel as an honest, healthy book, necessary for us today […] And this is the real point of this book. I want men and women to be able to think sex fully, completely, honestly, and cleanly. ( LCL 307-8)

23 He also continued his argument about the damaging effects of modern civilisation:

The radio and the film are mere counterfeit emotion all the time, the current press and literature the same. ( LCL 312)

24 This passage is a clear reference back to “Art and Morality” and the criticism of the world of radio and other technology.

25 To conclude, there is a clear progression, a logical sequence, from the first of these essays onwards. Starting with the problem of the contemporary novel and then the need for man to be a thought-adventurer, the novel is argued to be the perfect medium for revealing the changing relationships between man and woman. The argument is developed so that the novel is the place to demonstrate such relativity. Furthermore, it is the book of life but the language of the feelings in these relationships needs to be developed. The prominent message in these essays, albeit not spelt out in all of them, is Lawrence’s belief that the novel is the place for the relative but not the absolute. By adopting this philosophy particularly in his later novels Lawrence moved right away from his earlier ones, and as Bell states “[i]t is no accident that Lawrence is at once the culmination of the English novel and the writer in whom it most completely fragments” (12).

Bibliographie

Bell, Michael. D. H. Lawrence: Language and Being . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Bien, Peter. “The Critical Philosophy of D. H. Lawrence,” in D. H. Lawrence Review . Vol. 17 No.2 (Summer 1984), 127-134.

Gordon, David J. D. H. Lawrence as a Literary Critic. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1966.

Kermode, Frank. D. H. Lawrence. London: Fontana, 1973.

Lawrence, D. H. “ A Propos of Lady Chatterley’s Lover ” in Lady Chatterley’s Lover . Ed. Michael Squires. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993, 305-35.

— . “Books” in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays . Ed. Michael Herbert. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988, 197-200.

— . “The Future of the Novel [Surgery for the Novel or a Bomb]” in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays . Ed. Bruce Steele. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985, 151-5.

— . “ Hymns in a Man’s Life,” in Late Essays and Articles . Ed. James T. Boulton. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005, 130-4.

— . Kangaroo. Ed. Bruce Steele. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994.

— . The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Volume One: September 1901 – May 1913 . Ed. James T. Boulton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

— . The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Volume Two: June 1913 – October 1916 . Ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

— . The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Volume Three: October 1916 – June 1921 . Ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

— . The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Volume Four: June 1921 – March 1924 . Ed. Warren Roberts James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

— . The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Volume Five: March 1924 – March 1927. Ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

— . The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Volume Six: March 1927 – November 1928. Ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret Boulton with Gerald M. Lacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

— . The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Volume Seven: November 1928 – February 1930. Ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

— . The Letters of D. H. Lawrence Volume Eight: Previously Uncollected Letters. Ed. James T. Boulton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

— . “ Morality and the Novel,” in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays . Ed. Bruce Steele. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985, 171-6, 241-5.

— . “The Novel,” in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays . Ed. Bruce Steele. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985, 179-90.

— . “The Novel and the Feelings,” in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays . Ed. Bruce Steele. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985, 201-5.

— . Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious and Fantasia of the Unconscious. Ed. Bruce Steele. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004.

— . “Why the Novel Matters,” in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays . Ed. Bruce Steele. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985, 193-8.

Leavis, F. R. D. H. Lawrence: Novelist . London: Chatto & Windus, 1955.

Niven, Alistair. D. H. Lawrence: The Novels. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1978.

Peters, Joan Douglas. “Rhetoric as Idea: D. H. Lawrence’s Genre Theory,” in Style , Vol. 34, No.1 (Spring 2000), 36-51.

Preston, Peter. “The Novel and the Nail: Metaphor and Form in Lawrence’s Essays on the Novel,” in Working with Lawrence: Texts, Places, Contexts. Nottingham: Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, 2011.

— . “Logic and Emotion in Lawrence’s Late Literary Criticism,” in Études Lawrenciennes , 42 | 2011, 59-74.

Roberts, Warren and Poplawski, Paul. A Bibliography of D. H. Lawrence. Third Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Worthen, John. D. H. Lawrence and the Idea of the Novel . London: Macmillan, 1979.

Pour citer cet article

Référence électronique.

Jonathan Long , « “The novel is […] so incapable of the absolute.” D. H. Lawrence’s Evolving Views on the Relative and the Absolute in the Novel » , Études Lawrenciennes [En ligne], 51 | 2020, mis en ligne le 09 juillet 2020 , consulté le 24 avril 2024 . URL : http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/1642 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/lawrence.1642

Jonathan Long

Jonathan Long is a solicitor advising farming clients in the East of England. He graduated in Law at the University of London in 1981. He has been a Lawrence enthusiast for over 35 years (with a particular interest in Lawrence’s biography and bibliography), and is a member of the D. H. Lawrence Societies of England, North America and Australia. He is a regular contributor to the Newsletter and to the Journal of the D. H. Lawrence Society in England and has delivered papers there. He is also a contributor to the Journal of the D. H. Lawrence Society of Australia. At the Arras conference in 2012 he delivered a paper entitled D. H. Lawrence and Book Publication During the Great War: a Study in Stagnation.

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44 | 2013 Language and Languages
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42 | 2011 The Logic of Emotion
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Why the Novel Matters Summary by D.H. Lawrence

Table of Contents

Introduction

Lawrence’s work Why the Novel Matters was published after in death in 1936. The text throws light on the ability of a novel to help human beings reach and realize their potential and fill their life with possibilities that are restricted by Science, philosophy or religion.

Perception of ‘Being Alive’

The author builds the text by highlighting the perception of ‘being alive’. He appreciates every part and particle of a living person and abrogates the excessive importance given to ideas, philosophy, spirit, and mind.

Lawrence claims that a novelist is better than a man of science, religion or philosophy because he/she can create characters and their lives and thus understand the true value of life and a living person.

He says that the belief that the mind is more important than other body parts like the fingers when their fingers are as alive as the mind. He calls the assertion that the body is a mere vessel for the mind or soul or spirit as ridiculous and irrational.

According to him, life extends from depths of the human mind to the extent of fingertips. However, the inanimate objects like pen, etc are not alive and require the alive hand to infuse life into the work done by them.

He compares the freckles on the skin and the blood in the human body to the mind that controlling them and calls them equally alive.

Novelist & Man of Religion

The importance of the man alive is understood intricately and profoundly by a novelist than men of Theology. Religion depends on the theory of soul and life after death but the novelist is only thinking about the present moment and life in it.

Novelist & Philosopher

The philosopher talks about spirit and infinite knowledge contained in it but for a novelist it the living that contains all the understandable knowledge. Everything else is conjecture and speculation.

While for a philosopher, thoughts and ideas are of paramount importance, for a novelist there are mere disturbances and ‘tremulations’ on the ether and are as dead as ether itself.

Any idea is meaningless until it is received and understood by a live person. It does not have a life of its own. Hence, the man alive is much more important than the lifeless ideas and concepts.

Novelist & Scientist

The scientist does not value living beings and wants to analyze it lying dead and motionless under a microscope. To a scientist, a human being is a sum total of its different parts or organs like heart, liver, etc. However, a novelist courts the living and believes that all the parts make a greater whole i.e. a superior living being.

Importance of Novel

Now, Lawrence describes the importance of a novel. According to him, a novel is a window to life. But any novel or book is as valuable as thoughts until it is read by a human being. He says that the novel is more important than any other book because it is more impactful and influential.

He enlists the Platonic ideals or Mosaic Ten Commandments etc less significant than a novel because they only attract one part of a living being. He calls Bible a great perplexing novel just like Homeric or Shakespearean literature .

Lawrence feels that a novel is able to provide a stimulating story and diverse characters that make it fluid and dynamic. It celebrates change and discourages absolute statements. There is no ultimate formula which is the true reflection of human beings and their growth and unpredictable actions.

This unpredictability and uncertainty breed intrigue and romance. If there is constancy like found in non-living things it is very difficult to make the bond of love and care.

He believes that a man needs desire and purpose to be alive. Mere existing without a goal is as if a man is dead. Love, companionship, wealth, power etc are all reasons for a man to live and not just exist in a dead life.

In the end, Lawrence believes that a novel acts as a guiding post for a man alive. It mirrors the unpredictable nature of human life and the importance of change.

It foreshadows the changeability of human nature and beliefs. It never postulates absolute right or wrong and knows that they can change with surroundings and circumstances. Thus, a novel can help a man to experience a wholesome life and become a complete man alive and makes the novel important.

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Why the novel matters

Against the “imperialism of the absolute” – a personal manifesto on the art of fiction.

