Individualism and Paradox in the Works of D. H. Lawrence :: Biography Biographies Essays

Individualism and Paradox in the Works of D. H. Lawrence When you read something by D. H. Lawrence, you often break up wondering the same thing does he hate people? Lawrence has a profound interest in us human beings, but its the fascination of a child picking at a scab that drives him, rather than a kind of scientific or spiritual quest for some mythical social truth. Some of Lawrences works--Insouciance, for example--question mankinds t blockencies directly what good is served by a world of white-haired ladies wasting quantify caring and sounding intelligent and cultured and talking ab pop out pretentious, mercenary issues?(2) But this work is blatant in its negative descriptions of people and their sort in society. At one point in Insouciance, the narrator--Lawrence--comes right out and pontificates for several paragraphs on the defects of modern society. But for me, it is the more subtle pieces that ensure greatest power. When Lawrence hints, insinuates, or implies his views, he is, in a way, letting us discover the kernel of truth, however upsetting or controversial. This process, utilized in Mercury, is of far greater interest than the almost direct missive from Lawrence apply in Insouciance, that flatly states his view of what living really is. For not nevertheless must we discover the meaning we must also decide whether our adaptation is really Lawrences intent--mayhap we have confused some inadvertent seepage of Lawrences force play venom with his intended meaning. It is a risk we will have to assimilate as we analyze works such as Mercury. quite of condemning society in Mercury, Lawrence actually tries to leave it, ascending to the filch of the Merkur, where he has a new vantage point on the world. He develops some of the same ideas as in Insouciance, but at the end of the work, Lawrence redeems society, or at least apologizes for it, adding new fire to our question. By the end we cannot, with certainty, tell whether Lawrence hates peo ple or not--and this reflects a sort of internal clamber for Lawrence. One could lessen the scope and dilute the importance of this topic by suggesting that the Sunday people Lawrence criticizes are not humanity as a whole but rather a specific group--perhaps the vacationing, upper-middle class Schlegels, perhaps the aspiring, pseudo-intellectual Leonard Basts of the lower middle class, who think culture lies in a construe walk through the woods.