Philipp Wagner T.C. - Reclaiming Lawrence For 21st Century Feminism FINAL VERSION (Print)

TRAVAIL DE CANDIDATURE
Reclaiming Lawrence for

21st Century Feminism?
Sexuality, Society, and Female Agency in D.H.
Lawrence's Works.
Philipp Wagner
Philipp Wagner - Travail de candidature
Reclaiming Lawrence for 21st Century Feminism? Sexuality, Society, and Female Agency in D.H. Lawrence's Works.
Declaration of originality
I certify that this dissertation is my own work, that it was written by myself, and that I did
not resort to professional services in any form, paid or unpaid, in its completion
(proofreading, writing, structuring, etc.). It is not copied from and does not incorporate
and/or paraphrase any other person’s work unless this is acknowledged in the body of the
text and in the bibliography. It was not previously submitted for assessment at any academic
institute. All sources, both published and unpublished, in print and on the internet, are
clearly indicated according to academic conventions of citation. I declare that this is a true
copy of the final version of my thesis.
Helmsange, the 27th May 2019
Philipp Wagner
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Philipp Wagner
Candidat-professeur de lettres au Lycée

technique du Centre
Specialité: Anglais
Reclaiming Lawrence for 21st Century

Feminism? Sexuality, Society, and Female
Agency in D.H. Lawrence's Works.
Patron: Ms. Prüm Agnès
Lycée technique du Centre, 2019
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Abstract:
The objective of this thesis is not to determine whether Lawrence was a feminist or not.
Rather, it aims to explore whether Lawrence’s works can be re-examined with a modern
feminist approach and if his works therefore should be included in the modern literary
feminist canon.
By analysing a broad range of Lawrence’s work including his novels, short stories and
poetry, several traits that define Lawrence’s work such as motherhood, the gaze, and sex will
be re-evaluated under a modern feminist lens. Furthermore, this thesis will reframe the
feminist criticism Lawrence has received so far while investigating the biographical
influences and female perspectives that have shaped his work.
The conclusion of this thesis suggests that many of Lawrence’s key traits are paradoxical.
Whereas his poetry is filled with resentment and hostility aimed at women, his novels often
offer intriguing feminist elements of female agency and empowerment. The key to
interpreting Lawrence’s paradox then seems to lie in the deconstruction of the conflict
between the female voices that seem to be ever-present in his work and the fragile
masculinity that can be traced in his writings.
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Literature review and critical framework:
Taking into account some of the harshest feminist criticism on Lawrence such as Kate
Millet’s Sexual Politics (1970) and Jane Foster’s D.H. Lawrence – Infinite Sensual Violence
(1994), this thesis aims to revaluate his work from a more modern feminist perspective.
Although early feminist criticism of Lawrence’s work can be considered as punitive yet
sensible, it may appear outdated according to more contemporary standards, as many of his
stories address interesting recurring feminist features such as strong female protagonists and a
critique of patriarchy. Interestingly, it appears that there has been a rise of academic criticism
uncovering more traits that deserve a re-evaluation of Lawrence’s work.
One of those traits is Lawrence’s recurring theme of motherhood. Inspired by the research
written in Judith Ruderman’s D.H. Lawrence and the Devouring Mother – The Search for a
patriarchal ideal of leadership (1984) and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson’s Writing Against the
Family – Gender in Lawrence and Joyce (1994), this thesis will look at how Lawrence
shifted his representation of motherhood from idolisation to a critique of motherhood. This
shift becomes clear when comparing Lawrence’s different depictions of motherhood in his
poetry, short stories, and especially in The Virgin and the Gipsy (1930b). What makes The
Virgin and the Gipsy so relevant is that Lawrence’s novella is a departure from his other
stories. It is a comedic story that focuses on the family life of Lucille and Yvette, two sisters
who try to escape their mundane life and especially their controlling grandmother, referred to
as The Mater. On one of their road trips Yvette makes the acquaintance of a gipsy, whom she
soon falls in love with. As the story unfolds, the more Yvette tries to gain her independence
the more her grandmother tries to control the family. The reason why this novella is so
significant is that, along with Lawrence’s Fantasia of the Unconscious (1921), it offers his
strongest critique of motherhood. One of the goals of this thesis is to analyse Lawrence’s
critique of motherhood while also questioning his reasons for his criticism in the hope of
uncovering potential feminist values.
A more modern feminist approach will be used to analyse Lawrence’s poetry and the
characteristic fragile masculinity and hostility towards women found in it. The concept for
this part of the research is inspired by Linda Ruth Williams’ D.H. Lawrence (1997) and Mark
Spilka’s On Lawrence’s Hostility to Wilful Women: The Chatterley Solution (1978). The
main focus will be on Lawrence’s poetry and two short stories. The first short story, Tickets,
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Please! (1918b), is set between the two World Wars and focusses on female conductors. The
female conductors are able to take on jobs previously only accessible to men and are
therefore able to enjoy some of the privileges associated with male-dominated professions.
As the story unfolds, a group of female conductors gangs up on a womaniser by whom the
women had all been seduced and misled in the past. At the end of the story, the women inflict
violence on the womaniser in order to humiliate him and to teach him a lesson. The second
short story, The Fox (1923b), is the story about two women, Banford and March, living in
what appears to be a lesbian relationship. Yet their happiness is threatened by the return of a
young man, Henry, who claims to be the owner of the land they live on. Moreover, Henry
develops a romantic interest in March. In order to be able to be with March, Henry eventually
kills Banford, pretending it was an accident.
The goal of this chapter is to analyse Lawrence’s portrayal of modernity and its effects on
women in order to investigate whether Lawrence had an awareness of how patriarchy granted
privileges and shaped gender roles. Moreover, this thesis examines Lawrence’s critique of
modernity in order to better understand his discomfort with women in the workforce.
Additionally, Lawrence’s portrayal of queer relationships contrasting heteronormative
expectations and heterosexual relationships allows investigating whether Lawrence wanted to
portray a queer utopia, or whether the murder of Banford was the result of potential
homophobic tendencies of Lawrence. Whereas some academics and critics have focussed on
the possibilities of homoerotic and homosexual tendencies of Lawrence, the main focus of
this chapter will be on his portrayal of lesbian relationships and the homophobic fears present
in his stories and poetry. Therefore, this thesis hopes to gain insight into how fragile
masculinity could have affected Lawrence and why Lawrence and other men might have felt
threatened by the empowerment of women during the early 20th century.
One of the most important elements in determining whether Lawrence deserves to be

