Dissertation

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#003333" TEXT="#F7F7FF" background="12ad4c00dduajq.gif"> <div> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="0" WIDTH="95" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 46 ><NOBR><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="46" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="91" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></NOBR></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> <bR> <div> CONTENTS</div> <bR> <div> PART ONE</div> <div> PART TWO</div> <div> PART THREE</div> <div> PART FOUR</div> <div> PART FIVE</div> <div> Back to Top</div> <bR> <bR> <div> HOME PAGE</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#FFFBF0" TEXT="#080000"> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B> <A NAME="the_influence_of__unidentified_"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B><B>THE INFLUENCE OF `UNIDENTIFIED' CHARACTERS</B></div> <div> in</div> <div> <B>SONS AND LOVERS</B></div> <div> Author:  S. T. Hedges</div> <bR> <div> A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT</div> <div> FOR THE DEGREE OF</div> <div> BA HONOURS ENGLISH, 1999</div> <div> (Revised 2006)</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B> <A NAME="contents"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B><B>CONTENTS</B></div> <div> Abstract       </div> <div> Part One           The Argument                              </div> <div> Part Two           Reading Sons and Lovers in 1958               </div> <div> Part Three          Selections from Corpus of Literary Criticism      </div> <div> Part Four           A `Dual' Analysis                                  </div> <div> Part Five          Conclusion                                       </div> <div> Acknowledgements</div> <div> Bibliography</div> <bR> <div> <B>Abstract</B></div> <bR> <div> The primary hypothesis is that the continued inclusion of D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers in the English canon, and thereby the syllabuses of so many schools, colleges and universities today, is due mainly to Alfred Kuttner's observations two years after the novel's first publication in 1915, wherein he was first to point out the parallels to be drawn between this novel and the (then) relatively new Oedipal Complex theory of Sigmund Freud.  The hypothesis arises from a personal investigation into my own changed responses to the novel over a number of readings separated by many years.   </div> <div> Three important questions will be raised and discussed:  </div> <div> (1) As Freud's Oedipal theory was still controversial at the time of publication, why did Lawrence and his publishers ignore the opportunity to exploit this?  </div> <div> (2) The ambiguous tone and register of the novel, a synthesis of working class and middle class values, provokes the question of the intended audience or readership. Who is the target reader; the working-class general reader, or the middle-class intellectually informed reader? </div> <div> (3) Whichever class of reader Lawrence has in mind, it is the writer's belief that the novel's initial reception among male general readers would not have guaranteed the work's success. What can we deduce from this?  </div> <div> In Part One I present a detailed argument.  Part Two is devoted to the reasons for my own early (negative) responses.  In Part Three appears a selection of contemporary and later criticism from a corpus of accepted literary critics.  Part Four compares my early adverse readings against my current knowledge of the layers of meaning within a given text, and Part Five forms a summary and final conclusions.  </div> <bR> <bR> <div>  <A NAME="part_one"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A>PART ONE</div> <div> The Argument</div> <bR> <div> Immediately one hears the question: “What unidentified characters?  Surely there are no unidentified characters of importance in Sons and Lovers?”  and one hastens to reply, of course not.  Manifestly, the informed reader cannot deny that each of the main characters in the novel is 'rounded' and properly 'fleshed out'.  But even the manner one leaps to re-assure the reader of this begs the argument that follows. It is defensive.  But if one has read Sons and Lovers several times and can admit to not enjoying it at the first reading, is this a reason to be defensive?  Yes, because one is acutely aware that after eighty-six years of more or less continued popularity, this novel still ranks high on the required-reading list of many schools, colleges and universities. Yet I once numbered it among my most boring books.</div> <div> In approaching this novel a variety of readings are justified. Rick Rylance points out that one thinks of Gender Studies, the Bildüngsroman, the Künstlerroman [Rylance, 1996, pp.2-3], though one might also add the Industrial novel, Psychological, Autobiographical, Town and Country, and so on), but of all readings, the Freudian one remains the most prevalent.  Therefore I believe it is fair to ask if this could be the major factor contributing to the novel's continued support among the academic establishment.  </div> <div> My initial response was based on the 1913 edition, now sometimes referred to as `the Garnett edition'. However, having re-read this same edition several times over the past forty years, my admiration for the work has gradually increased until, now, I can agree with most critics that Sons and Lovers merits its place as a minor masterpiece and have come to realise that Lawrence was an artist with astonishing psychological acuity.  </div> <div> Curious to know why my opinion of the novel could alter so dramatically over time, I was forced to recall the insipid young man who first read it. I was twenty-three; it was 1958; I had been married only two years and was still childless. Today I am sixty-four, twice married, the father of four children (three surviving daughters and a son who died suddenly at the age of twenty-six), as well as the grandfather of two. </div> <div> What follows is the result of this personal enquiry and, as such, will be of little interest to those outside the field of literary criticism.  Even there it may possess only a certain curiosity value for those studying reader-response theories and the history of perception, though offered without my pretence to any thorough knowledge of literary critical theory.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> At the risk of sounding arrogant, in comparing my state of mind and morals in 1958 (i.e. my current stock of 'mental baggage', so to speak), with today's, I came to the conclusion that my reasons for disliking the novel initially had been sound enough. I say arrogance because one is fully aware that in academic circles that reading would have been called a misreading, or at best naïve, and therefore unsound. But surely, I reasoned, if my initial response bore integrity, was honest, and reflected my current state of mind, that response must surely have had some literary value?  This begs the question: Are literary responses valid simply because they are honest? </div> <div> Leaving that aside for the present, in this essay I hope to show that my improved skills in literary appreciation since 1958 clearly illustrates the effect of a lifetime's experience on a reader's evolving `acquired responses' to a given work.</div> <div> Let me remind the reader that, according to M. H. Abrams, Wolfgang Iser distinguishes between the "implied reader," who is established by the text itself as one who will respond in specific ways to the "response-inviting structures" of the text, and the "actual reader," whose responses are inevitably colored [sic] by his or her accumulated private experiences (Abrams, 1993, p.269).</div> <div> I take this to mean that an infinite number of interpretations can be applied to any text. But some critics will say that if a response is to be valid, a reading of many years ago must be justifiable not only to oneself, but to others also; which, for me, raises a further important question. </div> <div> If agreed, we must accept the corollary that, following the initial reading, all successive readings differ in relation to the amount, quality, and psychological effect of the individual's subsequent experience; which begs the question of whether or not the acquisition of experience invalidates our earlier impressions, condemning all previous readings to the status of `misreadings'. Astute readers will grasp the implications immediately, for isn't this tantamount to asserting that all literary criticism becomes invalid over time owing to the cumulative effect of experience?  One imagines academics and professional critics would baulk at this premise;  nevertheless, I believe it is a valid question.  </div> <div> It may be worthwhile to remind ourselves here that, according to Rick Rylance, </div> <div> '...one major change in criticism since Leavis has been an eagerness to see such issues in historical rather than individual or moral contexts' (Rylance, 1996, p.2).</div> <div> This could easily relate to part of what is attempted in Part Four; that is, to remember as much as possible about reactions to a first reading, then, taking account of the `historical context', validate them.  </div> <div> But in a recent interview with Dr. Michael Black, author of Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, (1992),  he made the following comment: </div> <div> `To be honest is not necessarily to be right.' </div> <div> And later, in a letter to me, he asserted that  </div> <div> `[A]ll readings are personal; they are not equally “valid” (unless “valid” has no meaning).'  </div> <div> I have to say that, on the face of it, he makes a good case, and we will need to return to this later.  But first let us ask two questions: </div> <div> (a) Why did Lawrence write this book? And </div> <div> (b) For whom was it written?  </div> <bR> <bR> <div> Writers are advised to keep a target audience in mind.  So who were the imaginary readers Lawrence hoped to enlighten with his embedded sub-text<FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#000066" FACE="Times New Roman Greek" > ¯</FONT>that same text which I apparently misread in 1958?  It is here that the parts played by the `unidentified characters' of Freud and Oedipus become a major issue. For the general male reader of 1913 (or 195<FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000066" FACE="Times New Roman" >8 for that matter), would certainly not have identified them.  </FONT></div> <div> And if the book's `response-inviting structures' are shown to have `failed' in the sense of not conveying the essence of the author's sexual and moral beliefs to the reader's benefit, as it did with me in 1958, is this not that a 'failure' on the part of the author?  </div> <div> More and more I began to feel this must be so.  It was then I realised that, without the support of academicians or, more specifically, the Oedipus element in the novel, the unthinkable was possible: negative sales returns might have consigned this masterpiece to the `out of print' category long ago. For it may never have survived if left to the average general male reader of the early part of this century, or readers like my younger self. With no knowledge of Freud's psycho-sexual theories, naïve male readers of 1913 might have found artistic depictions of ordinary domestic affairs and everyday sexual sensations, e.g. Paul's and Miriam's sexual frustration, rather uncompelling.  Instead of reading the book as an exposition on the consequences of sexual repression, a plea for new understanding between men and women in their physical relationships, such readers might easily have felt the novel comprised nothing more than the effusions of a romantic sentimentalist. In other words, at best, this type of reader might have thought it a pleasant enough way of passing time, but little else.  </div> <div> For like all great novels, Sons and Lovers does faithfully reproduces the human condition, an accepted essential ingredient of fiction since Aristotle. It is only the style and manner by which this is achieved that distinguishes the great novelist from the accomplished or mediocre.  On this score Sons and Lovers undoubtedly shows Lawrence to be, at the very least, a gifted writer.  And it may well be that he has written a great novel by virtue of the embedded Oedipal element, even though unaware of it at the time of writing. But in that case, is it not tantamount to accepting that great literature can be written by default?  If my argument is accepted - that Kuttner's observation first brought this element to the attention of the literati - it must leave in doubt the question of its being a great novel before that time.  </div> <div> However, I would contend that it is no longer possible for the average informed reader today to judge, by virtue of the widespread knowledge of the Oedipal Complex. One with this knowledge would find it impossible to escape the Freudian reading, because any knowledge of the complex inevitably interferes with our reader-response processes at a sub-conscious level, unlike the uninitiated of 1913.</div> <div> This feeling was reinforced when I discovered that Duckworths had made no attempt to capitalise on the parallels between Lawrence's manuscript and Freud's psychosexual theories, still controversial on the novel's publication in 1913). Yet publishers are notorious for recognising potential opportunities to gain free publicity. Some actually exploit topicality. So why did Duckworths not capitalise on this controversial issue?  Had they simply not made the connection?   </div> <div> I then discovered that, on publication, the novel failed to receive unqualified, universal acclaim from the major critics of the day.  In view of the novel's reputation among academics since then, I found this surprising. But as will be seen from examples given in the third part of this essay, the critics were mostly favourable without being over-generous, certainly not fulsome. All appeared to have reservations, none speaking of it as great fiction, let alone a masterpiece. Growing curiosity then led me to the discovery that William Heinemann, Lawrence's existing publisher, had rejected the work originally. Now Heinemann had already published Lawrence's first two novels, The White Peacock and The Trespasser, yet still saw fit to reject this latest novel partly on grounds of lack of unity, which some would describe as literary incompetence.  A damning indictment from so knowledgeable a person as Heinemann.  Publishers dealing with their young, aspiring authors are not likely to make critical observations of this nature without considerable forethought and deliberate intent. Yet upon reading the `final' draft of 'Paul Morel' in June 1912, (i.e., before Lawrence's later revisions and consultations with Frieda Weekley and the subsequent change of title), among other adverse comments in his letter of acknowledgement dated 1st July, Heinemann writes: </div> <div> 'I have read Paul Morel with a good deal of interest and, frankly, with a good deal of disappointment …</div> <div>      I feel that the book is unsatisfactory from several points of view; not only because it lacks unity, without which the reader's interest cannot be held…”  </div> <div> From this it seems clear that anyone less erudite than he would almost certainly have rejected the book also. In other words, the mass of ordinary general male readers.   </div> <div> Disregarding any assumption that Lawrence did not direct himself to such an audience, what would he, the ordinary male reader of 1913, have made of it?  Would he have found the characters 'rounded' because Lawrence provides all the necessary information and architecture necessary?  Or is the modern (informed) reader not in a position of advantage in being able to complete the process through inference, imagination, and speculation based on an elementary knowledge of psychology?  In order to discover if Lawrence intended his reader to participate through the imaginative use of experience, one needs to subject the text to this other reading, one which assumes no knowledge of Freud or his theories.    </div> <div> If the reader can imagine a mind ignorant of Freud's theories, do the characters still remain rounded? Do we relate to them?  Do they engage our sympathy? Does the story have a beginning, a middle and an end? Does it satisfy the expectations of the naïve mass of general readers buying and borrowing books in post-Edwardian England? Does unity permeate the whole in Heinemann's sense?  In other words, does the novel still succeed? The remainder of this essay hopes to show that these questions should at least be considered in the modern debate.</div> <div> However, since my first reading of <U>Sons and Lovers</U> was conditioned by the sum of my life experiences until then, I can only substantiate my main argument if I first acquaint the reader with a glimpse of the history that had conditioned me as a reader of novels in 1958. </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div>  <A NAME="part_two"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A>PART TWO</div> <div> Reading Sons and Lovers in 1958</div> <bR> <bR> <div> I was born in 1934, five years before the outbreak of World War Two, the youngest of three sons.  In 1941 our father deserted us.  Totally unsupported, from then on we were raised by a courageous mother, whose elementary education had ceased at fourteen.  For the better part of the war we lived within a mile or so of the Royal Group of Docks in London's East End.  Between 1940 and 1944, three of our meagre homes were partially destroyed by bombing, and at such times Mother would enjoy short-term emergency relief. But without the state benefit system of today, women in her situation were more or less forced to fend for themselves.  Mostly she worked as a singer/barmaid.  Being handsome, she naturally attracted admirers and, as much from economic necessity as from a natural need to seek love and affection, she took advantage of her looks.  Some admirers were kind, some violent, some drunken, some drunken and violent.  To me, violence and brutality were an everyday part of life.  None of her relationships ever bore the remotest trace of spiritual or even romantic love.  At times her struggle seemed impossible, always on the verge of putting her family into voluntary care.  