David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930)

Only Connect ... New Directions D. H. Lawrence 1. Life Born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire in 1885. Eastwood was a coal mining town. His father was a miner and his mother belonged to a higher class. He became the centre of his mother’s emotional life after the death of his brother Ernest. This mother-son relationship is the key to the fiction he wrote. D.H. Lawrence. Only Connect ... New Directions

Only Connect ... New Directions D. H. Lawrence 1. Life In 1908 he started teaching but he gave up in 1911 because of a recurring battle with pneumonia. He eloped with Frieda von Richthofen. The couple married in 1914 after Frieda's divorce. The war years made him see the forces of modern civilization as purely destructive. Died of TB in 1930. D.H. Lawrence. Only Connect ... New Directions

Only Connect ... New Directions D. H. Lawrence 2. Main works The autobiographical novel Sons and Lovers (1913)  it records the emotional bond between the protagonist and his mother. The Rainbow (1915) and its sequel Women in Love (1916)  these novels were banned by the censors and published in 1921. Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)  acquitted on the charge of obscenity and published only in the 1960s. Only Connect ... New Directions

3. Lawrence’s view of life D. H. Lawrence 3. Lawrence’s view of life Man = a mixture of culture and biology, natural impulses and instinct. “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. Mind knowledge  can lead one to act wrongly. The sexual instinct  the strongest natural impulse; it can save humanity from self-destruction. Only Connect ... New Directions

4. Hatred of modern civilization D. H. Lawrence 4. Hatred of modern civilization Modern civilization  too intellectual and dehumanizing A new awareness of the self and admiration of Nature Seasons, natural objects, particularly flowers, symbolise the author’s awareness of the negative power of industrialisation and the chaotic city life. Only Connect ... New Directions

Only Connect ... New Directions D. H. Lawrence 5. Style Omniscient narrator Point of view is restricted  most of the events are seen through the protagonist’s eyes Poetic language in the natural descriptions  words and images appealing to the senses Only Connect ... New Directions

Only Connect ... New Directions D. H. Lawrence 6. Sons and Lovers: themes Love and marriage at the turn of the century. Romantic bondage  Paul is bound to his mother, he is unable to make up his mind between hate and love for all the women in his life, including his mother at times. The opposition of body and mind  exposes the contradictory nature of desire. Only Connect ... New Directions