By Karl Ove Knausgaard

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote that music could lift him up. Of course there’s nothing remarkable about that – only he then added: and put me down somewhere else. I recognise that quote so well, especially when it comes to literature. The last time I experienced that sensation was last winter after reading Claire Keegan’s novel Small Things Like These . It’s a short novel and I read it in the space of a couple of hours. When I finished it, I remained in my chair with the book lowered in my lap for a few minutes, completely filled by its emotions and moods. After a while I got to my feet and vanished into the daily round, the impressions the novel had made on me slowly dwindling until there was barely anything left other than a certain feeling that came over me when I turned my thoughts to it.

Reading is nearness; we read to get near to something. What do we get near to in Small Things Like These ? The novel, set in a small Irish town, follows the thoughts and perceptions of Bill Furlong. Furlong is a coal merchant, a married man with five daughters. He works hard, but the family is struggling. Sometimes he feels life is running through his hands. But the thing about Bill Furlong, which he perhaps isn’t aware of himself, is that he’s a good man. And in many ways Small Things Like These is a novel about goodness.

In Dostoevsky’s The Idiot , goodness as an idea takes on physical existence in the figure of Prince Myshkin, the absolute example of the good person, and gains its force in the collision between the ideal and the real. The Idiot is a novel of ideas, or, as Dostoevsky himself called it, fantastic realism. The goodness we encounter in Small Things Like These is of a quite different character. It is vague, fleeting, elusive – in Bill Furlong it manifests itself in a thought here, a small action there. If goodness is a light, then it’s not a powerful beam exposing a social reality, as in Dostoevsky, but a weak, flickering flame. No one in Keegan’s novel talks about the good in people, it’s just something that occurs, nameless and ordinary. And that – bringing to life what is there, teasing it forth, as if from underneath the conceptions that so firmly hold it in their grasp – is something only the novel can do.

[See also: Margaret Atwood: Why I write dystopias ]

Usually we think that for something to be significant it has to have a certain impact on the existing state of affairs. If I asked what mattered right now, some might say the war in Ukraine; others the environmental crisis, others still, inflation and rising poverty, or perhaps the growth of right-wing populism or structural racism. For some, it would be an energy-sapping conflict at work, a sick and dying mother, or a shiny new love interest. I doubt that very many people, if asked to name something that matters, would say the novel. That anyone would think the novel mattered at all.

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Does the novel matter?

One of many to have given their take on why the novel matters is DH Lawrence . He believed the novel represented the highest form of expression so far attained. The reason, he wrote, was that the novel was incapable of expressing the absolute. While science and philosophy strove to nail down the world, the novel held life open. Lawrence was a vitalist, he hailed life in everything he wrote, and the reason he favoured the novel was that he felt it was near to life. In his 1925 essay “Why the Novel Matters”, the novel seems to be more living to him than life itself.

“To be alive, to be man alive, to be whole man alive: that is the point. And at its best, the novel, and the novel supremely, can help you. It can help you not to be dead man in life.”

To Lawrence, life was surging, erratic, uncontrollable in its constant state of flux. Everything that went against its shifting nature, everything that was bounded, defined, categorised and absolute, went against life itself. Beneath this lies a conception of nature as authentic and civilisation as inauthentic. The task of culture, then, is to penetrate the inauthentic and allow man to live authentically within it, or as Lawrence put it: to be alive .

Lawrence wasn’t alone: in the first decades of the last century, notions of the inauthentic human flourished, it was a time when our civilisation was viewed as something of a hindrance to life, something suppressive. This idea is one reason the First World War was greeted by many with glee and enthusiasm in the summer of 1914: in war, real life prevailed.

It was this same idea about authenticity and the unfeigned – the blood, the forest, the soil – that would later be absorbed by Nazism, and it was why Bertrand Russell was able to write that Lawrence’s “mystical philosophy of the ‘blood’… led straight to Auschwitz”.

In one way the idea is valid, in another not. For Lawrence’s yea! to life involved the hailing of life’s very form – open, bewildering, ever-changing, never complete – in other words, the exact opposite of Nazism’s absolutism. “We should ask for no absolutes, or absolute,” he writes. “Once and for all and for ever, let us have done with the ugly imperialism of any absolute.” The novel, he seems to mean, dismantles the absolute by virtue of its form, which is all about relationships: between people, between people and the world, and between people and language. And the further we probe into such relationships, the more relative our sense of the world becomes.

A good example of this is to be found in the work of another vitalist, a contemporary of Lawrence’s: the Norwegian Knut Hamsun. Hamsun was a Nazi, convicted of treason after the war ended, and his work has been robustly debated in Norway ever since. In 1915 Hamsun intervened in a newspaper debate concerning two young women who had given birth in secret and then killed their babies. Hamsun was appalled at the mild sentences the women were handed – five and eight months’ imprisonment. He called for the death sentence. Hang them, hang them, he wrote. Two years later he published Growth of the Soil , a novel which in part concerns a woman who kills her newborn child. This is depicted from the inside: we follow her through her days and come to understand her. The infanticide is not trivialised but intensified by making the full tragedy apparent from all sides, no longer a simple fact to trigger a simple reaction: “Hang them.”

[See also: Booker winner Shehan Karunatilaka: “You don’t know who you’re going to offend” ]

This is what the novel does: it pulls any abstract conception about life, whether political, philosophical or scientific in nature, into the human sphere, where it no longer stands alone but collides with myriad impressions, thoughts, emotions and actions. This is why Dostoevsky’s novels are still so eminently readable, the relationship between abstract ideas and a chaotic, bewildering, emotionally powered reality being their very rationale; Dostoevsky’s own ideals must submit in the event that an opposing voice belongs to a more interesting character.

It’s also the reason why Lawrence’s novels aren’t nearly as good as Dostoevsky’s, for while Lawrence wanted the novel to be like life itself, the idea of life can become so powerful in his novels as to stifle what’s alive about them, life then losing its fluidity, its mutability, to solidify in the mould of thought. In this way both Lawrence’s and Hamsun’s fiction illustrates the undercurrents that run between vitalism and totalitarianism. This isn’t to say that Lawrence’s and Hamsun’s novels are totalitarian – a totalitarian novel is a contradiction in terms. The novel concerns relationships, and every relationship has an intrinsic complexity. Even such a fanatical rant as Adolf Hitler ’s Mein Kampf is about relationships, from its opening pages about his upbringing; it’s obvious that he’s embellishing and holding back at the same time. He strives to keep this internal battle between order and chaos hidden, but it breaks out and undermines his monomaniacal tirade.

Totalitarianism is all about remoteness and control, about what’s common to us all. Anyone who’s ever been to Russia will have noticed the huge number of war monuments there, one in even the smallest village, and at the foot of them all burns a flame. They represent the grand, heroic Russian narrative of the Second World War. In recent years any utterance deemed to contradict or complicate that simple narrative has been smothered, including the work of the civil rights organisation Memorial, which sought to uncover human rights abuses under Stalin and remember their victims. This is an extreme example in a country of extremes, but all history is given to us in the narrative form, the same way as all news is given to us in the narrative form – as “story”. The role of the novel has always been to wriggle underneath these overarching narratives, to break them down, formally and thematically, to get closer to the concrete experience of reality.

U lysses was serialised between 1918 and 1920, some years before Lawrence wrote his essay about the novel, and one would think that he would have approved of James Joyce’s total dismantling of the absolute. But Lawrence hated Ulysses , just as much as he hated Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time . To him, these works occupied the novel’s deathbed:

“Is Ulysses in his cradle? Oh dear! What a grey face!… And M Proust? Alas! You can hear the death-rattle in their throats. They can hear it themselves. They are listening to it with acute interest, trying to discover whether the intervals are minor thirds or major fourths… “Did I feel a twinge in my little toe, or didn’t I?” asks every character of Mr Joyce… or M Proust.”

Joyce, Proust, Virginia Woolf and Lawrence strove to get as near to reality as possible in their novels. But while Lawrence made use of narrative to that end, for the three others, “story” was an obstacle, something that shut the novel off from reality and which therefore had to be overcome, triggering an explosion in form.

The difference in their approach has to do with distance. For Lawrence, writing fiction was about getting near to emotions. For Joyce and Woolf, it was about getting near to the moment – and in the moment there is no story, only actions and thoughts, as yet undefined. Telling a story tends to involve a greater sense of distance. What defines us – what determines what we see, believe and understand about the world – comes to us from outside, and is often organised in the narrative form. In Joyce, and in Woolf, we’re inside. We’re in the moment, and only in the moment does anything come into existence.

Another, highly pertinent and contemporary example of a book that operates in the shadowland between distance and nearness is The Orphanage by the Ukrainian writer Serhiy Zhadan. Published in Ukraine in 2017, it is about the conflict that was going on at the time, in the years prior to the recent Russian invasion, in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine where armed Russian separatists declared the region’s independence from Kyiv. However, nothing of this background is provided, the reader instead being thrown into a here-and-now in which everything takes place at eye level. The viewpoint is that of Pasha, a teacher in Donetsk who at the beginning of the novel is on his way to collect his nephew from a children’s home in a neighbouring town. What strikes the reader is how unclear everything is: who is friend and who is foe? Whose artillery is raining down? Who is fleeing? He speaks one language with some of the people he meets, a different one with others. There are no guy ropes, nothing is pegged out for us; everything is dissolved into the moments he must negotiate. A war is being described to us before it becomes story – in other words, while it’s still reality.