But, somehow, Mother held us together without once breaking down. <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000066" FACE="Times New Roman" > </FONT></div> <div> A prime target, London's docks sustained heavy bombing almost throughout the war.  However, in consequence of severe plane losses, after 1940 the Lüftwaffe resorted to night-raids almost exclusively, with consequent increased inaccuracy.  The area where we lived suffered badly, whole streets destroyed in a single raid, with schools frequently closed for emergency repair.   Always irregular, for several months education ceased altogether during 1944, when the V1 and V2 rockets began falling on London indiscriminately, destroying hundreds of square metres in a single strike. </div> <div> Nevertheless, with Germany defeated in May 1945, I sat the `Scholarship' in June and found myself selected for the local grammar school which, under the Education Act of 1944, was now free to those accepted.  </div> <div> Unfortunately, our continued poverty meant my giving up this privilege when, at Mother's request, I left school at the legal age of fifteen, a year before School Certificate examinations were to be taken.  And so, in 1949, without qualifications of any kind, I became office-boy to a firm of tea brokers in the City of London.  A year later, craving adventure, I left to join the Merchant Marine.  </div> <div> During a period of shore leave in 1952, I met the girl who was later to become my wife.  Consumed with infatuation, I abandoned the sea.  But on leaving the Merchant Marine, I automatically became eligible for National Service and, in June that year I began three years' service in the army.  After secretarial training, I then spent two years as secretary to the commandant of an officer cadet training establishment in Aldershot.   </div> <div> Here I was able to get home most weekends to see my fiancé, but-unremarkably for the times-our physical relationship remained virginal until we married a few months after my leaving the army.  With immense numbers of bombed houses still derelict in 1956, accommodation was desperately short and couples without children were not eligible to join council housing lists. (Even families with children might wait several years for `a place on the council'). We were forced to take rooms with my grandmother, then began saving for a house of our own.  Having little money to spare, I naturally made full use of the local library.  Fortunately, the charming, though seemingly austere, lady librarian (whom I later discovered had once been a `New Woman') took an interest in guiding me towards the English canon, still then dominated by Romantic and Victorian writers such as Scott, Wordsworth, Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson Hardy, et al..  One day my lady mentor urged me to read Sons and Lovers.   In her words, I was `mature enough'.  In truth, I was simply a general reader with little more than average intelligence.  </div> <div> Knowing little of Freud, only that he was connected with psychology -a subject about which I knew nothing- I had no pre-formed ideas about the book.  Of Sophocles or Oedipus I knew even less, only names among a numberless host of unidentifiable ancient Greeks.  (Ben Jonson might fairly have said I had 'scant Freud and less Sophocles').  However, when reading the book for the first time, I can -with due modesty- say that, at that time, I was probably better read than most of my family and friends.  Yet still I remember making a positive effort to complete that reading -notwithstanding a recognition that Paul Morel's background shared certain cultural parallels with my own.  But where were the great heroes and heroines?  Where were the great quests? What trials or dangers threatened the futures of these characters?  </div> <div> The first part was chillingly familiar, though Paul Morel's life was far less culturally or spiritually barren than my own experience.  (Today, of course, one would regard such a concrete response as a tribute to the author; i.e., his brilliant depiction of realism taken further than ever before).  However, the novel began to seem pointless; a negative tale set around ordinary working-class lives lived in fairly ordinary fashion; lives as dull, colourless and unfulfilled as my own, more or less.  Sadly, Lawrence seemed to offer no hope to other intelligent, working-class people.   Thus, it filled me with ennui, forcing a struggle to prevent his apparently inconsequential and unlovable characters deterring me from the importance of adding another of my mentor's recommended books to the list. </div> <div> Also, when I considered how I too had been a bright boy with artistic leanings from a working-class background -though, as can be seen, raised in even poorer conditions than he, and, moreover, witness to greater upheavals, drunkenness and violence (as well as suffering physical abuse by way of beatings), I remember feeling little sympathy for Paul Morel.  For my part, he was fortunate to have parents who remained married; and, moreover, hard-working, respectable, intelligent parents at that. To a man who spent his boyhood craving a father to brag about this was hard to understand, and it irritated me.  </div> <div> Apart from these personal considerations, the `classics' had led me to expect a growing degree of suspense from a novel, followed by a climactic denouement.  Here there was none.  At the end, everything just petered out; no plot worth recording.  Wanting no further painful reminders, even by the end of the first part I had lost interest in poetic descriptions of all that I wished to forget about my own poverty-stricken, sexually-frustrated adolescence.  Here, it may help the reader to remember that even the word 'sex' was taboo throughout my youth, while the subject itself was unmentionable in respectable mixed company -even between a good many married couples.  As an example, grandmothers and aunts were habitually at pains to remind my brothers and me that -despite our parents- we came from a decent, respectable working-class family.   From all this it can deduced that, for all my apparent experience of life, the merchant marine, the army, etc., I had gained little positive experience or understanding of sexuality and its associated emotions before marrying. </div> <div> And so I must confess to feeling somewhat betrayed and annoyed to find that, all those years before me, Paul Morel had had his way with Clara!  A woman to whom he was not even married!  Not only that, but he'd gone on to 'spoil' the innocent girl whose love and adulation for him remained faithful throughout his exasperating tantrums, his self-adulation, and his intolerable priggishness.  For it should be remembered that, before the `swinging sixties,' respectable girls followed a virtual vow of chastity imposed upon them by parents and family.  They were under no illusion: sexual intercourse before marriage was inexcusable.  The fear of unwanted pregnancies was very real; nor did girls in that situation expect sympathy from their parents and family.  Unless a marriage was arranged immediately, the girl was often forced to leave home in disgrace.  Therefore, if her partner proved tractable, a 'nice' girl preferred to reach the altar virgo intacta.   It was thus hard for me to understand why Paul Morel, raised by the same standards, should find this 'admirable' quality in Miriam so annoying.  Why blame her for his physical and emotional frustration?  What had it to do with her?  A 'good' girl could not behave otherwise than she did during the time of the story, and decent boys knew this perfectly well.  Yet still this Paul Morel showed no gratitude for his early sexual enlightenment, taken not only without subscription to society's expectations, but gained without making a personal commitment of any kind.  Moreover, at the end of the story he is still free to wander the far horizons.  A very poor example to other young men, I thought.  No, the aunts and grandmothers of my generation still called such men 'bounders' and 'cads'.  </div> <div> Not surprisingly, therefore, along with these finer feelings, I experienced another strong reaction.  Unlike the classic writers of the nineteenth-century, the author took no pains to avoid the subject of sexuality. For even if not described explicitly, sexual activity was erotically implied.  Though no more prudish than others of my generation I found this a little shocking.  No, a 'decent chap' could not recommend this book to females of his acquaintance.  Naturally, they'd be offended.   </div> <div> This leads naturally to considering the literary expectations of the general reader of 1913;  or, for that matter, 1958. </div> <div> Perhaps the book was too innovative for most readers, readers accustomed to the strict proprieties and plot complexities of nineteenth-century novels.  (For it could be argued that Sons and Lovers is rather thin in areas of action, dialogue, and plot).  Nor does it have a `tidy ending', as readers steeped in earlier fiction had come to expect.  Here we have a `modern' ending, an early example of `Modernism', a tale unresolved by the teller, a denouement which mimics life itself, the future unknown.  