Women's condition in D.H. Lawrence's shorter fiction : a study of representative narrative processes in selected texts

Abstract

The condition of women in D. H. Lawrence's fiction has often been examined from a psycho-biographical viewpoint. Concentrating on the content of his writings some scholars have argued that Lawrence 'turned against women' after the war and that this change is reflected in his post-war fiction. This thesis shifts the focus to the form that shapes the contents of Lawrence's fictions: drawing from the works of narratologists, it closely examines a formally and thematically representative sample of Lawrence's post-war short fictions with a view to demonstrating that the allegation is inaccurate and textually unfounded. What these readings ultimately evince is that the failure to apprehend Lawrence's complex mode of representation in combination with subjectivized narrators has often led to a misapprehension of the political import of Lawrence's narratives. The texts examined have been thematically grouped around four common indictments against Lawrence: his advocacy of woman's submission to man, his exultation over the infliction of physical violence on women, his delectation in breaking female bonds, and his silencing of rebellious women characters. After a brief examination of the extant criticism on Lawrence's short story production on the one hand, and on Lawrence's relationship to feminism on the other, and an exposition of the theoretical premises informing this thesis, four chapters follow. Chapter one examines 'Hadrian' and 'Tickets, Please' in the light of institutionalized and subliminal modes of patriarchal domination of women; it particularly aims to illuminate Lawrence's technique of narrative organization. Chapter two focuses on the theme of rape in 'Samson and Delilah', 'The Princess', and 'None of That'; here the main emphasis is on the handling of point of view and narrative voice. Chapter three explores 'Mother and Daughter', 'The Lovely Lady' (Part I) and The Fox (Part II) in relation to the question of women's division by/in a male hegemonic order; Part I focuses on intertextuality, whereas Part II concentrates on narrative ambiguity, structural fragmentation and open-endedness. Chapter four analyses 'The Woman Who Rode Away' and St Mawr in the light of the possible alternatives to patriarchal capitalism which they represent respectively; the techniques examined here are more broad-ranging, ultimately seeking to articulate the essential and paradigmatic quality of these texts: their intrinsic "volubility". The concluding chapter summarizes findings and situates Lawrence's narrative techniques within a post-Jamesian context