There’s a common conception that says that a novel is important when it deals with some significant or topical issue. But importance of theme is no indicator of whether a novel is important. In fact, it can be a problem for the novel, since important issues often go hand in hand with strong opinions, which have already been formed – and anything that’s already formed only makes life difficult for the novel. The novel is important precisely in giving voice to that which has none, to that which otherwise wouldn’t be heard. Its job is to get as near to life as to elude the opinion.

This attitude is entrenched in Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These . It’s a novel that gives room to a man who himself takes up none, and is from a layer of society that takes up none in its culture. But most importantly it’s a novel that makes room for something inside him – and inside us all – something so sheer and eluding that he’s not even aware of it himself.

One of the best novels I’ve read that achieves this effect is The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas, first published in Norway in 1957. The main character in The Birds is Mattis, a man in his forties who lives with his sister Hege in a cottage on the shores of a lake, at the fringe of a forest. Mattis is like a child; he doesn’t function very well with other people, because he doesn’t understand their social codes. Occasionally, he’s taken on as a day labourer by one of the village farms, where invariably he does more harm than good.

The novel makes us privy to his thoughts. If the important thing about Bill Furlong in Small Things Like These is that he’s good, then the important thing about Mattis is that he’s near to life. He’s not a person who does – he’s incapable of that – he’s a person who is . And this state of being is filled to the brim with the being that is all around him – that of his sister, but also of the birds, the trees, the sky, the lake. The writer is open to the language, the language is open to Mattis, Mattis is open to life.

[See also: The Passenger: The phantom world of Cormac McCarthy ]

When Mattis witnesses the flight of a woodcock, he interprets it as a sign. But, unable to communicate the meaning of the sign to anyone, Mattis starts communicating with the woodcock itself. Mattis’s great event turns out to signal the end: when the bird is shot, he loses his grip and ends up drowning in the lake.

Seen from the perspective of those around him, Mattis is not all there. But seen from within, his inner being is rich and complete, his emotional life complex, his thoughts quite comprehensible. In him, strong, opposing forces meet. While he longs to be included by the social world and its language, the novel longs towards wordless nature. While he seeks activity, the novel strives towards an actionless state of being. While he identifies with the woodcock in the belief that it will help him become included, the novel identifies him with the birds, which are outside the human realm.

The conflicts articulated in The Birds are those of an idiot, someone no one listens to or takes an interest in, but Mattis’s nature follows a different logic, one that’s continually quashed in its encounters with normality. Only a novel can support two such opposing logics at once, and only a novel can articulate our most important conflicts without locking them tight in definitions, but leaving them open to our emotions and experiences. Change comes from within: it’s where our opinions and attitudes, our conceptions of the world and ourselves reside, and it’s where the novel will always seek to go. Into the Norwegian idiot, into the Irish coal merchant, into the Ukrainian teacher. That’s the job of the novel, to go into the world and hold it open, and it’s because it can do that that it matters.

Translated by Martin Aitken. This is an edited version of the 2022 New Statesman/ Goldsmiths Prize Lecture, delivered at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London on 22 October

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Monday, April 16, 2012

Why the Novel Matters - Winning Essay

The novel has always mattered to me.

As a child, I climbed the Swiss Alps with Heidi and discovered England in The Secret Garden. I tied my braids with red ribbon like Spanish girls in picture books, or wrapped them in a crown like the heroine in Kirsten Saves the Day. With no television or computer games, my sisters and I rode bikes on the driveway and pretended to go to Bethlehem- the only foreign city I was sure of, thanks to our Bible storybook.

s raised me in a tidy Kansas town, north of Wichita and miles from anywhere significant. Long afternoons gazing at wheat fields made me conscious of my smallness and I hoped someday to escape, to soar over those prairies and find newfangled things.

On Sundays I sat with my friends near the front of the sanctuary, hands folded but eyes glazing as I found pictures in the wood grain of the pulpit- exotic things like donkeys and camels and palm trees. After school I devoured T he Diary of Anne Frank with my peanut butter and jelly, went to sleep to the tune of waves off The Island of Blue Dolphins.

My earliest dreams sprouted from books and a rare airport trip, where my stomach ached w

ith longing as stewardesses clicked past, pulling their rolling bags.

Someday, I would be a stewardess and pull a bag with wheels.

I read more and my dream changed: I would be a detective like Nancy Drew. Later I combined Cherry Ames, Jungle Nurse with Little Women and altered my dream again. This one stuck and all through my teens, I wanted to be a journalist in Africa.

Then reality hit, with a thud like a Twain in our library drop-box. Detective? Journalist? Those weren’t career paths for Plain girls. I could be a teacher, a nurse, or a homemaker.

led the seed-dream, but seedlings die hard.

I followed the acceptable path: taught school, married young. My husband had no interest in travel but I swaggered through France with The Count of Monte Cristo and toured London with David Copperfield.

Every time a jet flew over, I wished I was on it and every time I walked through an airport, my stomach hurt like it did as a child. But now I knew better. Girls like me didn’t go places. They put down roots like cottonwoods and learned to bend without breaking like wheat on the plains.

Then one startling day my husband mentioned mission work. Our church needed volunteers for its humanitarian program; maybe we should give some time to help ot

hers. It happened so slowly I scarcely realized it- here a comment, there a question- and when we submitted our application, I was as stunned as anyone.

Suddenly my wheat field exploded into fireworks.

But the mission board would probably send us to a local post, supervising hurricane clean up or a guesthouse.

They would, probably.

They sent us to Romania, within reach of the galaxy that was Europe. Other missionaries prepared for foreign service by getting shots and learning to cut hair but I read every library book that mentioned this new country of ours.

And then I climbed on that jet and glided away.

I soaked Romania in, walked the streets, spent evenings on our balcony and afternoons in the park. We explored from the brooding forests of Dracula , to the banks of the Blue Danube, to the quiet hometown of Elie Wiesel, and the quaint, overlooked country wedged in our hearts. But that was not all. Oh no, it was not all.

Hungary and Ukraine became old friends and Anna Karenina and The Singing Tree grew real. There were other trips - a layover in James Joyce’s Ireland, a drive through Sherlock Holmes’ Bavaria, a glimpse of The Scarlet Pimpernel ’s France.

Then we crossed the Adriatic by ferry and I blinked back tears as the lights of Italy approached. Kansas seemed far away but the girl with braids did a victory dance under the cottonwood.

Italy meant Venice and gondolas. It meant the Coliseum, a million crooked streets, and a new pasta dish every day. It meant The Voice in the Wind and The Last Days of Pompeii. It meant everything.

And now, I truly believe there will be more. Once a book plants a seed, it grows, and once you come unstuck, there’s no tying you. My wheat field is a runway and the brown-haired girl pulls a suitcase with wheels.

12 comments:

Vila, I knew you were my soulmate when I read the phrase, "my stomach ached with longing as stewardesses clicked past, pulling their rolling bags." Clicked past! that's exactly what they did. They dressed like celebrities and executives and they TRAVELED. Blessings on your life of travel as you bless others!

That totally says exactly why Novels matter.

Vila all I can say is that impacted me so deeply. It was so beautifully written, and...oh boy, do I understand that place. Well Done!!!!!

Vila, just purely beautiful.

What a beautiful trip through the lands of the novel. Right from the first reference to Heidi (one of my childhood favourites) I was hooked. Denise

Hello Soulmate! Thanks, All! I'm delighted you connected to my essay. How many times can I reread your lovely comments without looking desperate? :) To the Novel Matters writers- my lurking here has shown me what you're like- cheerleaders in half-glasses and writing smocks (question: what is a writing smock?) who honestly care about everyone who comments (or lurks) here. I've read the books you recommended, tried the tips you suggested, and went away from here inspired to scribble on. Thanks so much for that, and for the chance to enter this contest! Sharon, I loved your thoughts, especially the part about "grand plans for his daughters". So much possibility there. When you come to beautiful Dracula land- which you must- I'll spruce up the guest room and get out the crock pot. Let me know! Vila Gingerich

Congratulations, Vila. This was so beautiful.

This is fabulous! Thanks Vila for such an inspiring narrative. I am going to share this with our teen writers at WriteMemphis, who most times think reading is a waste of their time (and who will not even try to do a comparison with anything else they do being a waste of time!). You have given me much to share with them, and painted word pictures that will send them off on journeys that will help them understand what writing, and reading, can do for the soul.

Vila, my writing smock is a bathrobe. :)

Vila, I'd love nothing better! Thanks for the warm hospitality, thanks for your essay, and thanks for lurking with us. Congratulations!