The novel may well have lacked unity for readers unaccustomed to this type of ending, feeling dissatisfied, the story `unfinished'.  </div> <div> Being thoroughly familiar with the conventions, Lawrence certainly knew precisely what readers expected.  and his tale starts conventionally enough:  an omniscient narrator sketches in the history of Bestwood, provides good spatial descriptions of setting and background followed by a gradual filling-out and establishment of the Morel family.  In other words, all the essential detail anticipated by the general reader of the time.  Nothing radical here, nothing extraordinary, no `gaps' for the reader to fill.  All that comes later.  But later, I suggest, the reader either recognises and locks into the underlying psychological tensions building within the various relationships, or becomes more and more disinterested.  Undoubtedly, (as I did myself in 1958), the sensitive mind would still appreciate the finest sections of lyrical prose -those passages which might qualify as prose poems in themselves.  One thinks, for example, of the episode when, soon after Paul is born, Gertrude, still maddened by Walter's coarse manner in front of Mr Heaton, takes the baby in her arms for a self-consoling walk in the early evening:</div> <div> She went over the sheep-bridge and across a corner of the meadow to the cricket ground. The meadows seemed one space of ripe, evening light, whispering with the distant mill race. She sat on a seat under the alders… and fronted the evening.  Before her, level and solid, spread the big green cricket-field, like the bed of a sea of light.  Children played in the bluish shade of the pavilion.  Many rooks, high up, came cawing home across the softly woven sky.  They stooped in a long curve down into the golden glow, concentrating, cawing, wheeling like black flakes on a slow vor¬tex, over a tree clump that made a dark boss among the pasture (Lawrence, 1994, p.37).   </div> <div> This is fine writing; as fine as any lyrical passage of Thomas Hardy. But beautiful though it is, such passages do not sustain the reader's interest by themselves; not throughout a novel.  For that, one looks for action and incident, dilemmas, ironies and suspense portrayed through the forward movement of the plot, success and failure of main characters. </div> <div> Another notable feature of this novel is the way Lawrence treats the theme of love. Most readers are conditioned to seek reassurance that love is a blessed state `devoutly to be wished', and not something allied to the worst of human suffering.  But in this story love and hatred are enigmatic conditions, always in flux, never pure or singular but co-existing. Seldom is either condition mentioned without relation to the other, i.e. love = suffering.  (Indeed, so obsessed is Lawrence by this concept that he carries it over into his next book, The Rainbow).  And the naïve reader of 1913 or 1958 would not be alone in finding this repetitive motif invasive and monotonous. After making a similar connection, Lascelles Abercrombie (writing in `The Manchester Guardian', 2 July 1913), observed, </div> <div> 'The constant juxtaposition of love and hatred looks like an obsession; and, like all obsessions, soon becomes tiresome….  “Odi et amo” does marvellous well in an epigram; in a novel of four hundred odd pages it is a bore.' (Lawrence, 1994, p. 447).</div> <bR> <bR> <div> Let us now move briefly to the Oedipal dimension. In his essay on `Lawrence and His Critics' contained in the primary text used here, the editor, MacDonald Daly, tells us that </div> <div> '[t]he second half of Abercrombie's review, however, as if precisely to embody the contrary passions which it identifies, praises Lawrence's novel highly.  It is one of the most intellectually poised of the early responses, and, in its recognition of the “well-known psychological fact” [of this love/hate relationship] which the novel dramatises, it anticipated much later criticism (p.447).'  </div> <div> MacDonald Daly may here be referring to the Freudian connection first observed by Alfred Booth Kuttner, for he writes later that </div> <div> `Kuttner was the first critic to relate Sons and Lovers to a body of theoretical knowledge, in a review of the novel in the New Republic of April 1915' (p.450).  </div> <div> However, recognising that any hypotheses can only be substantiated through the text itself, the fourth part of this dissertation will concentrate exclusively on selected passages; selections which I feel the semi-literate general reader of 1913 or 1958 might have found difficulty agreeing with the critics.  I hope to illustrate this by way of a `dual' reading: i.e. comparing my past and current responses to the novel.  In this I hope to justify - or at least explain - the response of the `naïve' reader such as myself in 1958.  But before that, in Part Three, it will be helpful to remind ourselves of some important observations already established in literary circles.   </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div>  <A NAME="part_three"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A>PART THREE</div> <div> Selections from the Corpus of</div> <div> Established Literary Criticism</div> <bR> <div> `Seen from the end of the century he did so much to unsettle, D. H. Lawrence does not add up.  He gives to the sexual act a weight it will not bear….   In his fiction and poetry too, he allowed himself to produce a great deal of bad work.  “Few celebrated writers,” Noel Annan has said, “even Wordsworth, have ever written worse…”' (Maddox, 1994, p.1). </div> <div> Not even the fiercest anti-Laurentian today could place Sons and Lovers amongst Lawrence's  worst writing.  At the very least it ranks with The Rainbow and Women in Love as among his greatest achievements.  Nevertheless, however popular it may be today, it did attract an amount of adverse criticism before and after publication.  The views of William Heinemann I have already alluded to, but even Edward Garnett, Lawrence's friend and reader for Duckworth's, felt he could not present the MS to his editors until Lawrence was persuaded to undertake drastic revisions.  According to Helen and Carl Baron, (writing in the Cambridge Edition), while Lawrence and Frieda Weekley were abroad in 1912, Garnett cut around ten percent of Lawrence's final draft, some 2050 lines (Baron, 1992. p.ilix). We know too that Jessie Chambers was very unhappy with Lawrence's final draft.  However, her private view was unknown to the public for many years and must be considered outside the parameters of this essay.  </div> <div> However, returning to the professional critical reviews of the time we find a diversity ranging from mild enthusiasm to grudging praise through to high praise: i.e. neither outright condemnation nor unanimous acclaim. Later  I will remind the reader of some well-known pieces culled from various collections of discrete criticism, but first let me draw attention to F. R. Leavis, Lawrence's arch-interpreter, defender and apologist. </div> <div> In his definitive work, D. H. Lawrence: Novelist, Leavis devotes enormous attention to the two works he considers to be Lawrence's greatest achievements, The Rainbow and Women in Love, but gives Sons and Lovers an almost perfunctory dismissal on page 27:</div> <div> Remarkable as it is, its qualities and achievement, on the one hand, are obvious enough, and, on the other, they are not, I think, such as to suggest that the author was going to be a great novelist (Leavis, 1978, p.27). </div> <div> He is saying that Sons and Lovers was not written by a great novelist, but only a potentially great novelist.  I believe  adds strength to my argument that the novel was not destined to become admired by academics from the outset, but only after Kuttner's essay of 1915.  </div> <div> Let me next draw attention to a passage from sir Frank Kermode's brilliant appraisal of Lawrence. In his prologue there appears the following:</div> <div> Much has been said of the relationship between Sons and Lovers with Freud's Oedipal theme, and in the later stages of composition Lawrence had learned something about Freud from Frieda-his first contact with a thinker he would afterwards frequently attack [i.e. Freud, not Frieda]. Therefore the degree to which the personal relationships in the novel comply with Freud's account of mother-fixation is surely a tribute to the accuracy of Freud's generalisation rather than a proof of Lawrence's indebtedness (Kermode, 1979, p.20).     </div> <div> Without in any way detracting from Kermode's purpose in writing his book-a quite unambiguous celebration of Lawrence as an artist-I include this passage simply to add further weight to my assertion that it is academics who do, and have done, most to keep alive the Oedipal reading, thereby sustaining its inclusion in the English canon.    </div> <bR> <bR> <div> Turning to accepted anthologies before the later edition of 1996, edited by Rick Rylance, let me begin with the earlier Macmillan Casebook, D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers, (1969), edited by Gamini Salgado.  </div> <div> In his introduction, Salgado draws attention to the Freudian reading and owing to its relevance, I quote it at some length.  