reclaimed for feminism is his portrayal of the interplay between sex and power. By
examining feminist criticism found in Spilka’s Lawrence and the Clitoris (1990), Williams’
Sex In The Head: Visions of Femininity and Film in D.H. Lawrence (1993), Hilary Simpson’s
D.H. Lawrence and Feminism (1982), and Fiona Becket’s (2002) D.H. Lawrence, this thesis
will investigate Lawrence’s portrayal of sex and power while offering a feminist critique of
his use of the female gaze, violence, and pornography. This will be done through an in-depth
analysis of The Princess (1925), The Woman Who Rode Away (1928c), and Lady Chatterley’s
Lover (1928b).
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Perhaps his most notorious novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928b) is the tale of Lady
Constance Chatterley who is trapped in an unhappy marriage. Due to her husband’s inability
to conceive children, she is encouraged by him to seek out affairs in order to become
pregnant. During her affairs she meets the gatekeeper Mellors, who has been employed by
her husband. As the story unfolds, Connie learns to master her own sexual pleasures yet ends
up in a sort of sexual tug-of-war with Mellors. This thesis explores the ways in which
Connie’s sexual coming-of-age can be interpreted as feminist while also assessing recurring
elements of pornography and the gaze. The aim of this chapter is to investigate the ways in
which the depiction of her control over her sexuality (and her climax) can be seen as
empowering from a feminist point of view and to examine why Lawrence’s depiction of the
battle for sexual dominance can be seen as problematic.
Lawrence’s The Princess (1925) and The Woman Who Rode Away (1928c) are both short
stories that focus on the events of unsatisfied women trying to gain their freedom by riding
away on an adventure and leaving the numbing life of civilisation behind. As soon as both
heroines think that they are about to claim their independence, they are unexpectedly
punished for their transgressions against patriarchy: the protagonist in The Princess is
sexually assaulted and kidnapped by her guide, and the heroine in The Woman Who Rode
Away is brutally sacrificed to a native deity.
The reason why both of these short stories are important to this thesis is that they provide
prime examples of how Lawrence narrates many of his stories from the female protagonist’s
perspective. This then enables a debate about whether Lawrence was writing from women’s
perspectives in order to use empathy as a feminist tool or whether he was revealing sadistic
tendencies (with pornographic elements) by punishing his heroines.
Finally, this thesis will analyse some biographical elements from Lawrence’s own life that
can be found in his works, especially in respect to the women in his life. Drawing on the
criticism found in Richard Beynon’s Icon Critical Guides: The Rainbow, Women in Love
(1997) and Carol Siegel’s Lawrence Among The Women (1991), this thesis will examine how
far Lawrence used the women in his life as authentic inspiration for his heroines in order to
consider the possibility that he was thereby giving them a voice.
Regarding methodology, this thesis adopts an intertextual approach inspired by the research
in Cornelia Schulze’s The Battle of the Sexes in D.H. Lawrence’s Prose, Poetry and
Paintings (2002). By doing comparative readings of Lawrence’s novels, short stories, essays,
and poetry, this thesis aims at using examples from Lawrence’s major works to understand
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why his fiction had initially been accused of being sexist and phallocentric. Furthermore,
these early responses to Lawrence’s work will be challenged by applying up-to-date criticism
to see whether a modern feminist approach allows the reader to discover a critique of
patriarchal society and presence of inspiring feminist heroines within Lawrence’s work,
especially when it comes to the intertextual and ‘intersectional’ (Crenshaw, 1991) elements.
Finally, an interdisciplinary approach borrowing theories from literary criticism,
psychanalytical theory, post-colonial theory, and feminist criticism on pornography allows
for an in-depth analysis of topics such as the gaze, violence, and voice, which, under a
modern feminist lens, could challenge the harsh criticism Lawrence has received.
The results anticipated for this thesis are that although the initial severe feminist criticism is
still valid for Lawrence’s early works, Lawrence’s fiction offers so much more valuable
content that can be reclaimed for modern literary feminist studies. This thesis hopes to
demonstrate that Lawrence’s fiction deserves to be read alongside the work of his
contemporaries whose works are considered feminist.
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Table of content
Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... 4
Literature review and critical framework................................................................................................ 5
I. Introduction: Why and how to reclaim Lawrence for feminism? ...................................................... 11
II. Motherhood ...................................................................................................................................... 15
II.1) The mother: saint and bully – short stories and Fantasia of the Unconscious.......................... 17
II.2) The Queen-Mother - The Virgin and the Gipsy ........................................................................ 25
III. Fragile masculinity and queer utopias ............................................................................................ 31
III.1) Fragile rhymes – Lawrence’s poetry ....................................................................................... 33
III.2) Fragility and reversed roles – Tickets, Please! ........................................................................ 41
III.3) Masculinity under threat -The Fox .......................................................................................... 45
IV. Sexual and visual dominance.......................................................................................................... 51
IV.1) Sex and power – Lady Chatterley’s Lover .............................................................................. 53
IV.2) The male’s ego-t(r)ip – Lady Chatterley’s Lover .................................................................... 59
IV.3) The gaze and pornography – Lady Chatterley’s Lover and short stories ................................ 63
V. Women’s echoes .............................................................................................................................. 73
V.1) Biographical influences and gendered writing ......................................................................... 75
V.2) Women’s voices........................................................................................................................ 83
VI. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 87
Bibliography ......................................................................................................................................... 91
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I. Introduction: Why and how to reclaim Lawrence for feminism?
One can expect D.H. Lawrence’s works to be known best as part of the literary canon of
Modernism or the Great War. Lawrence can fascinate readers with his very particular way of
describing his characters’ inner thoughts and their way of witnessing and perceiving the
changes in society that Lawrence himself experienced and recorded through his writing. It is
often through one of his most notorious novels, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, that one first
encounters Lawrence at university or maybe as an enthusiast of English literature. One of the
most intriguing aspects of this novel is that Lady Chatterley herself, just like many of
Lawrence’s female protagonists, shows potential for a feminist-inspired reading. This is
because Lawrence’s heroines often are, as James Lasdun points out, ‘typically […] well-off,
‘liberated’ in the old parlance, superficially content, but at a deeper level dissatisfied, and
existing in a benumbed state of vagueness or detachment’ (Lasdun, 2006, p. xii). Lawrence
often depicts the women in his stories as defying social norms by having them make their
own choices against the roles that patriarchal society, or the protagonist’s family or their
lovers, had intended for them. It is possible to read Lawrence’s depiction of determined,
independent, and sexually liberated women as part of early feminist ideas within modernist
literature and to celebrate his work for its female heroines fighting patriarchal values. Yet,
most academic writings (especially from the 70s and 80s) have criticised Lawrence by
portraying him as sexist. Milne points out that feminist critics of that time often portrayed
Lawrence as a ‘patriarchal bigot and pornographer’ (Milne, 2001, p. 202). Lawrence’s
graphic writing about the adventures of adulterous women who engaged in sexual pleasure
with men below their social status led to critics harshly describing him as ‘a prophet of an
essentially masculine sexual order […] [who] celebrated the phallic at the expense of
woman’s reality and being’ (Beynon, 1997, p. 114). Foster sums up best the general attitude
of feminist criticism towards Lawrence: ‘Some feminists see Lawrence as a woman-hater,
someone who did not, finally, understand women, who belittled them, who feared them’
(Foster, 1994, p. 19). These descriptions of Lawrence make him appear as a clueless sex-
obsessed writer who uses stereotypes attributed to women to fulfil readers’ desire for
pornographic material. This harsh feminist criticism persisted throughout different decades.
Only from the mid-80s onwards did the tone change. The feminist criticism shifted its focus
from sex and sacrifice to Lawrence’s depiction of family. Moreover, some feminist critics
analysed Lawrence’s work through the influence that the women in his life had had on him.
Finally, it appears that some more recent articles have taken a completely different approach
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compared to early feminist critics. Those feminists have shifted the focus away from
Lawrence’s language towards the struggles and inner workings of his heroines. Therefore,
some feminists have started to regard Lawrence as a potential feminist ally in spite of the
sexist undertones found in his works. Foster points out that there are feminists who ‘see
Lawrence as an important writer, for, despite the misogyny, he is sympathetic of feminist
causes’ (Foster, 1994, p. 19). It seems to be paradoxical then to find feminist inspiration
within Lawrence’s writing. Trying to navigate Lawrence’s ambiguities which can be
described as sexist feminism, Schulze raises the question: ‘how can you be a feminist and a
Lawrentian’ (Schulze, 2002, p. 4)? Perhaps it is only possible because Lawrence himself is an
author full of contradictions. By contrasting Lawrence’s aspects of macho-culture and
sensitivity, one can shine a light on Lawrence’s own brand of feminism. By doing so, one can
reveal how his works can be read in a progressive way to further use his stories as examples
for studies and debates within feminist discourse and gender studies, thereby maybe even
redeeming Lawrence and ridding him of his reputation as ‘phallocentric monster’ (Schulze,
2002, p. 1).
How does one reclaim an author for the feminist cause who has, over decades, constantly
been criticised for misogyny? If that is not possible, can one at least find value in Lawrence’s
work for feminist literary criticism?
One possibility is to re-evaluate Lawrence’s heroines. In his analysis of Lawrence’s
protagonists, Williams states that in Lawrence’s writing, a ‘woman’s fulfilment is not found
in children; her struggle is an adult struggle with other adults. Like Lawrence’s men, she
battles in the workplace, she travels, she fights, she finds sexual pleasure’ (Williams, 1997, p.
42-43). Lawrence’s heroines are not one-dimensional characters with simple plot lines.
Instead, they fight many battles on different fronts to gain freedoms (such as independence
and sexual freedom…). In turn, these battles offer some critical insight into patriarchal
structures of the nineteenth century while providing useful perspectives for a feminist
analysis of the societal expectations regarding gender during the Victorian and Edwardian
eras.
Another way of understanding how Lawrence could be useful to modern literary feminism is
to analyse his initial appeal for his female readership. As Lewiecki-Wilson points out,
‘[w]omen readers are drawn to Lawrence’s clear understanding of the destructive elements of
bourgeois family relations, of the constraints that middle-class conventions imposed upon
women and upon sexual relations’ (Lewiecki-Wilson, 1994, p. 59). It is within these
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‘intersectional’ (Crenshaw, 1991) battles of class, sex, and gender-roles, which his heroines
face that women are perhaps able to identify with the protagonists. It is exactly this awareness
of the ‘intersectionality’ (Crenshaw, 1991) and his depiction of the struggles created through
this interplay of class, sex, and gender in his novels that Lawrence should be offered a chance
of redemption.
Additionally, a more modern approach enables us to analyse how Lawrence uses his voice as
an author to represent women in his writings. Authorship, voice, and representation are all
issues that are relevant to modern feminist and gender studies, as Schulze points out:
‘Feminist criticism is interested in both the writing by women and the writing on
women’(Schulze, 2002, p. 95). In this sense, Lawrence’s depiction of women offers an
interesting insight into their representation in the society and literature of the time and takes
part in the debate as to whether a male author can amplify women’s voices with his writing.
Finally, analysing the reasons for Lawrence’s misogyny in his texts can also benefit feminist
literary studies in the sense that it offers an understanding of how sexism originates in men’s
minds, especially in those with brittle male egos. Lawrence’s works are full of examples of
what is nowadays referred to as ‘fragile masculinity’ (Joseph and Black, 2012). Even though
his novels might be a century old, they still offer prime examples of vulnerable macho-
culture and of male egos, therefore offering valuable material for feminist discourse.
Most of the harsher feminist criticism focuses on Lawrence’s major novels. Yet the feminist
focus should perhaps shift towards Lawrence’s short stories, essays, and poetry, as they
provide the necessary content and paradoxes of his sexist feminism that can enable Lawrence
to be reclaimed for feminism.
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II. Motherhood
Motherhood (Jana Hrivniakova, 2019)
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II.1) The mother: saint and bully – short stories and Fantasia of the Unconscious
To understand Lawrence’s oxymoronic sexist feminism, it is helpful to start with one of his
core paradoxes: his view on his mother and on motherhood.
Much has been said about Lawrence’s attitude towards his mother, and it has often been
described as ‘oedipal’ (Freud, 1899). This is due to Lawrence’s strong connection to his
mother, Lydia Lawrence. As Becket points out, Lawrence’s mother was mainly responsible
for his upbringing, which resulted in the ‘strength of the emotional bonds that the young
Lawrence forged with his mother’ (Becket, 2002, p. 8). One cannot help but notice a change
of tone in a lot of academic writing on Lawrence that comes close to mockery when
discussing the relationship between him and his mother. One such example is Eggert calling
Lawrence ‘mother-dominated’ (Eggert, 2001, p. 157). Similarly, Millet points out that the
notion of Lawrence’s own mother (and mothers in general) is one of the main sources for
Lawrence’s writing: ‘mother, the endless spring of Lawrence’s sacred font’ (Millet, 1970, p.
257). This holds true for Lawrence’s short stories as well as for his poetry. A prime example
of his early feelings towards his mother and the nostalgia felt for the child-mother-
relationship is the poem Piano:
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;

Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling
strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles
as she sings.
[…]
Down on the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for
the past. (Lawrence, 1918a, p. 80)
It appears that Lawrence’s nostalgic image of his mother is more than just a collection of
sweet memories: they are an idolisation of motherhood. This becomes more apparent in his
shorter fiction. In The Trespasser, Lawrence is clearly worshipping an ideal of motherhood:
‘This woman, tall and pale, drooping with the strength of her compassion, seemed stable,
immortal, not a fragile human being, but a personification of the great motherhood of
women’ (Lawrence, 1912b, p. 46).
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Lawrence’s worshipping of the mother and motherhood is sexist because it elevates

motherhood and all the virtues associated with it as the ultimate achievement for women; an
ideal which has long been criticised in feminist discourse as the ‘the Angel in the House’
(Showalter, 1977, p. 12). The term itself was coined by Coventry Patmore (1854) as the title
of a poem which celebrated Victorian ideals of motherhood. Virginia Woolf depicts this ideal
best by describing that such a woman
was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish.
She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily […] she was
so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own […] Her purity was
supposed to be her chief beauty (Woolf, 1931, p. 141).
By setting this unrealistic goal of the pure ideal self-sacrificing mother as the most important
one for women, it creates sexist values in different ways. For instance, by making birthing
and raising children one of the most important duties for women, it leaves out women who
might not be able to conceive and pushes them to the margins, rendering them obsolete or
dysfunctional in the eyes of a motherhood-centric (matriarchal) society. Similarly, women
who opt to not have children might be stigmatized as unnatural or antisocial. Finally, women
who take part in sexual activities for the sheer pleasure of it (i.e. detached from the function
of procreation) are demonised and labelled as immoral and promiscuous. Although Lawrence
also to some extend embedded his poetry with this tradition of idolising motherhood, it is too
easy to label him as sexist because there are more layers and paradoxes to his writings on
motherhood.
While discussing mothers in Lawrence’s fiction, Simone de Beauvoir states that
he cherishes his mother; mothers appear in his work as magnificent examples of real
femininity; they are pure renunciation, absolute generosity, and all their human warmth
is devoted to their children, they accept them becoming men, they are proud of it
(Beauvoir, 1949 , p. 241).
While the first part of her analysis is correct, not all of Lawrence’s fictional mothers accept
and love their offspring. Throughout his career, Lawrence portrayed mothers in complex
ways, especially at the end of his career. As Becket points out: ‘[t]owards the end of his life
he […] became harsher in his judgement of his mother (and mothers in general’ (Becket,
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2002, p. 8). It is in his harsher writings that one can find aspects that serve feminism more
than just offering examples of the cult of motherhood.
One of the interesting aspects of Lawrence’s writing on motherhood is that he seems to show
awareness for some of the emotions that young mothers might go through, such as post-
partum-depression. Thompson and Fox describe post-partum depression as such:
Parent–infant synchrony is impacted in that depressed mothers tend to be slower to

respond to infant stress or social signals, look at and vocalise less often to their children
and engage in less rhythmic imitation and joint activity. […] Interactions between
depressed mothers and their infants become impaired with a longer course of
depression, with depressed mothers being less positive in face‐to‐face interactions and
in play with toys and less competent in feeding at six months post‐partum (Thompson
and Fox, 2010, online journal).
Having some of his fictional mothers express regret at having had children is a bold and
contradictory move for a writer who had initially praised the virtues of motherhood in his
poetry. For instance, the mother in The Rocking-Horse Winner appears to be suffering from
post-partum depression, revealing symptoms of the ‘self‐preoccupied nature of behaviour in
depressed mothers’ (Thompson and Fox, 2010, online journal):
She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not
love them. […] Only she herself knew that at the centre of her heart was a hard little
place that could not feel love, no, not for anybody (Lawrence, 1926a, p. 269).
Similarly, symptoms of being overwhelmed by motherhood become even more apparent in

his short-story the Sun, in which a young mother tries to avoid any physical contact with her
son: ‘She resented, rather, his little hands clutching at her, especially her neck’ (Lawrence,
1926b, p. 249) . She even expresses regrets for having borne a child:
She had had the child so much on her mind, in a torment of responsibility, as if, having
borne him, she had to answer for his whole existence. Even if his nose were running, it
had been repulsive and a goad in her vitals, as if she must say to herself: Look at the
thing you brought forth! (Lawrence, 1926b, p. 249).
Considering that the title is a wordplay on sun/son suggesting that the child is the centre of
the family, this is a very gloomy side of motherhood portrayed by Lawrence. It shows that
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Lawrence was not partaking in the glorification of motherhood throughout his career: his
portrayal of motherhood eventually turned into a critique, especially in his later work.
Additionally, a more obscure side of motherhood (or parenthood in general) is found in

Lawrence’s portrayal of fear that mothers can instil in their children. An initial feminist
reading of Odour of Chrysanthemums invites to read it as homage to working-class women,
describing mothers who endure the hardships of living with a rough and emotionally
unavailable husband in a mining town while trying to raise their children. This in return can
also be criticised as sexist as it glorifies values of perseverance and servitude found in the
Victorian ideal of motherhood. Nevertheless, Lawrence breaks with these values by
suggesting that mothers can also terrify their children: ‘the children played subduedly, intent,
fertile of invention, united in fear of their mother’s wrath and in dread of their father’s
homecoming’ (Lawrence, 1911, p. 81). By suggesting that mothers are able to scare their
children and that mothers can regret having borne children or can be overwhelmed by having
to raise them, Lawrence breaks away from the tradition of the ‘Angel in the House’
(Showalter, 1977, p. 12). This critique of the idealisation of motherhood is one of the ways in
which Lawrence can be rediscovered for feminist literary theory. But of course, as it is the
case with many aspects of Lawrence’s ambiguous portrayal of women, we will see that the
reason behind his depictions of motherhood is problematic.
Lawrence further explores the darker side of motherhood by revealing how much power and
influence mothers have over their children. In Fantasia of the Unconscious, he criticises
mothers for forcing children from an early age to continuing to accept the mother’s values
late into adolescence, thereby forcibly moulding the children into the version they like best:
The mother, in her new role of idealist and life-manager never, practically for one
single moment, gives her child the unthinking response from the deep dynamic centers.
No, she gives it what is good for it. She shoves mild in its mouth as the clock strikes
[…] and she shoves it ideally through baths and massage, promenades and practice, till
the little organism develops like a mushroom to stand on its own feet. Then she
continues her ideal shoving of it through all the stages of an ideal upbringing […] The
poor little object is his mother’s ideal (Lawrence, 1921, p. 75).
It appears that the overbearing mother does not leave room for independence in the minds of
her children. This goes for any aspect, especially for matters dear to Lawrence such as love
and sexuality. Lawrence goes on to blame mothers for raising their boys in such a way that
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they do not understand women and do not know how to interact with them. In Love among
the Haystacks he writes: ‘The two brothers were both fiercely shy of women, and until this
hay harvest, the whole feminine sex had been represented by their mother, in presence of any
other women they were dumb louts’ (Lawrence, 1930a, p. 5).
The ambiguity in Lawrence’s critique of motherhood is that, on the one hand, he does prove a
point by saying that mothers are responsible for the upbringing of their sons and how they
treat women when they grow up. Additionally, Lawrence establishes that if a mother is put on
a pedestal, she might turn out to be the only role model that children have. On the other hand,
the very reason why Lawrence criticises motherhood lies in his own resentment, his criticism
is not rooted in a feminist cause. It seems that his criticism of motherhood is aimed at his own
mother. In Fantasia of the Unconsciousness, it becomes clear that Lawrence has bitter
feelings towards his mother as he describes all mothers as bullies:
I embrace for example an ideal, and I seek to enact this ideal in the person of another.
This is ideal bullying. A mother says that life should be all love, all delicacy and
forbearance and gentleness. And she proceeds to spin a hateful sticky web of permanent
forbearance, gentleness, hushedness around her naturally passionate and hasty child
(Lawrence, 1921, p. 22).
Here, Lawrence clearly blames his mother for his insecurities, going as far as attacking
mothers for raising their sons with love and kindness and by doing so numbing them down
and preventing them from becoming the men they were supposed to be. Schulze summarises
Lawrence’s attack by stating that for him ‘[m]others have the same taming effect on their
sons as institutions such as schools or church’ (Schulze, 2002, p. 76). By doing so, Lawrence
mostly blames mothers for male insecurities (an issue that will be discussed in depth in the
next part). What is important to note is that Lawrence did what many Modernists of the time
were doing, which was to break away from prevalent (i.e. Victorian) values and therefore to
criticize the dominant ideal of motherhood at the time. Lawrence went even further by
accusing mothers of robbing children of their independence later on in life, as he wrote in The
Trespasser: ‘What can I do? It seems to me a man needs a mother all his life. I don’t feel
much like a lord of creation’ (Lawrence, 1912b, p. 102). Lawrence implied that even a grown
man is dependent on his mother, as Schulze explains: ‘Lawrence’s ambivalence towards his
mother or mother-like figures [which] reflected his need for nourishment and his hatred of the
21
dependency of others’ (Schulze, 2002, p. 78). This dependency pushed Lawrence to even go
further with his criticism of the cult of motherhood.
Although Lawrence is often criticised for being phallocentric (Millet, 1970), his idea of the
life-giving phallus shrinks in the shadow of the mother-as-life-giver. This then makes
Lawrence feel powerless. This feeling of powerlessness leads him into a more perverted
criticism of motherhood, the one in which dependency can lead into fetishised sexuality
found in the relationship between Clifford and his nurse Mrs Bolton in Lady Chatterley’s
Lover’s: ‘Lawrence was attempting to draw such a picture of the incest process when, years
later, he portrayed the impotent Clifford Chatterley obtaining perverse sexual satisfaction
from his nurse, Mrs Bolton’ (Ruderman, 1984, p. 24). One interesting aspect to highlight is
that, as will be discussed later, Lawrence’s themes often overlap, as is the case here with
motherhood and sexuality.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover’s Mrs Bolton, the nurse caring for Clifford, takes on qualities of a
mother while caring for Clifford, who in return enjoys their ‘mutual dependence and
perversity’ (Shiach, 2001, p. 96) as ‘Mrs Bolton changes from a chirpy servant to a death-
ridden mistress’ (Ruderman, 1984, p. 161):
Clifford became like a child with Mrs Bolton. He would hold her hand, and rest his
head on her breast, and when she once lightly kissed him, he said: ‘Yes! Do kiss me!
Do kiss me!’ And when she sponged his great blond body, he would say the same! ‘Do
kiss me!’ and she would lightly kiss his body, anywhere, half in mockery (Lawrence,
1928b, p. 269).
Here, Lawrence’s portrayal of the idolisation of motherhood is perversely transformed into a

