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7.D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
Life
David Herbert Lawrence was born in a miner’s family in Nottinghamshire. His
father worked as a coal miner at nearby Brinsley colliery in the industrial
Midlands, supporting the family with a meager income. His mother was a
former schoolteacher. He was the fourth child born into the family. The
different background of Lawrence’s parents often led to family conflicts.
After the death of his brother, his mother placed all her hope on Lawrence.
In his early life, Lawrence was excessively attached to his mother and
despised his illiterate father as a member of the working class. He won a
scholarship to a good high school and later went to Nottingham University.
After graduating he became a teacher as his mother wished. In 1912, Lawrence
met and fell in love with Frieda Weekley who was the wife of Ernest Weekley,
a professor at Nottingham University. She left her husband and three
children, and eloped with Lawrence to Bavaria. They married shortly after
her divorce from Ernest Weekley in 1914. During the First World War Lawrence
and his wife were accused of spying for the Germans and expelled from
Cornwall in 1917. They traveled several countries such as Austria, Germany
and Italy, before returning back to England. D.H. Lawrence died in Vence,
France on March 2, 1930.
His first novel, The White Peacock published in
1910 started his writing career, though regarded as still immature. His
second novel, The Trespassers (1912) was a record of trivial love
affair. Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers appeared in 1913 and was based on
his early life experience. The Rainbow (1915) was about three pairs
of lovers’ love affaires, which was banned during his life time. One of
Lawrence's best known works is Lady Chatterly's Lover (1929), telling
the love affair between a wealthy, married woman, and a man who works on her
husband's estate. The fate of the novel was like the former banned in
England. Although his novels were regarded as notorious at that time,
Lawrence believed his novels were sincere and moral, though not in a
conventional sense. He wanted to make his attitude explicit in virtue of
sex: “the essentially religious or creative motive is the first motive for
all human activity”. By adopting a new relationship between man and woman,
he tried to find a way out for the decayed civilization by modern
industrialization. Lawrence's other novels from the 1920s include Women
In Love (1920), a sequel to The Rainbow. His other works are Aaron's
Rod (1922) and Kangaroo (1923), in which he showed his political
ideas under the influence of Nietzsche. The Plumed Serpent (1926) was
a vivid evocation of Mexico and its ancient Aztec religion. The Man Who
Died (1929), is a bold story of Christ's Resurrection. The Virgin and
the Gypsy (1930) was his last novel dealing with the rather same theme
of Lady Chatterly's Lover.
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