After agreeing its validity, Salgado goes on to advise caution in regarding this reading as the dominant interpretation:  </div> <div> Practised with the proper regard for the unity and texture of the novel itself, this kind of approach can yield insights that would not otherwise be easily obtained […] But there seem to be at least two dangers to which this sort of criticism is unusually susceptible. First, it often ignores the palpable surface of the novel, what is really there, in its eagerness to get at what is really there.  It smooths awkward details in its effort to cut the novel into the size and shape that fits the theory.  Secondly, it tends to use the theory as a criterion by which to judge the [novel's] value… (that is, the more the novel endorses the theory, the better it is)….  Sons and Lovers continues to invite this kind of critical approach rather more than most other novels… (Salgado, 1969, p.14).  </div> <div> I am particularly interested in his parenthesis: `… the more the novel endorses the theory, the better it is,' for it coincides with my own view.  </div> <div> Next we have two extracts from contemporary critics which  represent a certain level of criticism for the novel's narrative unity.  The first appeared in `Athenaeum', June 1913:     </div> <div> Mr Lawrence's new novel is a fine, but not altogether a well-made piece of work.  A certain distortion arises from the fact that, while all the other characters are drawn, as it were, in the third person, the hero is drawn in the first.  The pronoun `I' is not, indeed, employed for him, but the author has lived so completely within his creation that the narrative reads like an autobiography-and, as discerning readers know, autobiographies are less likely than biographies to produce a lifelike portrait.  We are not… left understanding the nature of the man… (`Athenaeum', 21 June 1913. Salgado, p.55).  </div> <div> This bears on my hypothesis that whichever class or type of reader Lawrence had in mind, he might easily have failed to reach them. In his deprecation of the autobiographical nature of the narrative, this anonymous critic-whom one can assume from his language, tone and register to be someone of the middle-classes-affirms this by implying that he is a `discerning reader' and therefore the character of Paul Morel is, for him, not sufficiently rounded or `lifelike'.  The implication is that for other `discerning readers' the novel might not meet their level of expectation.  Of course, if we apply some form of deconstructionist reading to his comments, he may be implying that Lawrence could not have had middle-class readers in mind, but that if he did, he should have been more circumspect in his mode of composition.  Paradoxically, and in fairness to Lawrence, he goes on to say that </div> <div> `we are held captive from the first page to the last, and certain figures will, we think, remain engraved upon the memory' (Salgado, p. 54) </div> <div> which seems to indicate a certain confusion, or ambivalence, with regard to Lawrence's ability, or failure, to draw rounded characters.  One is therefore left wondering if the piece warrants any merit; but it adds a certain piquancy to my argument, and so I leave the reader to judge. </div> <div> Conversely, `P. G.',  (writing in the `Bookman', August 1913), places Lawrence alongside Galsworthy and other famous contemporaries in having enriched the literature of today with work which is</div> <div> '...esoteric, claiming acknowledgement and understanding from a limited circle of readers rather than from that general public for whose accommodation the circulating libraries have their being...' (Salgado, p. 58).  </div> <div> Even allowing for this critic's arrogance, we are left in no doubt that the novel is placed unequivocally beyond the understanding of working-class readers.  One is always reluctant to treat such bigotry seriously, but on this occasion it does actually accord with my own experience of 1958, and so it seems fair to include it.      </div> <div> Included also, (pp. 69-94), is Kuttner's famous `Freudian' essay of 1916, in which he enlarges on his original Oedipus connection, and which Lawrence later repudiated thus: </div> <div> I hated the Psychoanalysis Review [sic] of Sons and Lovers. You know I think `complexes' are vicious half-statements of the Freudians:  sort of can't see wood for trees (Salgado, pp.26-27).  </div> <div> I take this as evidence that the contemporary psycho-sexual debate among intellectuals of the period almost certainly did not play a part in pre-launch discussions between publisher and author, and that Duckworth's were not alive to its possible implications for future sales;  thus further evidence that the Freudian element may later have come to override any adverse literary criticism in becoming the dominant factor in the novel's future popularity among academics.  </div> <bR> <bR> <div> Turning to the 1996 edition, in his Introduction Rick Rylance also dwells at length on aspects of the Freudian reading.  Indeed, the importance he attaches to this is attested by his inclusion in the collection of Freud's essay, `The Most Prevalent Form of Degradation in Erotic Life' (Rylance, 1996, pp. 28-39).  Of the Oedipus reading, Rick Rylance explains how a debate exists today regarding the validity of non-literary theories being applied to literary texts, how those favouring it are opposed by those who say that `literature does not need systematic meanings' (Rylance, 1996. p.7) owing to its unique ability to communicate on more than one level-its multi-layered dimension-concluding the paragraph with the following:</div> <div> In this sense, Sons and Lovers might be thought to put as many questions to Freud, as Freud's essay provides ways of `explaining' the novel (Rylance, p.7). </div> <div> Among the essays is another by Sir Frank Kermode, who reminds us that Lawrence was, in a sense, altering his MS as he went along, taking advantage of new experience as it presented. He writes:  </div> <div> There is in consequence an abundance, even a confusion, of life;  one cannot feel that the published version is the last possible rehandling of the tale; and this openness is not the consequence of inefficiency (Rylance, p.21).</div> <div> This reminds us that Lawrence was, after all, (astonishingly) still in his mid-twenties during the years of writing the novel (1910-1912), and at a particularly emotional and tempestuous period of his life.  We should contrast this with the conception of novelists who, while creatively engaged, exclude themselves from society (as well as the works of other authors), only returning to the mainstream of life between novels.  While writing this novel, Lawrence fell under the influence of at least four women; his mother, Jessie Chambers, Louie Burrows (a model for Clara Dawes, according to Jessie Chambers) and Frieda Weekley.  Self-evidently, he did not cocoon himself with past experience; that is, sitting down to write a pre-planned scenario with pre-formed ideas, but exposed himself to powerful new experiences, producing the novel during an organic process of emotional and mental development.  (One is tempted to examine the fictional aspect of this novel from this new dimensional standpoint, along the lines of a journal or record of current experience commingled with the past.  But that also lays outside the nub of this piece).  What does seem relevant is that the limited knowledge of Freud that Lawrence gained through knowing Frieda came too late to play any part in <U>Sons and Lovers</U>, for then we can understand why neither he nor his publisher took advantage of the public controversy.  </div> <div> I make no excuse for reminding the reader that part of my argument is to establish a reasonable case for maintaining that it was the (later) `Freudian' disclosures which have had most to do with the book's continued success and, by using selected episodes and applying to them a `dual' analysis to highlight changes in my perspective between early and late readings, in the next part I hope to show how this might be so and, for this, I will concentrate solely on the primary text.  </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div>  <A NAME="part_four"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A>PART FOUR</div> <div> The `Dual' Analysis</div> <bR> <div> As everyone has noticed, the first part of the novel [...] is written in the manner of Victorian realism:  the omniscient narrator, working with firm control, sets forth the facts objectively (Louis L. Marz in Bloom, 1988. p.48).</div> <div> Reading this today, one is almost ashamed to admit that, forty years ago, it was the first five chapters -leading to the death of William at the end of chapter six- which least impressed me.  Yet Louis Marz seems to be describing the kind of Victorian classic which was quite familiar to me.  But the ones I could remember enjoying, such as Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and so on, had all contained established well-developed plot lines before a third of the way in.  Or so it seemed to me.  As I recall, my disappointment of forty years ago stemmed precisely from the impression that Lawrence had failed to establish an acceptable, cohesive `plot' by the end of chapter five.  