fetish by Clifford who develops and enjoys what Schulze calls an ‘infantile dependency on
Mrs Bolton’ (Schulze, 2002, p. 271):
And he would gaze on her with wide, childish eyes, in a relaxation of Madonna-
worship. It was sheer relaxation on his part, letting go all his manhood, and sinking
back to a childish position that was really perverse. And then he would put his hand
into her bosom and feel her breasts, and kiss them in exultation, the exultation of
perversity, of being a child when he was a man (Lawrence, 1928b, p. 269).
This oedipal (Freud, 1899) need for motherly affection along with the powerlessness and
dependence portrayed in Lady Chatterley’s Lover foreshadow Lawrence’s fear of mothers
22
castrating men and reducing them to the status of a child. Even though this perverted
relationship between Clifford and Mrs Bolton is consensual, Mrs Bolton enjoys it all the
more as this gives her power over her employer, thus over a man: ‘she was the Magna Mater,
full of power and potency, having the great blond childman under her will and her stroke
entirely’ (Lawrence, 1928b, p. 269). Millet refers to this fear of the dominating and castrating
mother as the fear of ‘the devouring maternal vampire’ (Millet, 1970, p. 246). Ruderman
elaborates that ‘[b]y his adult years Lawrence was convinced that women tend to engulf or
devour their loved ones’ (Ruderman, 1984, p. 178). These devouring women that Lawrence
feared and coined as ‘Magna Mater’ (Lawrence, 1928b, p. 269) are best represented in The
Virgin and the Gipsy.
23
24
II.2) The Queen-Mother - The Virgin and the Gipsy
Lawrence’s The Virgin and the Gipsy, which was published posthumously, is typically
Lawrentian while at the same time also a departure from his other short novels. On the one
hand, it is characteristic of Lawrence to include a female protagonist who is trying to liberate
herself from social expectations and family-ties while looking for romance or sexual
liberation. As previously discussed, this is one of the key-features that allow for a feminist
reading of Lawrence’s work since, as Lewiecki-Wilson points out, Lawrence’s short stories
offer ‘plots that disconnect and free women from family’ (Lewiecki-Wilson, 1994, p. 59). On
the other hand, this short novel has a humorous tone unlike any other work by Lawrence. The
Virgin and the Gipsy is a social commentary on the power (and abuse of power) of
motherhood, disguised as a humorous coming-of-age story. The comical tone can be noticed
at the beginning of the short novel when the reader is introduced to the Mater, ‘one of those
physically vulgar, clever old bodies who had got her own way all her life by buttering the
weakness of her men-folk’ (Lawrence, 1930b, p. 5). The Mater is the grandmother of the
heroine Yvette, and she is the undisputed ruler of the family:
The Mater, who had been somewhat diminished and insignificant as a widow in a small
house, now climbed into the chief arm-chair in the rectory, and planted her old bulk
firmly again. She was not going to be dethroned (Lawrence, 1930 b, p. 6).
In the domestic sphere, and in the absence of the father/patriarch, the mother is the ruler: the
queen. Having fulfilled her role as life-giver, mother, housekeeper, and wife, the Mater is
relieved of her duties now that she is a grandmother and a widow and is left to rule over her
domestic kingdom. The Mater’s status is contrasted by the presence of the Mater’s sister,
Aunt Cissie, ‘who was over forty, pale, pious, and gnawed by an inward worm’ (Lawrence,
1930b, p. 5). Aunt Cissie had lived her life in the shadow of her sister since the Mater was the
queen and Aunt Cissie was her servant:
Aunt Cissie’s life had been sacrificed to the Mater, and Aunt Cissie knew it, and the
Mater knew she knew it. Yet as the years went on, it became a convention. […] Granny
held her in her power. And Aunt Cissie’s one object in life was to look after The Mater
(Lawrence, 1930b, p. 9).
Aunt Cissie’s sacrifice to her sister is a stark commentary by Lawrence on the importance
that patriarchal society gives to the status of married women and mothers. The Mater,
25
previously married and childbearing, has more value to a patriarchal society than a woman
who eventually becomes a spinster, such as Aunt Cissie. Therefore, unmarried and
infertile/childless women are almost expected to at least fulfil one role in society by serving
and giving way to women who can get married and bear children. Lawrence’s use of Aunt
Cissie is interesting as he uses her to make a stark feminist comment on the role of women in
society in relation to their marital status and, more importantly, in relation to the cult of
motherhood.
It becomes evident that Lawrence is criticising the cult of motherhood when he describes the
Mater as an ‘awful idol of old flesh’ (Lawrence, 1930b, p. 20). Moreover, Lawrence pushes
this ideal of motherhood so far as to almost giving the Mater divine powers of immortality:
The will, the ancient, toad-like obscene will in the old woman, was fearful, once you
saw it […] it made one feel that Granny would never die. She would live on like these
higher reptiles, in a state of semi-coma, forever (Lawrence, 1930b, p. 117).
Although the Mater is not the central figure of the novel, she is dominating from the centre of
the novel as if it were her throne: ‘The Mater, of course, was the pivot of the family. The
family was her own extended ego. Naturally she covered it with her power’ (Lawrence,
1930b, p. 10). In this lies Lawrence’s main critique of motherhood, similar to his critique
encountered in Fantasia of the Unconsciousness. Lawrence criticises mothers for
overreaching and using their children as an amplifier for their ego. Ruderman explains
Lawrence’s critique of motherhood by stating that:
The woman who does not allow her children and grandchildren egos of their own, but
rather who engulfs them to assuage her own narcissistic needs, is marked as a
“devouring mother”. Lawrence draws attention to this aspect of the Mater’s character
by underscoring her large, even disgusting appetite (Ruderman, 1984, p. 145).
Moreover, as the Mater cannot leave her domain, she tries to stay informed and in the centre
of power by interrogating her family about their excursions and the latest gossip, sucking out
any bit of information she can:
It was the static inertia of her unsavoury power. Yet in a minute she would open her
ancient mouth to find out every detail about Leo Wetherell. For the moment she was
hibernating in her oldness, her agedness. But in a minute her mouth would open, her
26
mind would flicker awake, and with her insatiable greed for life, other people’s life, she
would start on her quest for every detail (Lawrence, 1930b, p. 24).
Perhaps this can be read as Lawrence’s social commentary on gossip and mothers trying to
influence or control the social lives of their children. Eventually, in a comedic twist of events,
the Mater dies in a flood. The Mater’s death then becomes relevant to reclaiming Lawrence
for feminism, according to Siegel’s interpretation:
The Mater is removed by the flood as if nature would not tolerate a pretender to the title
of Great Mother who is an enemy of sexuality, marriage, and fertility. […] Here
Lawrence’s text moves very close to feminism (Siegel, 1991, p. 175).
Yet there are some other possibilities when reading into the symbolic meaning of the Mater’s
death i.e. Lawrence’s literary matricide under a feminist lens.
There is of course the traditional ‘oedipal bias’(Ruderman, 1984, p. 7). Ruderman’s stance is
that the death of the Mater is a ‘release from the constricting bounds set by Granny’s brand of
motherhood […] The death of Granny, on the most basic level, is a wish fulfilment of the
first order’ (Ruderman, 1984, p. 157). This point of view obviously classifies Lawrence as a
misogynist because if Lawrence killed off the Mater out of oedipal tendencies, one could not
reclaim this story for feminism as he might have acted out as a form of revenge against the
influence that his own mother had on him.
However, killing the Mater and thereby killing the grotesque idol of motherhood can also
been seen as a feminist act of liberating the heroine from old-fashioned gender roles and
expectations, just like Virginia Woolf who needed to kill the Angel of the House as ‘part of
the occupation of a woman writer’ (Woolf, 1931, p. 142) to liberate herself from Victorian
constraints in order to write freely about ‘human relations, morality, sex’ (Woolf, 1931, p.
142). Harris explains this point of view by stating that ‘in […] previous Modern Girl novels,
mothers stood unambiguously for worn-out ways, for traditions best discarded’ (Harris, 1990,
p. 67). This is also in line with Lawrence the modernist breaking away from Victorian values
in accordance with Siegel’s interpretation (1991). This can then be regarded as Lawrence’s
own brand of feminism that does away with old-fashioned gender expectations and clichés.
Finally, a more neutral stance is that of critics such as Blanchard, who see Lawrence’s
portrayal of mother-daughter relationships as ‘part of Lawrence’s great strength as an artist
that he was willing to face and to give form to the most unsatisfactory consequences of
relationships that failed because they became unbalanced’ (Blanchard, 1978, p. 97).
27
It is perhaps this imbalance of relationships as a result of the worshipping of motherhood that