Well done Vila! I experienced the opposite, dragged from country to country and longing for roots like Little Women and Anne of Green Gables. You remind me that without novels I would have no concept of roots. Thanks and I look forward to reading more from you.

Vila this is fantastic!

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Why the novel matters Summarize the views of D. H. Lawrence in his essay

Why the novel matters, summarize the views of d. h. lawrence in his essay..

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Ans, ‘Why the novel matters’ is an essay, written by D. H. Lawrence, a Leading novelist during the Modern period in the English language and literature. In this essay, the writer has presented his great thoughts and Ideas about the novels.

It is a presentation of inner thoughts and understanding of Lawrence. In his eyes, the Novel deals with high understanding in an impressive way. It presents the wide feelings of the novelist in an explicit manner. why the novel matters

Why the novel matters by DH Lawrence

The novel deals with all sorts of human situations elaborately. The feelings of a novelist are indeed akin to a saint or a philosopher or a scientist. The saint wishes to offer spiritual food to the people. The philosopher thinks much and he presents his great thought for the welfare of mankind.

The scientist tries to present his scientific achievements for the sake of society the novelist intends to influence the mass by discussing human problems and it may be said that the great novelist leaves a great impact on the minds of the people. why the novel matters

It is apathy to remark that the novel is the big book of life. It can make the whole human beings active and alive. Lawrence feels that the Bible is also akin to a great novel because it deals with God and His creation.

In the Bible, we get acquainted with Adam, Eve, Sarah, Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Samuel David, and others. In the novel, the characters present varied actions and the situations are dealt with as per pattern. why the novel matters

Why the novel matters pdf

A character in the novel conveys lively thoughts, related to human understanding and ideologies. The presentation in the novel is of great importance. The novelist seeks to leave a grand impression and indelible imprint on the tender mind and hearts of the readers.

In this regard, Lawrence has sought that the novels must see the plain ways of life. The whole world is compacted with sight as well as sound understanding.

It is seen that the characters of the novel delineate all sorts of consciousness of human beings. The novelist must be fair and square in his characterization. It must act as the lively epitome of life.

It should jerk all the threads of human understanding. It must act like an alive dog and it need not deal with a dead lion. It should also act as a microscope in the range of worldly affairs. why the novel matters

Why the novel matters questions and answers

There should be clarity of outlook in dealing with worldly affairs. In a true sense, the responsibility of a novelist is of par excellence.

This essay is full of higher thoughts and ideas, D. H. Lawrence has presented himself as a reviewer. All the feelings with regard to the novel are dealt with concisely. The approach seems to be positive in some aspects.

Critical appreciation the bottle imp summary and analysis, critical estimate of the model millionaire summary, important aspects of short story our lady’s juggler essay, leave a reply cancel reply.

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When the essay "Why the Novel Matters" is approached as rhetorical systems rather than statements of doctrine, it is, I think, significant as critical conceptions of the novel as those of a writer defining his genre in his own terms - dialogically, rhetorically, and artistically, as a novelist would. It is these rhetorical maneuvers, not the stated philosophy, that collectively constitute Lawrence's coherent critical vision of the novel as a genre. In the essay "Why the Novel Matters", Lawrence explores in his own way the Romantic concept of the relativity of parts and wholes to construct a doctrinal statement celebrating the novel over other fields of thought. Unlike philosophy, science, and religion, which only address "part" of us, he says, the novel reaches us "whole hog". Incorporated into this argument is a diatribe against moral "absolutes". " Once and for all and for ever, let us have done with the ugly imperialism of any absolute. There is no absolute good, there is nothing absolutely right," the writer asserts. Here Lawrence's hatred of absolutes is made supplemental to a larger theory on the relativity of parts and wholes. In the essay, he contends that "man alive" is as much or more the physical body than it is the mind or spirit, and he supports his thesis by disassembling the old cliche that the body is merely a vessel for the soul. Then he goes on saying that like "a bottle or a jug, or a tin can, or a vessel of clay" our body bleeds when it is cut. But the difference that sets it apart is the life in the skin, vein, bone or blood this is inside. But in case of other inanimate objects the entities inside are as dead as the outer. "And that's what you learn, when you're a novelist" quips Lawrence to define the people in this field. So the superficial "logic" of this passage is conspicuously off: to refute the notion that the body is merely a vessel for the soul, he "proves" that skin and bone are just as "alive" as blood is.

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Has Bibliography

6. Why is the Devil sometimes thought to be the hero in...

28/04/2004 Why is the Devil sometimes thought to be the hero in The Master and Margarita? ... Believer, agnostic, or atheist, it does not matter for the sake of the novel. ... Whether it was just his way of getting what he wanted does not matter, for he did not force her to do anything against her will, but gave her a choice. ... Satan is therefore a possible candidate for the title of hero of the novel, but whether or not the novel actually has a hero is another matter. The novel is not as clear cut as a story about good versus evil. ...

7. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Jay Asher's captivating novel, Thirteen Reasons Why, embodies seventeen-year-old Clay Jensen as his life is altered forever when he receives in the mail thirteen mysterious cassette tapes. ... Because it may seem like a small role now, but it matters. In the end, everything matters" (Asher 13). ... The tragic thoughts and feelings of both Hannah and Clay are beautifully written throughout the novel. ... Throughout the novel, Clay is always moving from location to location (wherever Hannah tells him to go) in order to better understand what happened. ...

Word Count: 644

8. Discuss the Themes in the novel, "Of Mice and Men"

"Page 122-123, paragraph 4-5, line 1-6, Curley's wife says"Why can't I talk to you? ... Main characters on, "John Steinbeck's novel have a dream to achieve. ... Crooks mention that having an own piece of land (no matter how small), was the dream of all men, but unfortunately all stayed in dreams. ... .If you .guys would want a hand to work for nothing - just his keep, why I"d come an"lend a hand. ... Friendship is another important theme in the novel. ...

Word Count: 1235

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Wednesday 1 February 2017

Why the novel matters| d.h. lawrence | summary and analysis.

Why the Novel Matters

D.h. lawrence.

First published January 1, 1936

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Kaleidoscope Why The Novel Matters

NCERT Solutions for Class 12 English Elective Book: Kaleidoscope Non-Fiction Chapter 4 - Why the Novel Matters

The NCERT Solutions for Class 12 English Chapter 4 – Why the Novel Matters are provided here to help students study and prepare for their exams. The solutions are developed in an interesting manner which makes learning fun and easy. Students can make use of NCERT Solutions which helps them effortlessly prepare for their exams. Expert tutors having vast knowledge about the subject have designed the solution module depending on students’ abilities. For students who wish to achieve good marks in their exams and build their confidence level, practising from NCERT Solutions is essential.

Chapter 4 – Why the Novel Matters provides solutions to questions related to each and every topic present in this chapter. To help students prepare for their exams, our experts at BYJU’S have formulated solutions for NCERT Solutions for Class 12 English. Students can refer to and download the solution module for free from the links given below and can use it in future as well.

NCERT Solutions for Class 12 English Elective Book: Kaleidoscope Non-Fiction Chapter 4 – Why the Novel Matters

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Understanding the Text

1. How does the novel reflect the wholeness of a human being?

Answer. The novel reflects the wholeness of a human being by changing the vitality of the whole person, not just simple instincts. Like most literary genres, novels are composed of characters. These characters are the protagonists of the soul, just like humans. Hence, the liveliness of the novel depends entirely upon its characters, where characters have different personalities. A novel displays different attributes of a human being, showing off all the good deeds of every individual, leaving it to the reader to interpret. Thus, this is how the novel reflects the wholeness of the human being.

2. Why does the author consider the novel superior to philosophy, science or even poetry?

Answer. According to the author, D.H. Lawrence considers the novel a superior genre among books. He believes that novels are the only good books in life and that not all books are life. He also believes that the novel teaches the lives of readers who are trembling to survive. Novels can bring life to readers more than philosophy, poetry or science. Therefore, the author believes that novels are superior to philosophy, science, and even poetry.

3. What does the author mean by ‘tremulations on ether’ and ‘the novel as a tremulation’?

Answer. The author says the novel is a ‘tremulations on the ether’. He means that novels induce liveliness in the readers where the other books are not proficient enough. Reading regular books indicates reading messages or gathering news that is being read over the radio. One can never identify the actual information; instead, one can feel happy or sad about the specific news for some time. But the novel portrays a multi-dimensional view of the characters, and the readers can relate with them personally. A novel teaches valuable life lessons which any reader can inculcate in their own lives and make their decisions. Thus, the novel is a life-inducing factor in the writer’s thought processes, which significantly affects the readers.