My will to continue had been sorely wounded long before reaching the `Rubicon' of chapter six.  For my part, Lawrence's attention to the minutia of a family's domestic life did not constitute a `plot'.  Where was all this leading, I kept asking. Was more of this simple, sentimental nostalgia all there was? </div> <div> This first section is generally held to be the stronger of the two, and ought to be if it is true that authors look to engage the reader's uncritical attention as early as possible;  i.e. persuade them to `suspend their disbelief', or `come on board', so to speak. Thus, at the beginning of my new, `comparative' reading, I felt it important to pay particular attention to this.  Why had I not been willing to `climb on board' in my earlier reading?  </div> <div> I would suggest that naïve readers like myself would have been unaware that, page by page, Lawrence was painstakingly preparing an elaborate frame on which to hang his masterpiece. Perhaps he asked too much. But it is here that he attempts to establish Paul Morel's emotional dependencies; where the bonds and links are being established by the artist. However, my own experience would indicate that some (naive?) readers are likely to become impatient with such elaborate attention to detail, always seeking further development of `the story', like the first two readers described by Forster.  As a reader, I fell into his first category, the one Forster respected and admired-ironically-the one who </div> <div> `is quite good-tempered and vague, and probably driving a motor-bus… paying no more attention to literature than it merits' (Forster, 1974. p.40). </div> <div> I can distinctly remember being irritated (even disturbed), in 1958 to read that the fourteen-year-old Paul allowed his mother to accompany him to his interview with Jordon's. You ask why, and my explanation is simple.  </div> <div> In August 1944, prompted by news of the indiscriminate rocket attacks on London already referred to, a previously unknown cousin of my father's, living in Stafford, wrote to my grandfather kindly offering a place of safety to any young boy of the family that Grandfather cared to nominate.  The writer added that the one chosen would have the company of his own six-year-old son.  Thus, as a boy of ten, armed with brown-paper parcel containing my belongings, plus a list of directions, I was despatched by bus, tube and train to the Midlands.  During wartime, passenger trains  were given low priority, frequently shunted off into sidings to allow essential munitions and troop trains to pass through; consequently, this journey took upwards of fifteen hours.  (As it happened, I shared the carriage with a jolly bunch of soldiers and sailors going home on leave and was given my first taste of brown ale).  However, four months later, after receiving a sad and homesick letter from me, Mother scraped my fare together, enabling me to make the return journey.  Needless to say, this too was accomplished alone.  I may also say that due to frequent changes of house and home, (mainly through poverty but also because of bombing), I attended ten different schools between the ages of five and eleven.  Only once did my mother come within sight of any of them, and that was my first school, on my first day, 4th September, 1939-the day after World War Two was declared.  On that day I remember being left at the gates with the words, `Be a good boy and do as you're told or you'll soon find out what the cane's all about.  And it's no good you come crying to me.'   Add to this that, much later, when I was much the same age as Paul Morel at the time of his interview, I was quite happy to travel alone into the City to attend my own first interview, when I gained employment as an office-boy wthout the least assistance from my mother, and perhaps the reader can understand that when Paul Morel was escorted to Nottingham, only some few miles from his home, walking into Jordon's accompanied by his mother, my respect for him received a heavy blow.  I never recovered from my early disappointment in the lad, and found myself seeking confirmation that Paul was not a `sissy'.  But Lawrence had lost me as a sympathetic reader by then.  </div> <div> However, at twenty-four I was nothing if not a conformist, and therefore able to persuade myself the reasons for my disgust were justified, i.e. based on the social mores of the time.  Let me explain.  Looking back to the East End working-class milieu of my youth, I can affirm that male society was undoubtedly dominated by natural codes of honour; what some think of as the warrior codes, men conditioned to believe that a man's masculine identity must be maintained at all costs.  Ostensibly, men did not have 'a feminine side'.  And if they did, it was prudent to conceal it.  Brought up in this atmosphere, we stifled our gentler feelings, thinking of them (even guiltily) as a form of personal aberration which it was wiser to ignore.  For instance, one felt that any display of a serious interest in art, literature, drama or music might invite -if only tacitly-a suspicion of one's secret effeminacy.  Therefore, raised on a wartime moral diet of this sort, where `we stand alone' with a `stiff upper lip' were the rule of the day, I could have no sympathy with what I perceived as Paul Morel's effeminacy.  (Here it is relevant to remind readers that homosexuality was still a criminal offence in 1958, and all illusion to it anathema to most heterosexuals).  </div> <div> But now, in reconsidering my feelings of that time, based on the store of 'mental baggage' accumulated by then, it is almost certain that, far from resenting Paul's weakness in having his mother take such interest in his affairs, I was suffering repressed feelings of envy, even anger or resentment at being forced to confront the facts of my own frustrated life.  For by then I had already begun blaming my sense of unfulfilled destiny upon the depravations, neglect, and emotional upheavals of my youth and early childhood.</div> <div> A further resentment had arisen from Paul's hating the job of going to the pit on Friday afternoons to fetch his father's wages.  I found this odd, remembering how proud I had been on the day Mother told me I was old enough (at ten) to take over the weekly task of going to the pawn shop to deposit or retrieve her wedding ring, or best sheets, best dress, etc. once my elder brother left school to start work. But Paul resented taking over from his older brother and sister, and I could not empathise with this. He felt he did not fit in with his father's co-miners. But any boy of my acquaintance would have been glad to see a glimpse of the grown-up world of men at work, and feel proud to see his father amongst them.  For it seemed to me then that every boy I knew was proud of his father, no matter if he was soldier, sailor, airman, boilermaker, plater, riveter, shipwright, painter, caulker, docker, drayman, driver, plasterer or whatever. I had always envied their pride. I would have been immensely proud to say my father was a miner. So Paul was not only effeminate, to my mind he was also a snob.  </div> <div> Today, of course, one recognises that, through his mother's genes, an inherited talent for art had made him inexpressibly aware that he wanted something different from the coarse and degrading life of his father, thus creating a confused mind torn between admiration and revulsion, a state of mind I am now personally familiar with.  In his essay, `The Artist as Psychologist', Daniel J. Schneider writes: </div> <div> `… the novel reveals Lawrence's early meditations on the question that had become, by 1912, an obsession: how can the individual, single, separate, unique, enter into any relationship with other human beings and with society without sacrificing his individuality and without destroying his creative, purposive energies?' (Bloom, 1988. p.144).</div> <bR> <bR> <div> In seeking a vantage point from which to take in a number of further issues, let us now move to the end of chapter six.  </div> <div> By this stage I had already decided that Mr. Morel was a wronged man, and much misunderstood: a simple but naturally warm, jolly, good-natured fellow who had been seduced and then mentally destroyed by a shrew.  I felt I understood him, whereas Gertrude's unforgiving nature, and her crusade to split the children from their father for reasons of spite had alienated me, even while fully conscious that this went against the author's intention.  For me, she had failed to recognise and develop the one virtuous talent Walter possessed, an ability to enjoy life and the society around him.  It was only after her wedding that, through a neighbour, she learned he had run a dancing class for five years before meeting her, so modest was the man she met.  Customary for the times, the young husband played his part faithfully, giving his wife regular housekeeping money and shielding her from all other responsibility.  It was only after discovering that, in order to buy furniture for the home, Walter had put himself in debt to his mother, and that his mother's two houses were not yet his, that </div> <div> `her manner had changed towards him.  