Lawrence tried to criticise in his own way, which could then give him feminist credentials.
What is also interesting to note is that this cult of motherhood in The Virgin and the Gipsy is
able to flourish due to the absence of a patriarch. This absence of the father is not only used
in this particular story of Lawrence, it is also in another relevant short story of his: The Fox.
Nelson highlights that in The Fox (just as in The Virgin and the Gipsy), ‘[t]he presence of the
Father […] is indicated in the text by his absence’ (Nelson, 1990, p. 129). For critics such as
Williams, this absence of the patriarch enables the mother to be omnipotent, which only feeds
into Lawrence’s fear of the dominant mother: ‘The figure of the excluded father focuses
[Lawrence’s] anxiety about men’s role, women’s primacy, and the inability of the family to
contain sexual desire’ (Williams, 1993, p. 45).
Nevertheless, unlike feminist novels or short stories of that period such as Charlotte Perkins-
Gilman’s Herland (Perkins-Gilman, 1915) which uses the idea of matriarchy to create a
fictional female-only utopian society, the mothers in Lawrence’s works, even in the absence
of the father, only serve to reinforce patriarchal rules that influence the power dynamics
between men and women. Blanchard points out that ‘Lawrence recognized that mother-
daughter relationships are central in influencing women in their relationship with men’
(Blanchard, 1978, p. 97) whereas Lewiecki-Wilson goes further and elaborates that
[h]aving no power outside of her location as wife and over the potentially violent
husband, [the mother] nevertheless is the one who passes on to her children the
devaluation of the female. She unwittingly promotes the conflict between the sexes in
gender division and reproduces the laws of patriarchy in her mothering (Lewiecki-
Wilson, 1994, p. 88).
One has to give Lawrence credit for having been aware of this vicious patriarchal circle of
mothers encoding patriarchal values in their daughters. Unfortunately, Lawrence criticised
them because they affected women’s behaviour in relation to men in a toxic way, not because
they reinforce abusive gender roles. Still, Lawrence can in this way be reclaimed for
feminism as he had a keen sense of gender-roles and the enablers of such.
To conclude, it is important to acknowledge Lawrence as an author responded to early on and

criticized Victorian values of motherhood. Even though Lawrence might have taken part in
28
furthering sexist stereotypes of the “Victorian mother” in his early poetry, he clearly
distanced himself from this image in later stories, offering a darker side of motherhood by
writing about post-partum depression and mothers instilling fear in their children. Moreover,
Lawrence offered early, albeit flawed criticism with an approach similar to modern feminism
by pushing the idea of motherhood to its extreme. Contemporary feminist literary discourse
should give Lawrence some credit for having been one of the early writers of the 20th century
to critically portray motherhood and for having been aware that even in the absence of fathers
(i.e. the representatives of patriarchy), mothers can be complicit in perpetuating patriarchal
values with which they have been instilled. In times of discussions around overprotective
parents, one can point towards Lawrence for exposing and depicting the grotesque extremes
to which motherhood can evolve if unchallenged, as demonstrated by the overbearing mother
in The Virgin and the Gipsy. One can say that in his works as well as in his personal life,
mothers appeared to be Lawrence’s adversaries: they were his “momtagonists”.
Nonetheless, the problem of reclaiming Lawrence for feminism regarding the topic of
motherhood lies within the reason for his criticism of motherhood: Lawrence was not
necessarily criticising motherhood because of feminist ideals but rather because he was
suffering from the fact that his mother had had such an influence on him, which in return
made him see himself and in the eyes of others as effeminate. In a certain way, Lawrence
tried to come to terms with his proximity to his mother through his unforgiving portrayal of
motherhood in his fiction. The reason why he wanted to distance himself from his mother can
be narrowed down to one symptom that has become an important topic in recent feminist
discourse: fragile masculinity.
29
30
III. Fragile masculinity and queer utopias
Fragile Masculinity (Hrivniakova, 2019)
31
32
III.1) Fragile rhymes – Lawrence’s poetry
Although this thesis tries to reclaim Lawrence for modern feminism, it is difficult to do so
when looking at his poetry. The reason why Lawrence’s poetry is full of sexism and bruised
male egos is because it appears that throughout his life he was living in the shadow of his
mother (as discussed previously) and his lovers. Schulze explains that this is the reason for
this contrast of love misogyny found in his poetry: ‘it is a truism that women produced
Lawrence’s worst mood swings. Thus throughout his career numerous poems are dedicated to
the other sex’ (Schulze, 2002, p. 31).
In order to understand how Lawrence expresses symptoms of fragile masculinity, one needs
to first understand its concept. According to Joseph and Black, men who fit in the ‘fragile
masculinities category [are] men who feel uncomfortable around women, unattractive to
women, and rejected by women in the sexual marketplace’ (Joseph and Black, 2012, online
article). In return, these feelings can lead to self-loathing, as Watkins Jr and Blazina suggest:
The fragile masculine self-reverberates and emasculates—rippling through the entirety

of the man’s psyche, spilling into his interpersonal space, and potentially wreaking
havoc across both the intrapersonal and interpersonal spheres (Watkins Jr. and Blazina,
2010, p. 212).
One could think that Lawrence did not fit this category because he did not seem to be the
kind of man who would be rejected by women. Moreover, Becket claims that Lawrence had
‘rejected for himself a specific masculine culture when he left home to work as a teacher’
(Becket, 2002, p. 9). Despite all this, Lawrence’s poetry paradoxically oozes with fragile
masculinity. One such example can be found in his poem These Clever Women, in which he
appears to be annoyed with or even afraid of educated and smart women:
Close your eyes, my love, let me make you blind!

They have taught you to see
(Lawrence, 1916, p. 83)
The whole poem can be summed up as a rant in which Lawrence curses at the intelligence of
women getting in the way of his sexual conquests:
Am I doomed in a long coition of words to mate you?

Unsatisfied! Is there no hope
33
Between your thighs, far, far from your peering sight?

(Lawrence, 1916, p. 83)
If Lawrence’s poetry was released today, it would most likely be dismissed as sexist and
mundane and would certainly not be published in any collected works or anthologies but
rather on some shady misogynistic website or blog. Even though Lawrence tried to break
away from poetical tropes of romance and desire, his poems appear to be very superficial and
driven by sexual lust. For instance, in The Mess of Love he wrote:
We’ve made a great mess of love

since we made an ideal of it.
The moment I swear to love a woman, a certain woman, all my life

that moment I begin to hate her
(Lawrence, 1929h, p. 386).
This poem addresses a certain unwillingness of Lawrence to commit to or to connect with

women on any emotional level. This only gets reaffirmed when reading his poem The Effort
of Love:
[…]
And if by a miracle a woman happened to come along
who warmed the cockles of my heart
I’d rejoice over the woman and the warmed cockles of my
heart
so long as it didn’t all fizzle out in talk.
(Lawrence, 1929b, p. 420)
This positioning of women into objects of worship and admirers of the speaker’s manliness
can be traced to Lawrence’s fragile masculinity. In return, this fragility must have affected his
interpersonal communication with women. Even though he criticised the notion of love
which society had shaped into some sort of unattainable ideal of eternal romance (similar to
his criticism of the idolisation of motherhood), it becomes apparent in I Wish I Knew a
Woman that Lawrence was rather busy pursuing temporary sexual gratification without any
commitment or relationship:
34
without having to make the polite effort of loving her

or the mental effort of making her acquaintance.
Without having to take a chill, talking to her.
(Lawrence, 1929g, p. 419)
The main thread of his poetry primarily consists in Lawrence ranting about independent and
smart women that are hard to get. Simone de Beauvoir points this out by stating that
‘Lawrence detests modern women, celluloid and rubber creatures who claim a consciousness’
(Beauvoir, 1949, p. 241). One prime example of this can be found in Lawrence’s Elderly
Discontented Women:
Elderly discontented women ask for intimate companionship,

by which they mean talk, talk, talk
[…]
stampeding over everybody,
while their hearts become absolutely empty,
and their voices are like screwdrivers
as they try to screw everybody else down with their will.
(Lawrence, 1929d, p. 415)
The core of Lawrence’s sexism in his poetry about this ideal of love (Lawrence, 1929h) lies
in his objectification of women and the creation of an idealistic image of a woman he himself
could never meet nor conquer: ‘the Woman whom Lawrence can never really understand, the
innocent sensual woman, whom he can only watch and wonder at, love and hate, and cleave
until the end’ (Murry, 1931, p. 75). The irony or paradox here is that while Lawrence was
criticising the glorification and idolisation of love and of motherhood, he himself was taking
part in creating impossible standards for women when it came to their role as lovers.
In a newly published collection of essays Life with a Capital L (Lawrence, 2019), one can
find examples of Lawrence showing an awareness of this issue. In his essay Give Her a
Pattern (Lawrence, 1928a), he wrote that ‘just as there are many men in the world, there are
many masculine theories of what women should be. But men run to type, and it is the type,
not the individual, that produces the theory, or ‘ideal’ of woman’ (Lawrence, 1928a, p. 353).
This awareness shows that Lawrence was complicit in this idolisation, which only further
35
risks disqualifying him from any feminist reclaiming. What makes matters worse is that
Lawrence accused women of being aware of this idolisation and that he claimed they needed
these ideals to perform their roles:
When a woman is thoroughly herself, she is being what her type of man wants her to
be. When a woman is hysterical it’s because she doesn’t quite know what to be, which
pattern to follow, which man’s picture of woman to live up to (Lawrence, 1928a, p.
353).
It is then hypocritical of Lawrence to show an awareness of this vicious circle of ideals

without making the effort to break the circle. Instead, just like in his poetry, he puts the blame
on women. What might furthermore exclude Lawrence from being reclaimed for modern
feminism is that Lawrence seemed to intentionally create an image of an ideal woman only to
use this image as a justification for his disdain for women, all because of his fragile ego.
Lawrence pushed this image even further by wanting to be able to worship it without being
questioned about his intentions. Lawrence’s poem Can’t be Borne reveals his paradoxical
nature by showing that he wants to idolise women but does not want to acknowledge it:
Any woman who says to me

-Do you really love me?-
earns my undying detestation.
(Lawrence, 1929a, p. 420)
It is almost as if Lawrence wanted to create this masculine image of himself as an

emotionally detached womaniser who was not at all interested in a woman’s intelligence or
emotions but rather in her conquest or worship. Yet instead of creating this manly image of
himself as womaniser, his persona in his poems exhibits clear symptoms of fragile
masculinity when reading poems such as Energetic Women:
Why are women so energetic?

