Concetti Chiave
- Lawrence's upbringing in Eastwood shaped his literary career, influenced by his mother's educational background and his escape from a miner's life due to poor health.
- His writing was deeply influenced by personal experiences, such as his mother's death and his brother's passing, which inspired his autobiographical novel "Sons and Lovers".
- Lawrence's themes challenge industrial society, emphasizing the conflict between human intellectualism and natural instincts, with a particular focus on the power of sexual impulses.
- He held controversial views on gender roles, portraying women as instruments for male happiness and often depicting them as accepting of male dominance.
- Lawrence's narrative techniques include a minimalistic omniscient narrator, the use of "showing" and "telling", and employing poetic devices to convey characters' emotions and create a sensory experience.
Childhood and Education of Lawrence
Lawrence was born in 1885 in Eastwood. His father was a miner and his mother was a woman of higher class who had been a schoolteacher. Thanks to his mother's education and poor physical health Lawrence escaped the miner's destiny. In 1908 he become a teacher and began writing poetry. When his brother died he became of his mother's emotional life to which he dedicated the autobiographical novel Sans and Lovers. A few years later his mother died and in 1912 he abandoned teaching after pneumonia. In 1914 he got married with the German wife of a French professor. He spent the 1920's travelling throughout the world and he died in France of TB in 1930. Several novels by Lawrence were banned by the censors but later acquitted on the change of obscenity and published unabridged both in Great Britain and in the USA only in the 1960's.
Themes and Literary Style
His work was a revolutionary force: his fight against the mechanical and the artificial aspects of the industrial civilization, his concerns about the emotions coming from alienation, his penetrating analysis of the relations between the sexes. He consider men as a mixture of culture and biology, of natural impulses and instinct. In fact, according to Lawrence, the “mind knowledge” is the separation of human intellectual from natural impulses which can lead to degeneration. Of all the natural impulses, the sexual one is the strongest, so only sex can save humanity form self-destruction. His concept of women goes against the new social role they had acquired; he consider woman only an instrument for mankind's happiness. His female are often sensitive girls who are aware of the essential “otherness” of their partners, whose intellectual and sexual supremacy they accept.
Narrative Techniques of Lawrence
Lawrence employed the traditional omniscient narrator limiting his intervention to the minimum; the point of view is generally that of the characters. He uses the techniques of “showing” and “telling” a method to reveal the feelings of the characters through the rhymes, repetitions, alliterations, assonances that convey a musical effect. He also uses words and images linked to senses.
Domande da interrogazione
- What influenced Lawrence's decision to pursue a career in teaching and writing instead of following in his father's footsteps as a miner?
- How did Lawrence's views on industrial civilization and human impulses shape his literary themes?
Lawrence's mother's education and his poor physical health played crucial roles in steering him away from a miner's life. Her background as a schoolteacher and his health issues allowed him to escape the miner's destiny, leading him to become a teacher and eventually a writer.
Lawrence's work was a revolutionary force against the mechanical and artificial aspects of industrial civilization. He emphasized the importance of natural impulses, particularly sexual ones, as a means to save humanity from self-destruction. His themes often explored the alienation caused by industrialization and the complex relations between the sexes.
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