Something in her proud, honourable soul had crystallised into hard rock' (Lawrence, p.15).  </div> <div> Some might think that a wife determined to make a success of her marriage would make the effort to recover from so slight a shock. But Gertrude could not.  And it is after this that her frigidity drives Walter to drink and subsequent paranoia, for he is too simple and weak to overcome an intelligent, determined woman such as Gertrude. </div> <div> But when Paul goes to the pit to inform his father of William's death, and that his Mother requires him to go to London, if my feelings towards the boy were ambiguous up to that point, they set hard against him after reading of his callousness towards his father's grief: </div> <div> 'As they came out and went along the railway… Morel said in a frightened voice:</div> <div> `'E's niver gone, child?'</div> <div> `Yes.'</div> <div> `When wor't?'</div> <div> `Last night.  We had a telegram from my mother.'</div> <div>  Morel walked on a few strides, then leaned up against a truck-side, his hand over his eyes.  He was not crying.  Paul stood looking round, waiting.  On the weighing machine a truck trundled slowly.  Paul saw everything, except his father leaning against the truck as if he were tired (Lawrence, 1994. pp.135-6).</div> <bR> <div> I recall being horrified by this passage.  Even allowing for the negative relationship between Paul and his father, Paul's lack of outward sympathy for Walter's distress was damning.  To me it seemed the boy was without a soul; his mother's son.  He had capitulated, succumbed to her wickedness, her wooing, and was now beyond redemption. </div> <div> More humble today, I can find alternative interpretations for Paul's behaviour that day, as well as sympathy for Gertrude's predicament. The lad's loyalty to his mother was instinctive, totally unpremeditated; he could not help himself. Also, his apparent callousness towards his father can be seen as repressed emotion manifested by his immature embarrassment in discovering his father was as vulnerable as any other.  Such behaviour should be seen as normal for a fourteen-year-old boy in the circumstances; regrettable, but not unusual, and one is therefore able to appreciate that descriptive narrative of this quality is among the finest examples of the writer's craft. </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div>  <A NAME="part_five"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A>PART FIVE</div> <div> Conclusion</div> <bR> <div> In seeking to strengthen my argument records of book sales for the period 1913-1920 would have been invaluable. Unfortunately, despite extensive enquiries, at the time of writing I have been unable to obtain any. However, in his opening paragraph, Michael Black asserts that </div> <div> `[al]though he [Lawrence] and his publishers were disappointed with its sales, it confirmed his growing reputation…' (Black, 1992, p.1).  </div> <div> If initial sales were disappointing, how do we account for the novel's later success? If my own experience was typical, a high proportion of readers would have found the book disappointing and found themselves unable to recommend it. But, as we have seen, nor were the critics of the day-who, arguably, could have done most to promote public interest-united in their appraisal, except perhaps in agreeing to its esoteric nature.  </div> <div> Lawrence undoubtedly wrote about the things he knew, and in this he followed the advice given to all young writers.  But only minds in sympathy with his own would appreciate this, which brings us back to the two questions:  </div> <div> (a) Why did he write Sons and Lovers, and </div> <div> (b) For whom?  </div> <bR> <div> In answer to the first it is now generally agreed that he wished to open a debate concerning the excessive prudery of the times, thus hoping to enlighten his contemporaries to his view of the true nature of man's sexual drive; how it is wholly natural and therefore an acceptable subject for education, general conversation and discussion; believing that only when men and women had gained total freedom to express themselves sexually would they be free of the tyranny of guilt and repression.  Writing to Edward Garnett in November, 1912, he says, </div> <div> `It is a great tragedy…. It's the tragedy of thousands of young men in England-' (Salgado, 1969, p.25).   </div> <div> One might say he saw the social adjustments forced upon them through ignorance as being `sacrificial', thereby emotionally harmful. </div> <div> Turning to the second question - for whom? - we know that every writer is advised to keep in mind an imaginary reader. We must therefore ask which reader Lawrence had in mind in 1910-13.  What type of reader would gain most benefit from understanding the implications of his themes based on empty marriages, unfulfilled endeavours, and the frustrated emotional deserts produced by sexual repression and ignorance among the working-class?  The most noble answer is, of course, the working-class, the class from which he came.  But as his literary style is self-consciously artistic, this seems unlikely. Lawrence must have been aware that none of his father's peers at home in Easthorpe would have the least interest in such a work. It might even be treated with scorn. </div> <div> No, Lawrence was immensely intelligent, far too intelligent to delude himself that the majority of people from whence he came would read his novel in the way he intended, i.e. appreciating its symbolism, the types of conflict, the unspoken cries for self-affirmation, and, of course, the central paradox-the lack in a socially and sexually repressed environment of any language to express or distinguish between natural and `unnatural' feelings and emotions.  </div> <div> It would have been naïve to imagine that such a work would appeal to the ill-educated reader.  Lawrence may have wished it would appeal to his peers in the back-to-backs of the Nottinghamshire towns, but only a blinkered utopian would believe it possible, and I do not believe this fairly describes D. H. Lawrence in 1913.  Later perhaps, in New Mexico for instance, but not 1913.</div> <div> So, did he write solely for the middle classes?  It was surely they who made up the majority of perceptive readers in 1913.  And if so, how could this benefit the working class that Lawrence did earnestly wish to enlighten?  Even today there's little social contact between the two classes, but in 1913 there was even less.  Did Lawrence hope against hope that the middle-class reader would disseminate his message down to the working classes over time?  Lead by example, perhaps?  </div> <div> In 1970, Raymond Williams touched on this in The English Novel from Dickens to Lawrence.  Referring to the problem of writing about people hitherto unwritten about, he said:</div> <div> 'What I've stressed as the problem in this-and it is a continuing problem-is the relation between the language of the novelist-always in some measure an educated language-as it has to be if the full account is to be given, and the language of these newly described men and women-a familiar language, steeped in a place and in work… different from the habits of education: the class, the method, the underlying sensibility' (Williams, 1974. pp. 138-9).</div> <div> Regrettably, if my argument is accepted, this could indicate that Lawrence was, in a sense, letting down the working class, for he knowingly wrote above and beyond the average reader's powers of perception and cognition. And Michael Black reminds us that Lawrence certainly thought about his audience: </div> <div> `… what will the others say [he asked]?  That I'm a fool.  A collier's son a poet!' (Black, 1992, p.2).  </div> <div> Lawrence may be alluding here to the anticipated opinions of the working class, but, on the other hand, he could also be referring to the middle-class intelligentsia which he hoped to become part of. So, again, who was Lawrence's imaginary reader; what was his purpose in writing this novel?  </div> <div> As we have seen, if his intention was to enlighten the working-class my early experience indicates he failed.  And if one feels this is simply because the semi-educated reader judges a literary work purely on its entertainment value, is this then to be labelled a `wrong reading'?  If we condemn all naïve readings as `misreadings' simply because a knowledge of the skills and intricacies of literary technique are lacking, is this not a gross arrogance? At best it is elitist. However crudely, the literately naïve reader still judges what he reads by his own standards, and, as much as any other, his opinion equally relates to the sale and purchase of books. It could be argued, therefore, that such `misreadings' should not be so classified unless they outrage the accepted criteria of that individual class or level of reader from which they emanate, not be damned by the esoteric few whose academic and literary acumen happens to be an unknown field of knowledge to the average general reader.  </div> <div> It must be said that if Lawrence hoped that by writing an artistic, intellectual account of ordinary working-class lives he would ingratiate himself with the  literary society of his day, to a large extent he seems to have failed. In his famous biography, John Worthen relates how, in 1909, through Hueffer, Lawrence visited Wells, met Yeats and also stayed with Ezra Pound, all the time conscious of his socially unpresentable boots and shabby schoolmaster's suit.