[…]
Why are they never happy to be still?
Why did they cut off their long hair
which they could comb by the hour in luxurious quiet?
36
I suppose when the men all started being Willy wet-legs

they felt it was no longer any use being a linger-longer Lucy.
(Lawrence, 1929e, p. 450)
Lawrence did not only bemoan the change that modernity had brought in women (referring to
short haircuts compared to classic feminine long hair), but that modern women were too fast
for men to catch up with and who rather wanted to be active members of society rather than
just passively admired (which is what Lawrence wanted for them in his poetry). Additionally,
for Lawrence it seemed that modern men had become weak versions of their former selves.
This becomes apparent when he refers to modern men as ‘Willy wet-legs’ (Lawrence,
1929m, p. 471), to whom he even dedicated an entire poem entitled Willy Wet-Legs:
I can’t stand Willy wet-leg,

can’t stand him at any price.
He’s resigned, and when you hit him
he lets you hit him twice.
(Lawrence, 1929m, p. 471)
Lawrence blames such men for letting women change them and reduce their masculinity even
more. This becomes evident in his poem Female Coercion (of which the title itself, of course,
reeks of fragile masculinity):
If men only fought outwards into the world

women might be devoted and gentle
[…]
But when men turn Willy wet-legs
women start in to make changes:
only instead of changing things that might be changed
they want to change the man himself
(Lawrence, 1929f, p. 451)
Even though Lawrence tried to make himself appear manlier in his poetry, it is very tempting
to read a projection of himself as one of those ‘Willy wet-legs’ (Lawrence, 1929m, p. 471).
This is why a feminist reading which primarily focuses on Lawrence’s poetry allows for a
deeper understanding of the inner workings of fragile patriarchal macho-culture. The more
Lawrence tries to reaffirm his manliness with his poetry by demeaning women (or weak
37
men), the more he becomes a pastiche of the heteronormative macho-culture. Lawrence tries
too hard to be manly and by doing so he makes himself appear even more insecure. This is
why Simpson describes Lawrence the poet as a ‘caricature of Lawrence as the squeaky-
voiced, hysterical, impotent prophet of virility’ (Simpson, 1982, p. 13). What makes this
situation almost comical is that it appears that Lawrence had a certain self-awareness of this.
In the poem Self-Pity, he writes:
I never saw a wild thing

sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.
(Lawrence, 1929k, p. 382)
This leaves room for interpretation that despite said awareness, he preferred blaming women
for his animosity. In Tarts, Lawrence’s bitterness and resentment towards women becomes
apparent:
I suppose tarts are called tarts because they’re tart,

meaning sour, make you pull a face after.
And I suppose most girls are a bit tarty today,

so that’s why so many young men have long faces.
(Lawrence, 1929l, p. 443)
Instead of realising how his own idolisation of women and his fragility were leading to his
disappointment, it was easier for him to put the blame on modern women through the
medium of his poetry. Nevertheless, Lawrence’s poetry offers valuable insight to the inner
workings of fragile masculinity. It appears that Lawrence’s fear of women is the result of a
feeling of inferiority. This feeling of inferiority is nothing but the consequence of a
patriarchal macho-culture that Lawrence found himself in and took part in. He was even
promoting it with his poetry. One interpretation of why Lawrence was taking part in this toxic
culture is that he tried to reaffirm his manliness with his poetry because he perceived himself
as effeminate due to his proximity to his mother, his ‘housewifely skills’ (Siegel, 1991, p.
32), and his profession as a writer. Therefore, one can say that Lawrence seemed to be stuck
in a vicious circle as he was following his career as a writer: ‘the further he embedded
himself in a female tradition [the] further eroded his masculinity’ (Siegel, 1991, p. 49).
38
Moreover, Lawrence’s insecurities were amplified because the people surrounding him might
have made him aware of it even more, which in return made his struggle to hide it worse.
According to Schulze, ‘women noticed his unmanly behaviour and that the male environment
was mocking him for his lack in manliness’ (Schulze, 2002, p. 72) The only way for
Lawrence to reaffirm his manliness was by demeaning women (which has led to his sexism),
just like one of the boys would do: ‘Lawrence must begin by asserting that he is a man and
waiting for acceptance as one’ (Siegel, 1991, p. 45)’. In a twist of irony, Lawrence’s fragile-
masculinity-ridden poetry and his attempt to make himself look manly by belittling women
only reaffirm Virginia Woolf’s idea that women ‘have served all these centuries as looking-
glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its
natural size’ (Woolf, 1928, p. 37). One justification for labelling Lawrence as sexist is to
accuse him of wilfully falling into this patriarchal trope of degrading women to boost his
male ego, especially as he was not able to prove his manliness by competing with other men
as he was perceived as effeminate (even though he mocked the ‘Willy wet-legs’ (Lawrence,
1929m, p. 471). Interestingly though, this aspect of Lawrence’s sexism in his poetry proves to
be useful to gender studies by showing how vague the definition of what defines manhood is,
creating a sense of pressure resulting in ‘toxic masculinity’ (Temple, 2018) of which women
have to bear the brunt:
fragility of masculinity is the sticky space of enacting masculinity within narrow