4. What are the arguments presented in the essay against the denial of the body by spiritual thinkers?

Answer. The author, D.H. Lawrence, compares a human body to that of a vessel containing the soul and that the soul is the only thing alive. Life is most meaningful, and being active is the most fantastic thing. Humans are just limited to the body, which overlooks the importance of the body and restricts them to the body. The author uses an example of the hand and denies the hand is a lifeless object used only as a medium of writing is entirely incorrect. Similarly, a person talks about the importance of souls in heaven. However, the author Lawrence, being a novelist, says that ‘paradise is in the palm of your hand.’ A philosopher talks about infinity and the pure spirit who knows everything. But these are just pieces of life that act as messages or news being read over the radio. Hence, the body is alive, and man is more alive than any other entity and denying it is a wrong decision by spiritual thinkers.

Talking about the Text

Discuss in pairs.

1. The interest in a novel springs from the reactions of characters to circumstances. It is more important for characters to be true to themselves (integrity) than to what is expected of them (consistency). (A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds – Emerson.)

Answer. The basis of every novel is its character – plots, plots, twists and turns – all about the characters depicted in the novel. Therefore, the characters must be faithful to their integrity, which is the essence of the characters. If not, they lose their charm and become boring, flat characters.

There are two types of characters in the novel – Round and Flat characters. Flat characters are those that remain consistent in their behaviour throughout the plot. Not a single instance in the story changes them or has any effect on them. While round characters, on the other hand, keep developing throughout the story and create an impact on the storyline. They keep the readers glued to the novel, making it interesting for the reader.

Thus, if every character is flat by following what should be done rather than following their instincts, the novel will lose its charm and become dull. Hence, the author believes, “It is more important for characters to be true to themselves (integrity) than to what is expected of them (consistency).”

2. ‘The novel is the one bright book of life.’ ‘Books are not life.’ Discuss the distinction between the two statements. Recall Ruskin’s definition of ‘What Is a Good Book?’ in Woven Words Class XI.

Answer. Unlike the other books on philosophy, science, etc., the novel portrays the real aspects of life and depicts life in its natural form for its readers to gain knowledge from them. They acquire several life lessons. Hence, the novel is ‘the bright book of life.’ But the author also points out that ‘Books are not life.’ The novel portrays real-like issues and characters, he means to say that it is not reality itself. It is a fantasy of someone’s imagination which real-life issues and feelings might have inspired. Although the novel portrays reality, it isn’t reality itself. In his work, ‘What Is a Good Book?’, Ruskin Bond says that it is vital for the readers to understand what the author has wanted to convey. This idea is similar to Lawrence, who asks the reader to take inspiration from the novel.

Appreciation

1. Certain catchphrases are recurrently used as pegs to hang the author’s thoughts throughout the essay. List these and discuss how they serve to achieve the argumentative force of the essay.

Answer. Here are a few catchphrases:

Body – The author describes the importance of the body and discusses how the body is the ultimate phase of being in learner mode.
Spirit – The spirit, according to the author, is a misleading concept which makes a man get into confusion. It leads a man to things that are unreal to the imagination.
Man alive – This is the realistic concept of the author in which he says that everything happens because man is alive.
Tremulations – Here, tremulations are the talks that the philosophers and saints do because of which man-alive may be influenced to change his course of action.
Change – The only constant.

2. The language of the argument is intense and succeeds in convincing the reader through rhetorical devices. Identify the devices used by the author to achieve this force.

Answer. Given below is the list of rhetorical devices used to intensify the language of argument:

• Allusion – The mention of the Bible.

• Amplification – The repetitive use of words like man alive, spirit, tremulations, etc.

• Metonymy – By saying that ‘The novel is the one bright book of life.’

Language Work

A. Vocabulary

1. There are a few non-English expressions in the essay. Identify them and mention the language they belong to. Can you guess the meaning of the expressions from the context?

• Mens sana in corpore sano is a Latin phrase, usually translated as “a healthy mind in a healthy body.”

• C’est la vie! is a French phrase used to express acceptance or resignation in the face of a difficult or unpleasant situation.

2. Given below are a few roots from Latin. Make a list of the words that can be derived from them.

mens (mind) corpus(body) sanare (to heal)

Mind – Remind mastermind, never mind.

Body – Bodily, anybody, nobody.

to heal – To heal up.

1. Identify the intransitive verbs and the copulas in the examples below from the text in this unit. Say what the category of the complement is. You can work in pairs or groups and discuss the reasons for your analysis.

• I am a thief and a murderer.

• Right and wrong is an instinct.

• The flower fades.

• I am a very curious assembly of incongruous parts.

• The bud opens.

• The word shall stand forever.

• It is a funny sort of superstition.

• You’re a philosopher.

• Nothing is important.

• The whole is greater than the part.

• I am a man, and alive.

• I am greater than anything that is merely a part of me.

• The novel is the book of life.

Answer. be+adjective phrase

Answer. be+adverb

Answer. be+adverb phrase

Answer. be+noun phrase

Answer. be+adjective

2. Identify other sentences from the text with intransitive verbs and copulas.

Answer. Other sentences from the text with intransitive verbs and copulas are

a) My hand, as it writes.

b) Whatever is me alive is me.

NCERT Solutions for Class 12 English Chapter 4 – Why the Novel Matters

The chapter “Why the Novel Matters” is an essay written by the famous writer D.H. Lawrence. He emphasises the importance of fiction in his article and consciously tries to put novelists above all other professions. Lawrence believes that a novelist is a person who can create characters and express life through words, so the author feels the career of a novelist is better than that of a philosopher or a scientist, or any poet. In addition, the author continues to emphasise the importance of novels, pointing out that novels let people know whether they are alive or dead, so he believes that novels are books that can touch people’s lives. Hence, the title “Why the Novel Matters”. Experts at BYJU’S have prepared the solutions with the utmost care, making it easier for students to understand. NCERT Class 12 English is the best study material, which is provided in accordance with the latest CBSE syllabus. One can use this for preparing for their board exams to excel in their examinations. Students can study and prepare for their exams from the links provided.

Frequently Asked Questions on NCERT Solutions for Class 12 English Elective Book: Kaleidoscope Non-Fiction Chapter 4

How to secure full marks in the board exams using the ncert solutions for class 12 english non-fiction chapter 4.

Students may find the basics difficult at first, but getting good grades with the proper guidance is not that difficult. If your goal is to achieve good results in the subject, you also need to solve different questions. NCERT Solutions provides answers which make students aware of the type of questions that would appear in the annual exams. Subject experts have designed the solutions in an easily understandable manner for students to grasp the concepts at ease. Students can quickly refer to NCERT Solutions for Class 12 English at BYJU’S website and download the solutions module for free.

How does the novel reflect the wholeness of a human being in Chapter 4 of NCERT Solutions for Class 12 English Non-Fiction?

The novel reflects the wholeness of a human being by changing the vitality of the whole person, not just simple instincts. Like most literary genres, novels are composed of characters. These characters are the protagonists of the soul, just like humans. Hence, the liveliness of the novel depends entirely upon its characters, where characters have different personalities. BYJU’S provides the most accurate answers for the questions present in the NCERT textbooks. The expert tutors having vast experience in the subject have explained and answered the solutions clearly based on the abilities of students.

Why does the author consider the novel superior to philosophy, science or even poetry in Chapter 4 of NCERT Solutions of Class 12 English Non-Fiction?

According to the author, D.H. Lawrence considers the novel a superior genre among books. He believes that novels are the only good books in life and that not all books are life. He also believes that the novel teaches the lives of readers who are trembling to survive. Novels can bring life to readers more than philosophy, poetry or science. Therefore, the author believes that novels are superior to philosophy, science, and even poetry. To boost interest among students, the solutions are prepared with utmost care to help students grasp the concepts easily. Solutions to all the textbook questions have been answered by the expert faculty team to help students achieve their desired goals. Students can easily download the solution PDF for free from the links given.

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Why the Novel Matters by D.H. Lawrence

WE have curious ideas of ourselves. We think of ourselves as a body with a spirit in it, or a body with a soul in it, or a body with a mind in it. Mens sana in corpore sano. The years drink up the wine, and at last throw the bottle away, the body, of course, being the bottle.

It is a funny sort of superstition. Why should I look at my hand, as it so cleverly writes these words, and decide that it is a mere nothing compared to the mind that directs it? Is there really any huge difference between my hand and my brain? Or my mind? My hand is alive, it flickers with a life of its own. It meets all the strange universe in touch, and learns a vast number of things, and knows a vast number of things. My hand, as it writes these words, slips gaily along, jumps like a grasshopper to dot an i, feels the table rather cold, gets a little bored if I write too long, has its own rudiments of thought, and is just as much me as is my brain, my mind, or my soul. Why should I imagine that there is a me which is more me than my hand is? Since my hand is absolutely alive, me alive.

Whereas, of course, as far as I am concerned, my pen isn't alive at all. My pen isn't me alive. Me alive ends at my finger-tips.

Whatever is me alive is me. Every tiny bit of my hands is alive, every little freckle and hair and fold of skin. And whatever is me alive is me. Only my finger-nails, those ten little weapons between me and an inanimate universe, they cross the mysterious Rubicon between me alive and things like my pen, which are not alive, in my own sense.

