The life, works, and controversial views of D. H. Lawrence

Early life and education

D. H. Lawrence was born in 1885 in Eastwood. His father was a sinner and his mother was a woman of higher class who had been a schoolteacher. Lawrence’s mother spent all her life fighing to have her children recived a proper education and she want to prevent David from following his father into the miners. When he was 16 he started to work as a clerk in a factory, while when he was 23 he was qualificated as a teacher at Nottingham University College.

Family and personal struggles

When his brither was died becouse of T. B. He became the center of his mother’s emotional life and the story about their love is told in the autobiographical novel “Sons and Lovers”. In 1910 his mootrher was died. Later he met and fell in love with a german women and during the war year her nationality was criticised by public opinion and Lawrence was sespected of being a spy. After the War he started travelling: he was in Italy, Australia, Switzeland and Mexico. He died of T. B. in South France in 1930.

• Sons and Lovers

• The Rainbow

• Women in love

• Lady Chatterley’s lover

• The White Peacock

Views on industrial civilization

Lawrence was against the mechanical and the artificial aspects of the industrial civilisationand he made penetrating analyssis of the relationship between men and women . he consider men as a mixure of culture and biology, of natural impulses and instinct. For the poet of all natural impulses the sexual one is the strongest so only a relationship between men and women based on sensual possions and sexuality can save humanity from self-destruction.

Lawrence was against the emancipation of women (in Ingland in 1928=English women can vote). In fact he considered women as a instrument for mankind’s happiness.

Plot of Sons and Lovers

The story speak about the Morel family, in particular way the relationship between Paul Morel, who is considered as the main character, and his mother. This strong relationship is very dangerouse for Paul in fact he is unable to sustain a fulfilling relathinship with any women. In fact he rejects his first girlfriend Miriam, with whom he had a phycological love, and he has an affair with Clara, a married women with whom he had a physical love. [Clara is the perfect of modern women: infact he supported the women rights.] After his mother’s death, Paul is torn between the wish to rejoin his mother in death or go on living. In the end he decided to go on living.