confines, and the fear of being caught failing at demonstrating dominance and
superiority, given that hegemonic masculinity is privileged and rewarded
(Kimmel, 2013 cited in Myketiak, 2016, p. 291).
This also fits in with current discussions in gender studies that gender or gender-identity is a
fluctuating social construct rather than something innate (Evans and Williams, 2013), and
that the habits associated with gender are learned rather than inherent (Beauvoir, 1949 /
Evans and Williams, 2013). Lawrence shows an awareness of this in his short story Tickets,
Please!
39
40
III.2) Fragility and reversed roles – Tickets, Please!
Lawrence’s fear of women is not only apparent in his poetry but can also be found in his
short stories, especially those written during and after the Great War. Simpson calls this fear
a ‘post-war paranoia […] shared with many men of his generation’ (Simpson, 1982, p. 15).
The context for this is that due to the lack of manpower during the Great War, many women
were tasked or had the opportunity to fill in for the men who were fighting at the front in
order to keep society working. These new jobs brought significant changes for women: those
changes ‘gave [women] new social freedoms and a staggering financial independence’
(Simpson, 1982, p. 63) and the changes ‘changed attitudes to sexuality in a direction that was
generally in [women’s] favour’ (Simpson, 1982, p. 64). As Lawrence depicted these changes
almost with the accuracy of a historian, he took great care to describe how the Great War had
changed society in its everyday life. In his short story Tickets, Please! he wrote about modern
female conductors:
the most dangerous tram-service in England, as the authorities themselves declare, with
pride, is entirely conducted by girls, and driven by rash young men, a little crippled, or
by delicate young men, who creep forward in terror. The girls are fearless young
hussies. In their ugly blue uniform […] they have all the sang-froid of an old non-
commissioned officer. […] They push off the men at the end of their distance. They are
not going to be done in the eye- not they. They fear nobody – and everybody fears them
(Lawrence, 1918b, p. 30).
The reason why the short story Tickets, Please! is particularly interesting in terms of
reclaiming Lawrence for feminism is that it shows that the author had an awareness of how
elements such as class and gender influence one’s identity and behaviour. Lawrence
describes the changes of women adopting and embracing masculine attitudes and privileges
just as they adopt the authority and cool-headedness that come with the masculine aspect of
the uniforms. Unfortunately, Lawrence does this with a tone full of disdain: ‘Women in
trousers, women lobbying for the vote, women conducting trams and running farms – all
were, to him, signs of decay’(Ruderman, 1984, p. 17) .Whereas one might initially think that
Tickets, Please! might be a gender-norms defying story, it is unfortunately a critique of
modernisation. Lawrence’s negative tone originates from his ‘horror of automatism’ (Nin,
1932, p. 88) which has as its source the mechanised warfare and industrial production of the
time. Lawrence was afraid that the changes could affect women as much as it had already
41
affected men: ‘Lawrence had never argued that women should enter the masculine world of
industry and technology which he hated’ (Simpson, 1982, p. 66). What is problematic here is
that it appears that Lawrence was not in favour of women’s progress in the modern world.
Instead, he wanted them to move away from the progress society had achieved. Furthermore,
what was most threatening to Lawrence were not women having to face repetitive and
mechanical work at factories when stepping in for the missing male workforce, but the social
changes that these temporary jobs brought, as Schulze explains:
[a]s the men went off to war, leaving the women at home to take on traditionally male
occupations and responsibilities, profound changes occurred in the male-female
relationship. These changes were deeply threatening to Lawrence (Ruderman, 1984, p.
17).
In Tickets, Please! Annie and her female conductor colleagues group up on a man and dare
him to tell them who he fancies most, all because he was a known womaniser who had
disappointed and misled some of the female conductors in the past: ‘‘Nay, you’ve got to
make your pick,’ said Muriel […] They pushed him to a wall and stood him there with his
face to it’ (Lawrence, 1918b, p. 37). The womaniser in question is John, whose only interest
is to ‘remain a nocturnal presence [and who] hated intelligent interest’ (Lawrence, 1918b, p.
33). It is interesting to note that John seems to be echoing Lawrence’s poet-persona. When
confronted by the female conductors, John finds himself backed into a corner, and the dare
and teasing that he faces turn into violence:
He went forward, rather vaguely. She had taken off her belt, and swinging it, she
fetched him a sharp blow over the head with the buckle end. He sprang and seized her.
But immediately the other girls rushed upon him, pulling and tearing and beating him.
Their blood was now thoroughly up. He was their sport now (Lawrence, 1918b, p. 38).
As the event is unfolding, John is assaulted by the women as they enter into a sort of rage:
His tunic was simply torn off his back, his shirt sleeves were torn away, his arms were
naked. The girls rushed at him, clenched their hands on him and pulled at him. […] The
sight of his white, bare arm maddened the girls. He lay in a kind of trance of fear and
antagonism. They felt themselves filled with supernatural strength (Lawrence, 1918b,
p. 38-39).
42
What is so problematic about this scene is that in a contemporary context it can be interpreted
as hinting at sexual violence. Williams even goes as far as to describe this scene as ‘female
gang-rape’ (Williams, 1993, p. 130). Indeed, John does leave the scene like a rape-victim
with torn clothes, injuries, full of fear and shame, while the women are readjusting their
uniforms and make-up and pretending as if nothing had happened:
The other girls turned aside. He remained lying on the floor, with his torn clothes and
bleeding, averted face.
[…]
He, however, kept his face closed and averted from them all. There was silence of the
end. He picked up the torn pieces of his tunic, without knowing what to do with them.
The girls stood about uneasily, flushed, panting […] He looked at none of them. He
espied his cap in a corner, and went and picked it up. He put it on his head, and one of
the girls burst into a shrill, hysteric laugh at the sight he presented (Lawrence, 1918b, p.
40-41).
Whereas the short story starts off as a modern depiction of solidary women in the workforce,
it turns into a shady story of women behaving like predatory men. At this point in the analysis
it should be clear that Tickets, Please! is the culmination of Lawrence’s fears of independent
women claiming their agency and freedom (previously only granted to men), as they ‘fight
against men, or against man’s representative, the phallic male himself’(Simpson, 1982, p.
64).
Nevertheless, there are certain aspects of the story relevant to feminism that cannot be
brushed over. Initially, by having the female conductors adopt gendered jobs and thus adopt
gendered behaviour, Lawrence provides feminism and gender studies with a prime example
of how gender is performative and learned. If women act like men when taking on men’s
jobs, then this goes to show that gender is behavioural and learned and not inherent. This
again reaffirms Simone de Beauvoir’s theory (1949). Unfortunately, Lawrence’s awareness
of the shift in gender roles and gender expectations is for him something to be lamented:
Man has assumed the gentle, all-sympathetic role, and woman has become the energetic
party, with the authority in her hands. […] Which is a reversal of the old flow. The
woman is now the initiator, man the responder (Lawrence, 1921, p. 49).
43
In a way, Lawrence acknowledges that gender is not static but fluid, which is part of
recurring discussions that make Lawrence relevant for modern gender studies.
Furthermore, what Lawrence did with Tickets, Please! was to hold up a mirror to men’s
predatory behaviour. Simpson explains that the women in Tickets, Please! :
have attacked the double standard and their own status as sexual objects; attacked the
notion that women are incapable of solidarity and must always compete with each other
when a man is at stake; and shown themselves capable of violent action (Simpson,
1982, p. 69).
Although Lawrence’s reasons could not have been further away from feminism, Lawrence
does criticize patriarchy’s violent and sexual abusive behaviour towards women by granting
his female characters privileges and power which have traditionally been reserved to men.
The women in the short story then use these privileges and this power to behave like men
towards other men, even going as far as to (sexually) assault and humiliate a womaniser to
get revenge on him. One has to acknowledge that to a certain extent Lawrence uses a feminist
method of reversing gender-roles to criticise society (albeit he did not criticise patriarchy as
such but only modern society in general).
When looking at all the negative feminist criticism that Lawrence has faced over the years
one can say that it is unfair to simply dismiss Lawrence as sexist because with Tickets,
Please! he shows an awareness of intersectionality regarding class and gender. Moreover, by
describing how women take up patriarchal values when taking on jobs usually associated
with men and then spiral into (sexual) violence by appropriating the behaviour they have seen
in men, Lawrence holds up a mirror to patriarchal society and by doing so, criticises it.
Nonetheless, what is problematic is that the reason why Lawrence does so is most likely
because he wants to criticise the effects that modernity has on the society he lives in; he most
likely does not aim at criticising the toxic effect of patriarchal values inherent in society.
Moreover, it is not difficult to notice a sense of unease in this short story as women have
acquired new privileges previously only granted to men. Those privileges now threaten
patriarchy, since those same privileges that previously held women back can now empower
women who in return can demand equal rights and opportunities. This ‘feeling that ‘women’s
gains during the war had been achieved at the expenses of men, or even men’s lives’(Schulze,
2002, p. 37) only added fuel to Lawrence’s fragile masculinity.
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III.3) Masculinity under threat -The Fox
The sum of Lawrence’s male fears is personified by those who, with the social changes of
that specific period, threaten the patriarchal norms of gender relations: lesbian and dandies.
The epitome of his male fears culminates in his short story The Fox, which according to
Spilka ‘deals head on with the clashing of wills between men and women, and with the
sexual differences defined by it’ (Spilka, 1978, p. 195). The Fox is the story of Banford and
March (also referred to as Nellie), two women living on a farm. A modern feminist reading of
this story directly leads to the assumption that Banford and March are living in a lesbian
relationship. Although Lawrence did not explicitly describe the women’s relationship as
such, it becomes apparent that they are living as what Spilka refers to a ‘muted lesbian pair’
(Spilka, 1978, p. 196). What is intriguing is that Lawrence almost creates a queer utopia
within his short story, as Banford and March are living self-sufficiently on their property and
only need each other’s company. Yet this subtle lesbian idyll is destroyed by the arrival of a
prime example of Lawrence’s patriarchal macho-yet-fragile protagonist, Henry. Henry,
having returned from the war, claims that the property belongs to him and invades the
women’s space. Soon, he begins to desire March. As cocky as Henry is, he begins to assert
himself even though March is older than he: ‘What if she was older than he? It didn’t matter.
When he thought of her dark, startled, vulnerable eyes he smiled subtly to himself. He was
older than she, really. He was master of her’ (Lawrence, 1923b, p. 23). As soon as Henry
arrives it becomes clear that this Lawrentian proto-macho will infiltrate and destroy the
peaceful queer utopia that Banford and March have created. Furthermore Henry, when
thinking about March, echoes Lawrence’s misogynist desire for passive women found in his
poetry:
He wouldn’t let her exert her love towards him. No, she had to be passive, to acquiesce,
and to be submerged under the surface of love. She had to be like the seaweeds she saw
as she peered down from the boat, swaying forever delicately under water (Lawrence,
1923b, p. 67).
It is difficult not to read Henry’s thoughts in the voice of Lawrence the poet when reading
passages such as the following that express a desire to possess women that have no real self
or own opinion: ‘He wanted to take away her consciousness, and make her just his woman.
Just his woman’ (Lawrence, 1923b, p. 70).
45
When Henry tells Banford that he wants to ask March to marry him, a heated argument
between the two erupts, with March in the middle of it:
“I’ll never believe it, Nellie,” she cried. “It is absolutely impossible!”
Her plaintive, fretful voice had a thread of hot anger and despair.
“Why? Why shouldn’t you believe it?” asked the youth, with all his soft, velvety
impertinence in his voice” (Lawrence, 1923b, p35).
During this argument, Banford manages to regain her composure by belittling Henry while
trying to convince March not to let Henry break up their working relationship: ‘While I live
he’s never going to set foot here. I know what it would be. He’d soon think he was master of
both of us, as he thinks he’s master of you already’ (Lawrence, 1923b, p. 37). It is at this
exact moment that Banford becomes a threat and a target to Henry, who previously had been
sure of himself as the irresistible and dominating man. Henry then decides that he needs to
get rid of Banford by any means necessary in order to be able to conquer March. Like in his
poetry, Lawrence puts all the blame on women. The dynamic that evolves from this moment
is relevant to feminist and gender studies as it shows how twisted fragile masculinity can be
to assert male dominance when facing strong women, especially of the kind that cannot be
sexually seduced and submitted (i.e. lesbians). Moreover, in an ironic twist Lawrence
unintentionally confirmed that the lesbian relationship between Banford and March is far
more balanced and harmonious than any heterosexual relationship between March and Henry,
as March is reflecting on her choice: ‘And [March] had been so used to the very opposite.
She had had to take all the thought for love and for life, and all the responsibility’ (Lawrence,
1923b, p. 67). In some ways this confirms the quality of the queer utopia and the quality of
female companionships compared to heteronormative expectations.
It is interesting to note that there is another element relevant to gender studies: March’s
transition from muted lesbian to heterosexual woman. Throughout the story Lawrence
describes March’s transformation through which she is ‘is womanized in the process’
(Williams, 1997, p. 70). By doing so, Lawrence explores the concept of gender-fluidity
(Evans and Williams, 2013 [double-check]). It is as if Lawrence has an awareness of how
gender can be acted out on a spectrum and can be influenced by one’s entourage.
Nevertheless, as the story progresses, Henry kills Banford, pretending it is an accident. Henry
has thereby removed the last obstacle to seducing March. Having nobody else to turn to,
46
March gives in and marries Henry, who tries to suppress her spirit. What is interesting is that
Lawrence does not offer a fairy-tale ending in The Fox, but that he depicts a rather depressing
marriage (especially compared to the harmonious queer relationship March had with
Banford):
And she was so tired, so tired, like a child that wants to go to sleep, but which fights
against sleep as if sleep were death. […] She would keep awake. She would know. She
would consider and judge and decide. She would have the reins of her own life between
her own hands. She would be an independent woman to the last- - But she was so tired,
so tired of everything. And there was such rest in the boy (Lawrence, 1923b, p. 70).
It seems that Henry’s ‘process of anaesthetizing the bride’ (Millet, 1970, p. 265) has been
nearly successful. Yet one trademark of the Lawrentian female protagonists is that they are
resilient, as Williams points out: ‘these women submit only partially, and with great
resistance’ (Williams, 1997, p. 43). The previous passage shows that March still has a
memory of the quality of the previous lesbian relationship and is aware of how toxic the
marriage to Henry is. Therefore, one can say that this awareness and this (fading) resilience
of the protagonist is a sort of feminist critique of toxic patriarchal marriage, or as Nelson
describes March’s struggle ‘a resistance against the symbolic power and the tyranny of
patriarchal law’ (Nelson, 1990, p. 130) (albeit a failed resistance that ended in the victory for
the patriarch). Lawrence almost depicts heteronormative relationships as a lose-lose situation
by portraying Henry as jealous of the quality of March’s previous non-heteronormative
relationship, even resenting March for it: ‘He ought never to have killed Banford. He should
have left Banford and March to kill one another’ (Lawrence, 1923b, p. 70). Henry’s thoughts
show how resentful he is despite having attained his goal of marrying March by destroying
the queer utopia.
Thus, one way then to reclaim Lawrence for 21st century feminism (and in this case queer-
studies) is to read The Fox as an attempt to deconstruct the notion of heteronormative
marriage by describing how heteronormative and patriarchal expectations for love and
relationships can gradually spiral down. By doing so, one can even highlight the balanced and
harmonious qualities of queer or non-heteronormative/non-patriarchal relationships.
Unfortunately, it seems that The Fox is more of an attack on homosexuals and in this case
lesbian women, as Millet points out that for the murder of Banford ‘[t]he most feasible
explanation of [Lawrence’s] hatred for female homosexuality or even friendship of any kind
47
seems to be political distrust’ (Millet, 1970, p. 266). This seems to be the case for Lawrence,
as one can find homophobic elements in his fragile-masculinity-infused poetry. In Ego-Bound
Women, Lawrence wrote:
Ego-bound women are often lesbian,