So, seeing my hand is all alive, and me alive, wherein is it just a bottle, or a jug, or a tin can, or a vessel of clay, or any of the rest of that nonsense? True, if I cut it it will bleed, like a can of cherries. But then the skin that is cut, and the veins that bleed, and the bones that should never be seen, they are all just as alive as the blood that flows. So the tin can business, or vessel of clay, is just bunk.

And that's what you learn, when you're a novelist. And that's what you are very liable not to know, if you're a parson, or a philosopher, or a scientist, or a stupid person. If you're a parson, you talk about souls in heaven. If you're a novelist, you know that paradise is in the palm of your hand, and on the end of your nose, because both are alive; and alive, and man alive, which is more than you can say, for certain, of paradise. Paradise is after life, and I for one am not keen on anything that is after life. If you are a philosopher, you talk about infinity, and the pure spirit which knows all things. But if you pick up a novel, you realize immediately that infinity is just a handle to this self-same jug of a body of mine; while as for knowing, if I find my finger in the fire, I know that fire burns, with a knowledge so emphatic and vital, it leaves Nirvana merely a conjecture. Oh, yes, my body, me alive, knows, and knows intensely. And as for the sum of all knowledge, it can't be anything more than an accumulation of all the things I know in the body, and you, dear reader, know in the body.

These damned philosophers, they talk as if they suddenly went off in steam, and were then much more important than they are when they're in their shirts. It is nonsense. Every man, philosopher included, ends in his own finger-tips. That's the end of his man alive. As for the words and thoughts and sighs and aspirations that fly from him, they are so many tremulations in the ether, and not alive at all. But if the tremulations reach another man alive, he may receive them into his life, and his life may take on a new colour, like a chameleon creeping from a brown rock on to a green leaf. All very well and good. It still doesn't alter the fact that the so-called spirit, the message or teaching of the philosopher or the saint, isn't alive at all, but just a tremulation upon the ether, like a radio message. All this spirit stuff is just tremulations upon the ether. If you, as man alive, quiver from the tremulation of the ether into new life, that is because you are man alive, and you take sustenance and stimulation into your alive man in a myriad ways. But to say that the message, or the spirit which is communicated to you, is more important than your living body, is nonsense. You might as well say that the potato at dinner was more important.

Nothing is important but life. And for myself, I can absolutely see life nowhere but in the living. Life with a capital L is only man alive. Even a cabbage in the rain is cabbage alive. All things that are alive are amazing. And all things that are dead are subsidiary to the living. Better a live dog than a dead lion. But better a live lion than a live dog. C'est la vie! *

It seems impossible to get a saint, or a philosopher, or a scientist, to stick to this simple truth. They are all, in a sense, renegades. The saint wishes to offer himself up as spiritual food for the multitude. Even Francis of Assisi turns himself into a sort of angelcake, of which anyone may take a slice. But an angel-cake is rather less than man alive. And poor St Francis might well apologize to his body, when he is dying: 'Oh, pardon me, my body, the wrong I did you through the years!' * It was no wafer, for others to eat. *

The philosopher, on the other hand, because he can think, decides that nothing but thoughts matter. It is as if a rabbit, because he can make little pills, should decide that nothing but little pills matter. As for the scientist, he has absolutely no use for me so long as I am man alive. To the scientist, I am dead. He puts under the microscope a bit of dead me, and calls it me. He takes me to pieces, and says first one piece, and then another piece, is me. My heart, my liver, my stomach have all been scientifically me, according to the scientist; and nowadays I am either a brain, or nerves, or glands, or something more up-to-date in the tissue line.

Now I absolutely flatly deny that I am a soul, or a body, or a mind, or an intelligence, or a brain, or a nervous system, or a bunch of glands, or any of the rest of these bits of me. The whole is greater than the part. And therefore, I, who am man alive, am greater than my soul, or spirit, or body, or mind, or consciousness, or anything else that is merely a part of me. I am a man, and alive. I am man alive, and as long as I can, I intend to go on being man alive.

For this reason I am a novelist. And being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, the scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog.

The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble. Which is more than poetry, philosophy, science, or any other book-tremulation can do.

The novel is the book of life. In this sense, the Bible is a great confused novel. You may say, it is about God. But it is really about man alive. Adam, Eve, Sarai, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Samuel, David, Bath-Sheba, Ruth, Esther, Solomon, Job, Isaiah, Jesus, Mark, Judas, Paul, Peter: what is it but man alive, from start to finish? Man alive, not mere bits. Even the Lord is another man alive, in a burning bush, throwing the tablets of stone * at Moses's head.

I do hope you begin to get my idea, why the novel is supremely important, as a tremulation on the ether. Plato makes the perfect ideal being tremble in me. But that's only a bit of me. Perfection is only a bit, in the strange make-up of man alive. The Sermon on the Mount makes the selfless spirit of me quiver. But that, too, is only a bit of me. The Ten Commandments set the old Adam * shivering in me, warning me that I am a thief and a murderer, unless I watch it. But even the old Adam is only a bit of me.

I very much like all these bits of me to be set trembling with life and the wisdom of life. But I do ask that the whole of me shall tremble in its wholeness, some time or other.

And this, of course, must happen in me, living.

But as far as it can happen from a communication, it can only happen when a whole novel communicates itself to me. The Bible--but all the Bible--and Homer, and Shakespeare: these are the supreme old novels. These are all things to all men. Which means that in their wholeness they affect the whole man alive, which is the man himself, beyond any part of him. They set the whole tree trembling with a new access of life, they do not just stimulate growth in one direction.

I don't want to grow in any one direction any more. And, if I can help it, I don't want to stimulate anybody else into some particular direction. A particular direction ends in a cul-de-sac. We're in a cul-de-sac at present.

I don't believe in any dazzling revelation, or in any supreme Word. 'The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the Word of the Lord shall stand for ever.'* That's the kind of stuff we've drugged ourselves with. As a matter of fact, the grass withereth, but comes up all the greener for that reason, after the rains. The flower fadeth, and therefore the bud opens. But the Word of the Lord, being man-uttered and a mere vibration on the ether, becomes staler and staler, more and more boring, till at last we turn a deaf ear and it ceases to exist, far more finally than any withered grass. It is grass that renews its youth like the eagle, * not any Word.

We should ask for no absolutes, or absolute. Once and for all and for ever, let us have done with the ugly imperialism of any absolute.

There is no absolute good, there is nothing absolutely right. All things flow and change, and even change is not absolute. The whole is a strange assembly of apparently incongruous parts, slipping past one another.

Me, man alive, I am a very curious assembly of incongruous parts. My yea! of today is oddly different from my yea! of yesterday. My tears of tomorrow will have nothing to do with my tears of a year ago. If the one I love remains unchanged and unchanging, I shall cease to love her. It is only because she changes and startles me into change and defies my inertia, and is herself staggered in her inertia by my changing, that I can continue to love her. If she stayed put, I might as well love the pepper-pot.

In all this change, I maintain a certain integrity. But woe betide me if I try to put my finger on it. If I say of myself, I am this, I am that!--then, if I stick to it, I turn into a stupid fixed thing like a lamp-post. I shall never know wherein lies my integrity, my individuality, my me. I can never know it. It is useless to talk about my ego. That only means that I have made up an idea of myself, and that I am trying to cut myself out to pattern. Which is no good. You can cut your cloth to fit your coat, but you can't clip bits off your living body, to trim it down to your idea. True, you can put yourself into ideal corsets. But even in ideal corsets, fashions change.

Let us learn from the novel. In the novel, the characters can do nothing but live. If they keep on being good, according to pattern, or bad, according to pattern, or even volatile, according to pattern, they cease to live, and the novel falls dead. A character in a novel has got to live, or it is nothing.

We, likewise, in life have got to live, or we are nothing.

What we mean by living is, of course, just as indescribable as what we mean by being. Men get ideas into their heads, of what they mean by Life, and they proceed to cut life out to pattern. Sometimes they go into the desert to seek God, sometimes they go into the desert to seek cash, sometimes it is wine, woman, and song, * and again it is water, political reform, and votes. You never know what it will be next: from killing your neighbour with hideous bombs and gas that tears the lungs, to supporting a Foundlings Home and preaching infinite Love, and being corespondent in a divorce.

In all this wild welter, we need some sort of guide. It's no good inventing Thou Shalt Nots!

What then? Turn truly, honorably to the novel, and see wherein you are man alive, and wherein you are dead man in life. You may love a woman as man alive, and you may be making love to a woman as sheer dead man in life. You may eat your dinner as man alive, or as a mere masticating corpse. As man alive you may have a shot at your enemy. But as a ghastly simulacrum of life you may be firing bombs into men who are neither your enemies nor your friends, but just things you are dead to. Which is criminal, when the things happen to be alive.

