What do you think the central themes are of Lawrence's work?

[Janine]

kelby lake, I love Sons and Lovers as well. I first tried to read it years ago and couldn't get into it for some dumb reason. I later picked it up knowing it was basically autobiographical (asside from Clara who is the composite of several women close to Lawrence). I loved the book and soaked up every word of it and later I read it again and got even more out of it. It's a fine novel with beautiful descriptions and such truth it knocks you over with it's stark realism, I think. The parts when the mother is dying I can totally relate to. It is both poignant and lovely throughout.

[kelby_lake]

I found this scene at the end of Chapter 8 one of the most powerful and intense moments I have ever read in a novel:

As he stooped to kiss his mother, she threw her
arms round his neck, hid her face on his shoulder, and cried,
in a whimpering voice, so unlike her own that he writhed in agony:

"I can't bear it. I could let another woman--but not her.
She'd leave me no room, not a bit of room---"

And immediately he hated Miriam bitterly.

"And I've never--you know, Paul--I've never had a husband--not really---"

He stroked his mother's hair, and his mouth was on her throat.

"And she exults so in taking you from me--she's not like
ordinary girls."

"Well, I don't love her, mother," he murmured, bowing his head
and hiding his eyes on her shoulder in misery. His mother kissed
him a long, fervent kiss.

"My boy!" she said, in a voice trembling with passionate love.

Without knowing, he gently stroked her face.

"There," said his mother, "now go to bed. You'll be so tired
in the morning." As she was speaking she heard her husband coming.
"There's your father--now go." Suddenly she looked at him almost
as if in fear. "Perhaps I'm selfish. If you want her, take her,
my boy."

His mother looked so strange, Paul kissed her, trembling.

"Ha--mother!" he said softly.

It's the start of that suffocating struggle Paul has with his mother. He loves her because she's his mother and she doesn't have anyone else but Paul knows that he cannot have a real relationship with his woman whilst his mother still has that hold on him.

There's also a parallel with the closet scene in Hamlet. Both Hamlet and Paul are bargaining with their mother (both of whom are called Gertrude); both of them simultaneously find their mother pitiful and yet need her love; both of them ask her not to go to bed with her brutish/cruel husband.

[osho]

I have read several books of Lawrence and of them sons and lovers, women in love were masterpieces that never ceased touching me. Despite all kinds of trashes leveled against him, he was masterful when it comes to fictionalizing his imagination. He is one of the best writers in English and I cannot think his nonexistence

He sounds Freudian, so what? He is, or any writer must be at liberty to say something he wants to say and we must not stop him from saying anything and any one critiquing him disapprovingly is doing injustice not only to him but to us also

[Janine]

kelby lake, that is beautifully expressed and I fully agree with you. I loved that passage as well. What great insight Lawrence had into human beings, especially women. Just the hint of the father coming shows the fear of the mother in this abusive relationship. The way she manipulates Paul concerning Miriam is also so brilliantly executed here and you can see what hold she had over her son, even in an offhand way with her last statement to 'have her if you really want her'. Sad.

I have read several books of Lawrence and of them sons and lovers, women in love were masterpieces that never ceased touching me. Despite all kinds of trashes leveled against him, he was masterful when it comes to fictionalizing his imagination. He is one of the best writers in English and I cannot think his nonexistence

He sounds Freudian, so what? He is, or any writer must be at liberty to say something he wants to say and we must not stop him from saying anything and any one critiquing him disapprovingly is doing injustice not only to him but to us also

Osho, I like the way you think. I agree totally but some of his work was based on truth so it's not all fictionalized. Everyone thinks of "Lady Chatterly's Lover" as so racey but come on now - in this day and age it is mild in the sexual aspects, which do not comprise most of the book. I love the book and have read it several times and several versions.

You are right - all authors back then were influenced by Freud and Jung as well. Lawrence had a lot of injustice leveled against him and it is sad. He was unique and so under-appreciated in his day. Thank God today that is not entirely the case. He has emerged in a new way and influenced people everywhere who now realise his genius and honesty.

I have read several books of Lawrence and of them sons and lovers, women in love were masterpieces that never ceased touching me. Despite all kinds of trashes leveled against him, he was masterful when it comes to fictionalizing his imagination. He is one of the best writers in English and I cannot think his nonexistence

He sounds Freudian, so what? He is, or any writer must be at liberty to say something he wants to say and we must not stop him from saying anything and any one critiquing him disapprovingly is doing injustice not only to him but to us also

I really love your reference to Hamlet. I hadn't quite thought of that but it's very true. Interesting.

