Relationships in his writing

[Dark Muse]

I have a while back read the book Rainbow and now I am nearly down with Sons and Lovers and I have noticed that D. H. Lawrence has a very unique way of portraying human relationships that play a very predominant role in both these books, and I was curious if anyone else has read him, or knows anything about his personal life that can offer insight in the way he conveys the way people treat each other and the human emotion within intimate relationships.

In his books he has a very strong sense of this sort of Love-hate, of a relationship being a struggle of push and pull, with very strong highs, and very strong lows, and little peace and harmony, or little down time. The chars are often either very passionate with each other, or very cruel to each other.

There is little sweetness or tenderness, but it is chaos and battle when two chars are intimate with each other in his books. Sometimes it feels like he is examining relationships from the outside in, that is he is taking the inner feelings a person might have but keep restrained and exposing them.

[Virgil]

You are quite right, Dark Muse, Lawrence protrays very intense relationships. In part it's because he believes at the heart of people are emotions not rationality, and so he captures the intensity of the moment. It is quite possible in a Lawrence novel to go from love on one chapter and hate in the next. Another part is that the character's psychic framework (lousy phrase but I can't think of anything better right now) are trying to adjust to each other. There is the sexual attraction that brings them to love, but in the act of living their lives there is the repelling away to form their independent being. Love absorbs and wants to merge the two into one (and we see this with Tom and Lydia in The Rainbow), but their independent egos repell to maintain their individuality (and we see this with Anna and Will and later with Ursula and Schrenbensky) . I hope that helps.

Dark Muse, if you are interested in D.H. Lawrence, we have quite a reading group going, and perhaps you can join us.

And welcome to lit net, by the way. Based on your readings, I think you will enjoy this place. Hope to see you around.