To be alive, to be man alive, to be whole man alive: that is the point. And at its best, the novel, and the novel supremely, can help you. It can help you not to be dead man in life. So much of a man walks about dead and a carcass in the street and house, today: so much of women is merely dead. Like a pianoforte with half the notes mute.

But in the novel you can see, plainly, when the man goes dead, the woman goes inert. You can develop an instinct for life, if you will, instead of a theory of right and wrong, good and bad.

In life, there is right and wrong, good and bad, all the time. But what is right in one case is wrong in another. And in the novel you see one man becoming a corpse, because of his so-called goodness, another going dead because of his so-called wickedness. Right and wrong is an instinct: but an instinct of the whole consciousness in a man, bodily, mental, spiritual at once. And only in the novel are all things given full play, or at least, they may be given full play, when we realize that life itself, and not inert safety, is the reason for living. For out of the full play of all things emerges the only thing that is anything, the wholeness of a man, the wholeness of a woman, man alive, and live woman.

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Guest Essay

What We Lose if We Let Putin Win

A man holds a glowing red flare in the air at night.

By Dan Coats

Mr. Coats, a former senator from Indiana, served as the director of national intelligence from 2017 to 2019.

After Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, a rare consensus formed in Washington around the conviction that America must provide military support to Ukraine’s resistance. Three administrations and large majorities of both parties in Congress have consistently held that President Vladimir Putin’s aggression cannot be tolerated. When has such deep solidarity last occurred on any difficult subject?

Now members of Congress are arguing that we must turn away from spending more money to help Ukraine, choosing instead to focus on our own needs, pursuing our own interests. This is a false choice.

The choices facing America are always based on the same foundation: what best serves our nation. The choice is not America first or something else first. America is always first. The real question, in this complicated and uncertain world, is what course of action will most likely serve our core national interests — security and economic prosperity.

Those interests are inextricably linked to the strength of our global alliances and the international system of law and cooperation in which American democracy survives and prospers. And the strength of those networks, in turn, depends on our role as a trusted ally and friend, on our credibility and — frankly — on our virtue.

In the 80 years that the Soviet Union or Russia has been our strategic competitor, we have spent an incalculable amount to defend ourselves. We have spent trillions of dollars on America’s nuclear defense alone, with primarily one other nuclear-armed state in mind.

Ukraine’s effort to defend itself against Mr. Putin’s advance has degraded Russia’s military more than anyone thought possible when the full invasion of Ukraine began just over two years ago. In blunt dollar terms, helping Ukraine in that defense is, by far, the least expensive way to weaken Russia’s military and discourage Russian aggression, thereby protecting ourselves and our allies.

The opposite is also true. If Mr. Putin succeeds, the high anxiety in Europe over his next steps will justifiably continue to grow — and expensive imperatives will follow. Anticipating the next possible phase of Mr. Putin’s campaign to reimpose the Russian hegemony of the Cold War era will force NATO to greatly increase its defense budget, plunging the world into an arms race like those leading up to the world wars. Those who do not see the link between European security and our own are not living in the real world.

This is a moment that is heavy with potential consequences for America’s role in the world, for our power to shape future events and for our ability to live securely within our borders. It is by no means certain that the pending aid package for Ukraine passed by the Senate will even come to a vote in the House and, if it does, what its prospects will be. What happens next will determine whether our potential adversaries will be encouraged in their aggressive designs or intimidated by our collective resolve to resist them. It will determine whether our friends and allies will be strengthened by our determination or frightened by the collapse of American will.

The potential consequences of failing to help Ukraine resist Russia’s raw territorial aggression are not limited to Europe. China is watching closely to see how firmly America supports, or doesn't support, its friends these days. Our allies are watching, too, including Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. All three are nervous about China’s regional ambitions — and dependent on America as a security partner.

This is the context in which the Ukraine aid package that is before the House must be assessed. This isn’t about the money. It is about American steadfastness, something that is now in question because of another partisan contest. Ukraine and the tens of millions of people living there have become pawns for political maneuvering in Washington.

And while these maneuvers are not new to me or to the American public these days, usually the stakes are not so high. Our failure to help Ukraine resist, our complicity in allowing naked territorial aggression to succeed, our undermining of NATO security, our tacit encouragement for China to follow Russia’s lead and, most of all, our abandonment of people of courage and hope and who love America would, together, be a colossal strategic blunder.

This is not the time for political games. It is time for America to do what we all know is right.

Dan Coats was the director of national intelligence from 2017 to 2019, after serving Indiana in the U.S. Senate from 1989 to 1999 and from 2011 to 2017. He was also the American ambassador to Germany from 2001 to 2005. He is a senior policy adviser at the King & Spalding law firm.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Author Interviews

Death doula says life is more meaningful if you 'get real' about the end.

Tonya Mosley

In Alua Arthur's 2023 TED Talk , she said her ideal death would happen at sunset. Yeofi Andoh/HarperCollins hide caption

In Alua Arthur's 2023 TED Talk , she said her ideal death would happen at sunset.

As a death doula, Alua Arthur helps people to plan for the end of life and, when the time comes, to let go. She says that while we're conditioned to fear death, thinking and talking about it is instrumental to creating meaningful lives.

"When I'm thinking about my death, I'm thinking about my life very clearly: ... What I value, who I care about, how I'm spending my time," Arthur says. "And all these things allow us to reach the end of our lives gracefully, so that we can die without the fear and the concerns and the worries that many people carry."

Before becoming a death doula, Arthur worked as attorney — a job she hated. Unhappy and depressed, she took a trip to Cuba where she met a fellow traveler who had terminal uterine cancer. Talking to the woman about death, Arthur realized she needed to make a change.

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"Up until then, I was just kind of waiting for my life to write itself without taking any action to make it so," she says. "Thinking about my mortality, about my death, really created action."

Arthur went on to found Going with Grace , an organization that supports people as they plan for the end of their lives. She says a big part of her work is helping people deal with regret as they reconcile the lives they lived with the lives they might have wanted.

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"When folks are grappling with the choices that they've made, my role is to be there with them," she says. "Sometimes the greatest gift that we can offer is grace. ... Part of the reason why I named the business 'Going with Grace' is because of the grace that needs to be present at the end of life, for people to be able to let go of it."

Arthur's new book is Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End .

Interview highlights

On the death of her brother in law, Peter, in 2013

It was the first time I was really faced with this reality that the people that we love might not be here for much longer. It felt really isolating. I knew intellectually that there were a lot of other people that were ill and getting close to ... the end of their lives, but it felt like we were the only ones that felt like we were on this little cancer planet by ourselves, where somebody we loved will soon be dying. And there wasn't some one person that I could turn to to say, "Help! Just help. I'm lost here," or "Today's really hard," or "How do we navigate this?" Or "What do we do with all these medications?" "Where can we find smaller sized hospital gowns that will arrive, like in the next days?" (Because he was losing weight so rapidly) We just needed some help and I mean, practically, but also just somebody to be there to listen, to rely upon, somebody that I could lean on as other people were leaning on me. ...

Many people have already served as death doulas for somebody in their family, and most of us will at some point. Which is why I think it's so important that we all have a functional death literacy, because we live in community. We die in community. At some point, a member of that community is going to need the support. So many of us are going to do it and already have. That's how I learned how to do it is through Peter. I took courses afterwards, but that was the initial spark, the initial practical application of the work itself.

On facing grief

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The thing about grief is whether or not you want to face it, it's going to find its way through. Either we don't acknowledge it emotionally, and it manifests itself in work, or our relationships, or addiction or some other traumatic event, or it shows up in our bodies as illness. But grief is present. Grief lives in the body and it must be accessed at some point. It will force its way. I think that since we push so many of our sad or difficult emotions away, we don't allow space for grief because it is difficult. But I don't yet know anybody who has died from grieving. It's hard, and yet there is always another day, provided we choose the next day.

On the importance of talking to your medical proxy

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The first thing I encourage people to do is to think about the person who will make the decisions for them in the event that they can't. That is a health care proxy or a medical power of attorney, or just somebody whose job it is to make your decisions. Somebody who would make decisions the way that you would. Not the way that they would, not the things that they want for you, but rather what you would want for yourself. And to begin communicating those desires to your health care proxy, because the communication of that desire is going to open up a beautiful, rich conversation about what you want with your life, how you want your life to eventually end, if that is the way that it's going, and then get you started on the path toward planning for it.

On how not talking about death openly leads to fear and anxiety

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I think a lot of the old way of thinking is largely responsible for the death phobia that we currently experience in today's culture and society ... where we pretend it's not happening, where bodies are whisked away to funeral homes just moments after the death has occurred. We don't take time with the body. We don't take time to talk about death. We pretend it's not happening until it's too late. That death phobia has caused a real crisis, I think, in this country and in the West overall, where we are living out of relationship with nature and with our mortality, which is ultimately a detriment to us as a culture, but also to us as individuals.

