Introduction

Abstract

This study interprets five fictional works by D. H. Lawrence through his fundamental notions about sexual identity and self-definition. In each essay my argument is based on an integrated analysis of Lawrence’s artistic technique and informing doctrine, with the underlying unity of his poetic intuition and philosophic thought always the prime concern. This organic methodology — an approach surely consistent with Lawrence’s claims as a visionary artist — also expresses two correlative preoccupations that are persistent sub-themes in my criticism: I am interested both in related patterns of feminist misreading of the fiction, and (in more secondary fashion) in several suggestive speculations by Norman Mailer on a recognizable dialectic of love, sex, and ego in Lawrence’s art. While my essays are arranged in the chronological order of Lawrence’s fiction, they are not offered as the interlocking links in a progressively developed thesis; rather, each essay functions as a contributing piece of evidence, employing similar methods of critical investigation and pointing towards a verdict that highlights the profundity of Lawrence’s achievement and the inadequacy of many recent commentaries by his most outspoken detractors.