</div> <div> At a stroke, he had been catapulted into the heart of contemporary literary intellectual circles.  And yet at those meetings in 1909, just as he would for the rest of his life, Lawrence felt distinctly uncomfortable. He could not fit into their world-</div> <div> “I am not a Society man-it bores me” (from Letters I: 156. Worthen, Appendix `B' p.2 [http://mss. nott. ac.uk/dhlbiog-chp2.html]).  </div> <div> Other contemporary literary giants whom Lawrence might have wished to impress included such people as Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, John Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, Bertrand Russell, E. M. Forster, James Joyce, Aldous Huxley, Katherine Mansfield, T. S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf.   (Incidentally, the last named did not read Sons and Lovers until after Lawrence's death, and remained unimpressed with his work).  Of  those named only two befriended him or held his work in high regard: Aldous Huxley and E. M. Forster.  F. R. Leavis reminds us that </div> <div> 'Aldous Huxley's name stands on the title page of the Letters, and his services to Lawrence during the last days are common knowledge. But [that] E. M. Forster's generous championship is less well known.  The force of my “generous” is made plain by the phrasing of his [E. M Forster's]letter: 'Now he is dead, and the low-brows whom he scandalized have united with the high-brows whom he bored to ignore his greatness.  This cannot be helped: no one who alienates both Mrs Grundy and Aspasia can hope for a good obituary Press.  All that we can do… is to say straight out that he was the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation' (Leavis, 1978, p.11). </div> <div> And, writing in 1926, E. M. Forster said: </div> <div> '…Lawrence himself is… the only prophetic novelist writing today- all the rest are fantasists or preachers: the only living novelist in whom the song predominates, who has the rapt bardic quality, and whom it is idle to criticize' (Forster, 1980. p. 130). </div> <bR> <bR> <div> And so, though a regrettable amount of helpful substantiating material within the text has remained untouched through lack of space, I believe the evidence presented does indicate that, alas, Lawrence may have asked too much of the general male reader before 1960.  On the other hand, I do not believe he addressed them, but only that small elite of literary intellectuals from whom he desired recognition most. If so, I believe he only half succeeded. </div> <div> One draws inevitably to the conclusion that the consequence of Alfred Kuttner's Freudian interpretation must have done more to establishing this novel in the English canon than any pressure from the mainstream book-buying public.  Therefore, its inclusion can only be due to the academic establishment, whereby students are annually provoked into recognising the `unidentified characters' of Sigmund Freud and Oedipus, seeing this as a worthwhile literary exercise.  </div> <div> As to Lawrence, I don't believe he could help himself;  he could write this novel only as he did, feeling he must write the book that was in him to write; let it sink or swim.  In this it was his misfortune to be a man before his time; and, as we know, `the prophet is never heard in his own time'. But, being an artist, how could he do otherwise?</div> <div>                                     </div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>End</B></div> <bR> <div> Approx 11,250 Words</div> <bR> <div> <B>Acknowledgements</B></div> <div> In producing this piece, I am immensely grateful for the incomparable assistance of Dr Nigel Wheale of Anglia Polytechnic University, without whose guidance, scholarship and unfailing wisdom, this essay would be of even less worth.  I am especially conscious that without his singular patience and invaluable advice, it could not stand in its present form.  Without his persistence and determination in helping me to find a unifying theme for my ideas, and then providing constructive advice for their expression, they could not have been expressed or formulated in any way satisfactory, either to the University or to myself.   </div> <div> I must also express my appreciation to every member of the English Department at APU.  Their singular ability to work as a professional, unruffled, cheerful, courteous, and dedicated team has been of the greatest value, assistance and delight, contributing much to all the pleasure of studying at the university.  I thank them sincerely.</div> <div> Special personal thanks are due also to Dr Michael Black, emeritus professor of Clare Hall, Cambridge.  As author of Lawrence -Sons and Lovers, (1992), published by Cambridge University Press in the Landmarks Series, he kindly responded to my request for advice and gave warmly and freely of his personal time and extensive knowledge.  I am most grateful to him and extend my warmest wish for his continued enjoyment of a happy and productive retirement. </div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Bibliography</B></div> <div> Abrams, M. H.. (1993). A Glossary of Literary Terms. (1957). Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.</div> <div> Black, M. (1992).   Lawrence, Sons and Lovers. Cambridge: C.U.P.. </div> <div> Bloom, H. (1988). (Ed.), Modern Critical Interpretations: D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, U.S.A.: Chelsea House Publishers.</div> <div> Farr, J. (1970). (Ed.), Twentieth Century Interpretations of Sons and Lovers New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc..</div> <div> Forster, E. M. (1980). Aspects of the Novel. (1926). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.</div> <div> Kermode, F. (1979). Lawrence. (1973). London: Fontana/Collins.</div> <div> Lawrence, D. H. (1994). Sons and Lovers. (1913). London: J. M. Dent, Orion Publishing Group.</div> <div> Leavis, F. R. (1978). D. H. Lawrence: Novelist.  (1955). Harmondsworth : Penguin Books. </div> <div> Maddox, B. (1994). The Married Man: A Life of D. H. Lawrence. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, Reed Consumer Books Ltd..</div> <div> Rylance, R. (1996). (Ed.), Sons and Lovers: Contemporary Critical Essays. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, Ltd..</div> <div> Salgado. G. (1969). (Ed.), D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers: A Selection of Critical Essays. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Ltd..</div> <div> Williams, R. (1974). The English Novel from Dickens to Lawrence. (1970). St. Albans, Herts: Granada Publishing Limited. </div> <bR> <div> <B>Further Reading</B></div> <div> The following recommended works are acknowledged in the preparation of this paper:</div> <bR> <div> Bradbury, M. (1994). The Modern British Novel. (1993). London: Penguin Group.</div> <div> Cirlot, J. (1971), A Dictionary of Symbols, (1962) Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.</div> <div> Daiches, D. (1956), Critical Approaches to Literature, Longman's, London.</div> <div> Daiches, D. (1970), The Novel in the Modern World,  University of Chicago Press, USA.</div> <div> Encyclopædia Britannica CD ROM  Britannica CD, Version 98© 1994-1998. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. </div> <div> Hitschmann, E. (1921). Freud's Theories of the Neuroses, trans. Payne, C.. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Turner & Co., Ltd..</div> <div> Jung, C. (1978). Approaching the Unconscious. In C. G. Jung & M.. -L. von Franz (Eds.), Man and his Symbols.(1964). (pp. 1-94). London: Pan Books Ltd..</div> <div> Lawrence, D. H.  (1960). Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious. (1921). D. Trilling (Ed.). New York: Viking Press.</div> <div> Lawrence, D. H.  (1960). Fantasia of the Unconscious. (1922). D. Trilling (Ed.). New York: Viking Press.</div> <div> Lawrence, D. H. (1977). The Prussian Officer and Other Stories. (1914). Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd..</div> <div> Leavis, F. R. (1976). Thought, Words and Creativity: Art and Thought in Lawrence. London: Chatto & Windus.</div> <div> Murfin, R. C.(1987). Sons and Lovers: A Novel of Division and Desire. Boston: Twayne Publishers.</div> <div> Tedlock, E. W. (1971). (Ed.), D. H. Lawrence and Sons and Lovers  U.S.A.: N.Y. University Press.</div> <div> The Oxford Companion to English Literature, (1985) ed. Drabble, M., O.U.P. Oxford.</div> <div> Trotter, D. (1993). The English Novel in History: 1895-1920). London: Routledge.</div> <div> Webster's Third New International Dictionary, (1976), 2 Vols. G.& C. Merriam Co. Mass., USA . </div> <div> Readers are reminded that copyright is reserved on all personal creative material, which may not be copied for redistribution to third parties without prior written consent.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> email:</div> <div> sonoflawrence@yahoo.co.uk</div> <div> © S.T. Hedges 2006</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div>  </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>