D H Lawrence

[WICKES]

I have just started reading Lawrence, but I really know very little about him, beyond the fact that he was born into a working class/ mining family in central England, that he was friends with Aldous Huxley and that he died quite young. He is a fascinating character and someone I'd like to really explore. I want to read 'The Rainbow', 'Women in Love' and then maybe 'The Plumed Serpent', plus his book on Freud/ the unconscious. He sort of reminds me of Blake: you know, an oddity and outsider with an urgent, almost fanatical need to express his views. I guess it is his philosophy/ world view, or whatever you want to call it, that I'd like to know about. From the little I've read he seemed to believe that western civilization was dying- that we'd lost touch with the body and with nature. So did he want to help western 'man' reconnect somehow? If so, how did he differ from the Romantics? And how did he want us to reconnect? Through sex? He also had a belief in something called 'blood consciousness' which I'd like to understand.

I'm reading Lady Chatterly atm and am quite surprised. Why the hell anyone ever wanted to ban this novel is beyond me. OK, some of the descriptions of the sexual act are pretty explicit, but the relationship itself is tender and loving. I found out yesterday that Lawrence even toyed with the idea of calling the novel 'Tenderness'. If it was a novel glorifying rape, or the abuse of children, I could understand.

[Paulclem]

It's easy to underestimate how out of touch those in charge are. It was published over 50 years ago; one of the prosecutors was ridiculed for saying:

The prosecution was ridiculed for being out of touch with changing social norms when the chief prosecutor, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, asked if it were the kind of book "you would wish your wife or servants to read".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Chatterley%27s_Lover

The prosecutor most probably grew up with Victorian sensibilities, even though it was 1960.

I read the book in my twenties, and was undewhelmed by its notoriety. One thing I read recently was how particular Lawrence was with his "empathy". He reduces Clifford Chatterley - the wheelchair bound husband of Connie - to a cypher for the disconnect between this deeper feeling Lawrence wrote around. His portrait is very unsympathetic given his predicament. I was going off Lawrence by the time I read this.

[Seasider]

Surprised you didn't mention"sons and Lovers" That gives plenty of information about Lawrence's eventual character.

[Gladys]

He reduces Clifford Chatterley - the wheelchair bound husband of Connie - to a cypher for the disconnect between this deeper feeling Lawrence wrote around. His portrait is very unsympathetic given his predicament.

And if the rather unlike-able Paul Morel in Sons and Lovers is akin to Lawrence himself, it is generous of the author to give us the benefit of this telling self-portrait.

[kelby_lake]

And if the rather unlike-able Paul Morel in Sons and Lovers is akin to Lawrence himself, it is generous of the author to give us the benefit of this telling self-portrait.

Paul's certainly not the most loveable of characters.

[ennison]

Lawrence is ok up to a point but he was sex mad. On that basis he should be ripe for revival in these times