Scarica David Herbert Lawrence e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! David Herbert Lawrence Lawrence was born in a mining village in Nottinghamshire. His father(Arthur)was a miner that attracted ,with his vitality,Lydia: a higher class woman(she was a teacher). The happiness of their marriage was short lived,in fact Arthur started to drink. Lawrence studied to escape from the mining environment, supported by his mother. He become a teacher and a writer: The white peacock is his first novel. After his brother’s death,Lawrence became the center of his mother emotional life. The death of his mother was crucial for him. Their mutual love is reported in an autobiographical novel: Sons and Lovers. Lawrence married a german woman,but the World War I put their marriage under stress. In this period he published The Rainbow and Women in love, that were banned by censors. Lawrence died in 1930. MAIN FEATURES OF LAWRENCE’S NOVELS Lawrence revolutionised the English novel through his view of life,the fight against the industrial civilisation and the analysis of realations between sexes. He was worried about emotional life,above all about emotions provoked by alienation. Lawrence considered man as a mixture of impulses and instincts. The sexual impulse is the strongest,so only a sexual and passion relationship between man and woman can save humanity from self- destruction. He conceived woman as an instrument of mankind’s happiness(his thought was in contrast with the new social role of woman). The female characters aren’t suffragettes but women that are aware of their partner supremacy. The narrator was omniscient,however we can find the point of view of characters. Lawrence portraits his characters through the technique “showing”and “telling”. Showing= description of action and reader have to understand what happens Telling= the narrator tells explicitly what happens Sons and Lovers Plot Sons and Lovers is an autobiographical novel and it talks about the Oedipus complex. It deals with Lawrence’s experience in a working class environment. In the opening chapter Mrs Morel, the wife of a coal miner, is expecting a child: Paul. Between quarrels and disputes, her marriage fails. The children are attached to their mother, and Paul is the favorite. The relationship between Paul and is mother reveals unsettling: he is unable to have a relationship with other women. Paul reject his first girlfriend Miriam; later he had an affair with Clara Dawes,that satisfied the sexual sphere, but leaves him without a complete relationship to challenge his love for his mother. After Mrs Morel’s death, Paul is torn between the wish of dying, to rejoin his mother,or living. In the end he decides to live and shaking off his past. Characters Paul’s father is a miner(narrowmindness) and his mother belongs to a higher social class. Mr Morel isn’t emotional linked with his family, in part because of the social differences: he alienates from his children and brings them closer to their mother; but also by his lack of education, that makes difficult express his feelings, and the rigid discipline of his work makes him violent.
