D. H .

L AW R E N C E
English Literature Since Romanticism｜Spring 2024
D. H . L AW R E N C E

• Novelist, poet, painter

• Came from working class family
(miner father + genteel mother)
• Escaped mining through
education
• First worked as a teacher
• His novels were banned for
indecency
• Combines psychological
precision and poetic feeling
• Realism + symbolism 2
 THEMES

• Believed the dark forces of the inner self

should be in harmony with the rational
(not swamped by the rational) (611)
• Constantly at war with the constraints and
hypocrisies of civilization (Norton 611)
• Viewed marriage as a struggle (612)
• The restrictions of conventional middle-
class life vs. the liberating forces of people Sons and Lovers
outside middle-class (e.g. a peasant, a gypsy,
a worker, a primitive etc.) (612)
• Thought the English middle class as
alienated by the cerebral intellectual self Cover of the 1915
version of The Rainbow
(612)
L A DY C H AT T E R L E Y ’ S L OV E R

• Condemned as pornography and “the foulest book in English

literature”
• Printed in Italy in 1928 and distributed through private
subscription since American and British publishers couldn’t publish
the unexpurgated text
• Post offices held the mails containing the novels
• Police searched Lawrence’s friends’ houses and confiscated the
novels
• Five different pirated editions appeared in New York in 1928-1929
because there were only 1000 copies of the first edition of the
novel

4
L A DY C H AT T E R L E Y ’ S L OV E R

• After the publication of this novel, everything written by

Lawrence was considered pornographic
• Lawrence refused to make a “castrato public edition”
• Lawrence died before he published an edition cheaper than the
pirated edition
• Unexpurgated edition was not published legally until Penguin
won the case of obscenity trial in 1960

5

Clifford, Connie, Mrs. Bolton, and Oliver from the
2022 movie
THEMES
• Trauma of WWI
• Questioning modernity
• Upper class (chapter 1), middle class
(chapter 15), and working class
(Oliver’s Derby accent) (chapter 12)
• Mind vs. body
• Love vs. lust
• Marriage vs. extramarital affair
• Heir, illegitimate child, or no child
• Capitalism, industrialization,
socialism (chapters 15 and 19)
• Psychological and sexual awareness,
especially a lonely married woman’s
• Female empowerment and “freedom” 6
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. If you were Clifford, how would you deal with the fact that you cannot
give Connie what she wants (sex, a child etc.)? Why wouldn’t you divorce
Connie?
2. If you were Connie, how would you deal with an unhappy marriage with
Clifford? Would you have an affair with Oliver? Are there other ways to
get what you want?
3. If you were Oliver, would you have an affair with Connie? If so, how
would you provide for her and her unborn baby? Do you agree with
Oliver’s theory about living without spending in his letter that concludes
the novel?
4. Do you think soul (or mind or conversations) or body (sex or physical
attraction) is more important in a relationship? Why? 7
H O M E WO R K

T.S. Eliot
• “The Waste Land”
• “Tradition and the Individual
Talent”
• “The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock”
Quiz 4 covers weeks 12-14

Credit: Intellectual Takeout