On helping people who are at their worst

People are most human when they are dying. They are at their fullest. That means their best and their worst. I think as people are approaching the end, they are grieving as well. They are grieving their own death. They are grieving all the things that they're going to leave. I think we often forget that when somebody in our lives is dying, we are losing them, but they are losing everything and everyone and leaving the only place that they've known consciously. And so that brings about a lot of emotion, and some of it is anger and frustration. And sometimes disease causes personality changes. Sometimes there is some vitriol and sometimes it's just really not pretty. ... If we can be present for their experience, which often is rooted in fear, then I think it allows us to not take it so personally and to give them some grace for what it is that they are experiencing.

On advice for caregivers

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Give yourself plenty of grace. You, I'm sure, are doing amazing because this is really, really hard. ... I wish somebody had said that to me at various points. ... Next, I'd also encourage that people try to take a minute to check in with their bodies and take care of their bodies' needs. Make sure that you're eating to the best that you can ... find pockets of rest where you can. To the extent that you can, speak your needs and let somebody else support you in it. If you have a need, no matter how small it might be, speak it and open the space for somebody to support you in it. And I'd also say reach out for some support if you can, not only to a friend ... but there are plenty of doulas that are willing to support their community members at a free or reduced cost, maybe even a sliding scale. Reach out. There are plenty of resources that are available, but most importantly, if you hear nothing else, please just give yourself some grace for the process. It's tough.

On advice for the moment you sit with a loved one during their death

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Do your best to stay present. Do your best to stay in your body. It can be so confronting that the desire, the urge to disassociate or to distract is huge. And yet, if there's somebody that you loved and cared for, if you could hold thoughts of love and care and honor and gratitude for their lives, that's a really beautiful way to be during that time. And also, as always, give yourself plenty of grace for however it is that you're approaching it. If there is somebody in the room that is having a bigger emotional reaction, ask for their consent before touching or interrupting it or being with it in any way. And not everybody who is crying wants the tears to stop, or needs a tissue to plug them up, or wants a hug. Maybe they want to stay present in their bodies without the imposition as well. ... It's utterly profound. Getting to witness the doorway to existence is a gift and a privilege and a huge honor. And so hopefully we can continue to treat it as such.

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Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.

Doctors are pushing Hollywood for more realistic depictions of death and dying on TV

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Analysis of D. H. Lawrence's Novels
In his essay "Why the Novel Matters," he celebrates the novelist's advantage over the saint, the scientist, and the philosopher, all of whom deal only with parts of the composite being of humankind. The novelist alone, says Lawrence, is capable of rendering the whole of "man alive." He alone, by so doing, "can make the whole man ...
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Why the Novel Matters. D.H. Lawrence 1885-1930. D.H. Lawrence was born in a coal-mining town. He was the son of an uneducated miner and an ambitious mother who was a teacher. His wife was German, and the couple lived, at various times, in Italy, Germany, Australia, Tahiti and Mexico. Lawrence's writings reflect a revolt against puritanism ...
Why the Novel Matters
Why the Novel Matters. by D.H. Lawrence. WE have curious ideas of ourselves. We think of ourselves as a body with a spirit in it, or a body with a soul in it, or a body with a mind in it. Mens sana in corpore sano. The years drink up the wine, and at last throw the bottle away, the body, of course, being the bottle. It is a funny sort of ...
D. H Lawrence's Why the Novel Matters Analysis
Change is an important aspect of life. It is this change which. makes our life interesting and live. And hence, for him, the novel matters much. Lawrence describes the importance of the novel in our life. He believes in the. principle of 'sound mind in sound body'. He says that both the mind and the body are.
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That why it "matters." Out of the recent novels sent me for this review, I have chosen six that, to my mind, "matter." First, because they attend to the "business". of creating dense, non-abstract experience for readers to endure; and, in their different ways, show something complex and usable about people's efforts to endure.
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title, "Why the Novel Matters," came initially from a famous 1920s essay by D.H. Lawrence in which the novel figures as "the one bright book of life." In Spring 1985 the journal launched a new series under Lawrence's rubric, "Why the Novel Matters," beginning with an MLA Colloquium (December 1984)
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1 Early on in his 1925 essay "The Novel" Lawrence wrote: "The novel is the highest form of human expression so far attained. Why? Because it is so incapable of the absolute." (STH 179) That essay was one of a number of essays written in the 1920s about the function of the novel.This essay will examine Lawrence's evolving views about the relative and the absolute in the novel ...
Why the Novel Matters: Unveiling Its Impact on Culture and Empathy
In exploring 'Why the Novel Matters,' you'll discover the depths of a philosopher's reasoning and grasp the essay's enduring influence in the literary world. The Philosopher's Perspective. A renowned novelist, D.H. Lawrence saw novels as crucial in exploring the human condition.
Chapter 1
In the famous schoolroom scene that opens Charles Dickens's Hard Times (1854), the pedantic Mr. Gradgrind asks the novel's heroine to define a horse. Although she has spent her life around circus ponies, Sissy Jupe is struck dumb. Her horrible classmate Bitzer supplies the answer: "Quadruped. Gramnivorous.
Why the Novel Matters Summary by D.H. Lawrence
In the end, Lawrence believes that a novel acts as a guiding post for a man alive. It mirrors the unpredictable nature of human life and the importance of change. It foreshadows the changeability of human nature and beliefs. It never postulates absolute right or wrong and knows that they can change with surroundings and circumstances.
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In the vast realm of literature, the novel stands as a beacon of exploration, a canvas of human emotions, and a mirror to society's intricacies. D.H. Lawrence, a literary luminary of the 20th century, extolled the novel's profound importance. In the vast realm of literature, the novel stands as a beacon of exploration, a canvas of human ...
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In his 1925 essay "Why the Novel Matters", the novel seems to be more living to him than life itself. "To be alive, to be man alive, to be whole man alive: that is the point. And at its best, the novel, and the novel supremely, can help you. It can help you not to be dead man in life.".
PDF Critical examination of D. H. Lawrence's "Why the Novel Matters"
D. H. Lawrence's critical essay 'Why the novel matters' was published in the collection titled Phoenix in the year 1936. In this essay Lawrence speaks about the importance of the novel and tries to establish the superiority of the novelist above other professions. In an attempt to illustrate the importance of the novel Lawrence explains the
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Books. Why the Novel Matters: A Postmodern Perplex. Mark Spilka. Indiana University Press, Aug 22, 1990 - Literary Criticism - 388 pages. " [T]his collection is interesting and timely, and the attempt of many of the essays to re-establish what their authors usually call a humanistic criticism is a welcome and useful provocation."
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Our recent "Why the Novel Matters" contest brought home to us how amazing you all are. So to celebrate, we thought today we would post the winning essay, Vila Ginge. rich's Taking Flight. Here it is: The novel has always mattered to me. As a child, I climbed the Swiss Alps with Heidi and discovered England in The Secret Garden.
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Why the novel matters Summarize the views of D. H. Lawrence in his essay
Download PDF. Ans, 'Why the novel matters' is an essay, written by D. H. Lawrence, a Leading novelist during the Modern period in the English language and literature. In this essay, the writer has presented his great thoughts and Ideas about the novels. It is a presentation of inner thoughts and understanding of Lawrence.
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In the essay "Why the Novel Matters", Lawrence explores in his own way the Romantic concept of the relativity of parts and wholes to construct a doctrinal statement celebrating the novel over other fields of thought. Unlike philosophy, science, and religion, which only address "part" of us, he says, the novel reaches us "whole hog".
Why The Novel Matters| D.H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence's critical essay 'Why the novel matters' was published in the collection titled Phoenix in the year 1936. In this essay Lawrence speaks about the importance of the novel and tries to establish the superiority of the novelist above other professions. In an attempt to illustrate the importance of the novel Lawrence explains ...
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44 ratings3 reviews. Why the Novel Matters is an essay written by D.H. Lawrence. It was included in the essay collection Phoenix, published posthumously in 1936. Genres PhilosophyNonfiction. 10 pages.
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In the essay "Why the Novel Matters , Lawrence explores in his own way the Romantic concept of the relativity of parts and wholes to construct a doctrinal statement celebrating the novel over other fields of thought. Unlike philosophy, science, and religion, which only address "part of us, he says, the novel reaches us "whole hog . ...
NCERT Solutions for Class 12 English Elective Book: Kaleidoscope Non
The chapter "Why the Novel Matters" is an essay written by the famous writer D.H. Lawrence. He emphasises the importance of fiction in his article and consciously tries to put novelists above all other professions. Lawrence believes that a novelist is a person who can create characters and express life through words, so the author feels the ...
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Why the Novel Matters by D.H. Lawrence. WE have curious ideas of ourselves. We think of ourselves as a body with a spirit in it, or a body with a soul in it, or a body with a mind in it. Mens sana in corpore sano. The years drink up the wine, and at last throw the bottle away, the body, of course, being the bottle.
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