[Darcy88]

I think Lady Chatterly's Lover is the opposite of porn. Porn cheapens sex, it degrades the act, sucking from it all its meaning and significance. In LCL on the other hand, sex is exalted, given a transcendent quality, and is used by the characters to reconnect themselves to the vital pulse of life. Sexless Connie is like a ghost, she`s emaciated, depressed. Sensuality restores her like a transfusion of blood.

And Lawrence did practically worship the phallus. His letters state this plainly. Decrying abstraction, the man prized life, intense, authentic, abundant life. Virility. Vigor. Vivaciousness. And above all - passion. Impotence, in a wider sense, was his evil.

He said: "My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true."

"Ours is an excessively conscious age. We know so much, we feel so little."

"For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive."

And then this, which reads so beautifullly to me -

"There is only one thing that a man really wants to do, all his life; and that is, to find his way to his God, his Morning Star, salute his fellow man, and enjoy the woman who has come the long way with him."

Anyway. Lawrence is awesome!

[Janine]

I think Lady Chatterly's Lover is the opposite of porn. Porn cheapens sex, it degrades the act, sucking from it all its meaning and significance. In LCL on the other hand, sex is exalted, given a transcendent quality, and is used by the characters to reconnect themselves to the vital pulse of life. Sexless Connie is like a ghost, she`s emaciated, depressed. Sensuality restores her like a transfusion of blood.

And Lawrence did practically worship the phallus. His letters state this plainly. Decrying abstraction, the man prized life, intense, authentic, abundant life. Virility. Vigor. Vivaciousness. And above all - passion. Impotence, in a wider sense, was his evil.

He said: "My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true."

"Ours is an excessively conscious age. We know so much, we feel so little."

"For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive."

And then this, which reads so beautifullly to me -

"There is only one thing that a man really wants to do, all his life; and that is, to find his way to his God, his Morning Star, salute his fellow man, and enjoy the woman who has come the long way with him."

Anyway. Lawrence is awesome!

I applaud your post, Darcy! I am in total agreement. I love the way you have stated all of this -such truth. I see Lawrence in exactly the same light. He was opposite to 'pornographic' and 'abhored' the word and the conotations. He loved life. He loved 'feeling' and his work reflects that so intensely. He was sensuous, not sensational. He is simply Lawrence and Lawrence is truly 'awesome'. What a great quote:

"We know so much, we feel so little."
Especially today in all aspects of modern fast-paced life, that is so true.

[Des Essientes]

Lawrence's Nietzscheanism may not be as evident in Lady Chatterly's Lover nor in Sons And Lovers but in his novella's St Mawr and The Man Who Died it is undeniable. So too in The Plumed Serpent which is about a group of Mexican supermen and one Irish lady who set about overthrowing Christianity in Mexico along with the Mexican government. Lawrence satirized and despised the false aristocrats to be found in England afer the First World War, but he surely believed in the Nietzschean philosophy extolling the benefits of true aristocrats having power and proper mates.

[kelby_lake]

I think Lady Chatterly's Lover is the opposite of porn.

Calls to mind this quote from Lady Chatterley's Lover:

"It's the one thing they won't let you be, straight and open in your sex. You can be as dirty as you like. In fact the more dirt you do on sex the better they like it. But if you believe in your own sex, and won't have it done dirt to: they'll down you. It's the one insane taboo left: sex as a natural and vital thing. They won't have it, and they'll kill you before they'll let you have it. You'll see, they'll hound that man down."

[kelby_lake]

kelby lake, that is beautifully expressed and I fully agree with you. I loved that passage as well. What great insight Lawrence had into human beings, especially women. Just the hint of the father coming shows the fear of the mother in this abusive relationship. The way she manipulates Paul concerning Miriam is also so brilliantly executed here and you can see what hold she had over her son, even in an offhand way with her last statement to 'have her if you really want her'. Sad.

Re-reading it years later, it still strikes me as being so direct. Lawrence gets to the heart and core of things. There's Gertude's manipulative and ambiguous dialogue: "I've never had a husband, Paul- not really". Does she want Paul to take a husband role? I'm not suggesting that they literally desire to engage in incest but there is a perverseness about their relationship, in that she wants him to be her man. This isn't simply a mother upset that her little boy is growing up- she wants him to devote himself to her even as a man.

[kelby_lake]

Sex actually played a very little role in his works -not as people thought in the early part of the century. By today's standards, Lawrence is mild. His books are more about relationships and the difference between the sexes or the struggle that insue. I agree also about Gerald's death. It stayed with me for a long time. I still think about it and the isolation he must have felt on the mountainside. It was very tragic and broke my heart, too. To be able to do that an author is brilliant and understanding people below the surface.

I think sex and sexuality play a big part in his works but not in the sense of there are lots of explicit sex scenes. What Lawrence does is he relates sex to his 'life instinct' (I don't know the exact term)- as a manifestation of the urge towards fertility and fulfilment.