D. H. Lawrence Essay -- Biography Biographies Essays

It is a divided issue whether D. H. Lawrence is to be considered a friend or a foe to the feminist movement. On ace hand, he advocates an democratic man-woman relationship, on the other, his notion of equality seems rather subject to qualification. His reference to the specimen monogamous partnership as phallic marriage (Spilka 7) is certainly a cue that must be taken up. Why is marriage phallic unless the phallus is privileged in the expression of sexuality? (de Beauvoir 205) The idealisation of sex activity relationships leads to an essentialisation of gender, which is itself at the source of patriarchal domination. Is Lawrence really a liberator of sex, or further of patriarchal sex? Does he grant more independence to the women in his novels than his predecessors or just a little more freedom deep down the confines of established expectations? The answers to these will be that Lawrence is not a raving misogynist (as has been suggested), but is certainly a lon g way from absolutely enlightened. Rupert Birkin, the Lawrentian leading male of Women in revel, extols a philosophy of star-equilibrium in which the partners of a love relationship remain separate and individual, not blurred into one another, but together in knowledge of their difference. (WIL 230) Why not recant the other being free, why try to melt, or absorb, or melt? One might abandon oneself utterly to the moments, but not to each other being. (WIL 269) These moments are where one falls out of personal head ache and into the rhythm of the organic universe. Because of his belief in the life-force, he has generally been called a vitalist. But organicist would come much closer to the mark, since the goal of life, for Lawrence... ...over. London mandrake root Press, Ltd., 1996. _ _ _. Letters to Bertrand Russell. Ed. Harry T. Moore. New York Gotham Book Mart, 1948. _ _ _. Women in Love. Ware, Hertfordshire Wordsworth Editions, Ltd., 1996. Millett, Kate. Sexua l Politics. garden City, NY Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1970. Ross, Charles L. Women in Love a Novel of Mythic Realism. Boston Twayne Publishers, 1991. Spilka, Mark. The Love Ethic of D. H. Lawrence. Bloomington Indiana University Press, 1955. Tuma, Keith, ed. Anthology of Twentieth-Century British & Irish Poetry. New York Oxford University Press, 2001. 11 The ordinary Englishman of the meliorate class goes to a woman now to masterbate sic himself. Because he is not sack for discovery or new connection or progression, but totally to repeat upon himself a known reaction. (Letters 33)