perhaps always.
Perhaps the ego-bound can only love their own kind,

if they can love at all.
And of all passions

the lesbian passion is the most appalling.
(Lawrence, 1929c, p. 390)
It appears that for Lawrence, strong and independent women cannot fit in the patriarchal
world and must be lesbians, queers, or sexual deviants and should therefore be removed as
they are a threat to patriarchy. This homophobia and violence directed at women is the main
reason why The Fox deserves the harsh feminist criticism it has received from literary critics
such as Spilka:
It is one thing to assign death-wishes to spiteful lesbians, quite another to sanction

murder in the name of life; and still quite another to assume responsibility for
accessible, hence vulnerable women, while denying them independent spirit and
responsibility (Spilka, 1978, p. 196).
Lawrence’s homophobic elements unfortunately risk disqualifying him from being redeemed
by modern feminism, as modern feminism aims at being inclusive and intersectional.
Nonetheless, as is the case for his poetry, Lawrence’s homophobic elements in his works give
insight to the inner workings of fragile masculinity. Indeed, it seems that any aspect that
could threaten the heteronormative binary order is seen as a threat, as is the case for sexually
liberated women, homosexuals, and dandies: ‘the new woman and the dandy were perceived
as threats to classic Victorian definitions of gender’ (Schulze, 2002, p. 28). Just like he
mocked lesbians in his poetry, Lawrence did so with dandies as well. In Women Want
Fighters for Their Lovers, Lawrence’s disdain for dandies and men that do not fit the trope of
patriarchal masculine men comes full circle with his disdain for ‘Willy wet-legs’ (Lawrence,
1929m, p. 471):
48
Women don’t want wistful

mushy pathetic young men
struggling doubtful embraces
then trying again
(Lawrence, 1929n, p. 374)
The insight that modern feminism can gain from Lawrence’s poetry and The Fox reveals that
the ‘crisis of identity for men’ (Schulze, 2002, p. 33) is not a modern problem, but that it has
been around before. The resulting homophobia happens because any individual who disrupts
the binary patriarchal heteronormative order is seen as a threat. Such is the case for The Fox’s
Banford, whose sexuality and gender-non-conformity threaten Henry and the patriarchal
order. Banford becomes a threat and a target for Henry because in her ‘is eventually focused
all the power and authority of patriarchal culture as it is encountered and attacked by the
boy’( Nelson, 1990, p. 135). Banford, who dresses and behaves in a masculine way, can
despite the lack of male-privilege, stand her ground just as any man in a patriarchal society
could have done due to her living with March in their private queer utopia away from
patriarchal society. It is Banford’s strong bond with March that is the reason why Henry feels
threatened by her. With Lawrence’s poetry in mind, it is not difficult to imagine that Henry is
nothing but a projection of Lawrence’s insecurities and of his wish to restore simple and
binary patriarchal norms by any means, as William elaborates:
the vehemence of the battle Lawrence stages in The Fox can then partly be attributed to
his wider contempt for the sexual blurring of modernity’s decadence, for it was the
flapper and the fop of the dandy who most urgently suggested that girls will be boys
and boys will be girls, well before more recent postmodern gender-bending. Henry’s
aim seems finally to be nothing more nor less than to establish a pure distinction of the
sexes, a re-establishment of the natural mastery (Williams, 1997, p. 79).
It is because of this that Ruderman labels the murder of Banford as Henry’s ‘own little-boy
revenge’ (Ruderman, 1984, p. 55). Simpson even goes as far as to read Henry’s murderous
act as Lawrence’s own ‘revenge on independent women’ (Simpson, 1982, p. 70).
When it comes to Lawrence’s homophobic and misogynist poetry one needs to acknowledge
the fact that they disqualify him from being redeemed under modern feminist scrutiny.
49
Nevertheless, Lawrence’s poetry and his short stories offer insight into a patriarchal gender-
identity-malaise that evolved into what we nowadays refer to as fragile masculinity. One can
even say that Lawrence accidentally showed early symptoms of modern fragile masculinity.
More importantly, Lawrence’s redemption can be found in Tickets, Please! as it offers an
interesting approach of Lawrence upholding a mirror to patriarchal society even though
Lawrence must have aimed at dismissing the modern woman with this short story. It is in this
sense ironic that Tickets, Please! reveals the privileges and power patriarchy grants to men by
exploring the idea of reversed gender-roles through the shift that was occurring in society and
gender roles between the two wars.
Finally, depending on which discourse of literary feminist one may adopt, one can still read
The Fox as a critique of patriarchal heteronormative relationships. Spilka describes
Lawrence’s portrayal of heteronormative relationships in The Fox as a ‘fight to the death – or
to new life: these are the odds, this is how Lawrence sees courtship and marriage’ (Spilka,
1978, p. 194). What remains to discuss is how this struggle for power in heteronormative
relationships was fought in Lawrence’s mind. And which weapon is better suited to waging a
war between genders than sex?
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IV. Sexual and visual dominance
Sex and Power (Hrivniakova, 2019)
51
52
IV.1) Sex and power – Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Sex is a crucial element in Lawrence’s writing for which he had been harshly criticised and
which even led to censorship of his works. Because of the explicit content and the resulting
consequences, Eggert describes Lawrence as a ‘sex-crucified man’ (Eggert, 2001, p. 157).
But it is exactly because Lawrence wrote so much about sex that modern feminism should
have a closer look at his stories. Given the circumstances of the period, Lawrence’s writing
on sex was very progressive from a feminist point of view because he dared to write about
female pleasure, which ran contrary to Victorian and Edwardian values of modesty. Harris
suggests that during this period ‘the main fight of the time was between those who would
venerate woman’s supposedly nonsexual, angelic nature and those who would recognize her
sexuality’ (Harris, 1990, p. 74). Just like with his writings on motherhood, Lawrence was
against the Victorian tradition when it came to female sexuality. Not only did he
acknowledge female sexuality by writing about his heroines’ desires, but he even went as far
as to acknowledge their sexual pleasures. Knowing that the female orgasm is an ongoing
topic within feminist discourse because it still appears to be a taboo topic for society and on
social media, it is quite fascinating how progressive Lawrence had already been at his time.
And what novel is better to analyse his writings on female sexuality than the notorious Lady
Chatterley’s Lover?
To put it simply, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is ‘a book about sex’ (Shiach, 2001, p. 87). The
many sexual encounters of its main heroine Connie Chatterley in the book led to Anaïs Nin
describing the novel as Lawrence’s ‘fleshiest’ (Nin, 1932, p. 107) work. But the book is more
than just about sex: it is a book about power. What was initially so shocking about the novel
was Lawrence’s depiction of an upper-class woman having an affair with a man of a lower
status, depicting ‘a cross-class union and which positioned the woman as more socially
powerful’ (Williams, 1997, p. 95). This reveals an acute awareness on Lawrence’s part of the
intersectionality of class and sex that lead him to shock society so much that he had to fight
against censorship.
Nonetheless, what is more important in regards to modern feminism is how Lawrence
allowed his heroine to achieve control over her sexuality. In order to understand the
importance of this, it is necessary to look at Lawrence’s views on sex. The broad view on sex
is that ‘[s]uccessful sex is considered equivalent to pleasurable sex. One must do one’s best,
it is supposed, to make sex as pleasurable as possible for one’s self and for one’s partner’
53
(Apter, 1978, p. 167). Yet just like Lawrence observed the power-shift happening in modern
society (as previously analysed in Tickets, Please!), he observed a similar rift happening
during sexual intercourse. To Lawrence, it seemed that modern sex did not in any way bring
two lovers (and thereby the two genders) closer to each other. In the first chapters of Lady
Chatterley’s Lover, Lawrence depicted Connie as well as her sister’s sexual experiences
during their coming-of-age as such:
In the actual sex-thrill within the body, the sisters nearly succumbed to the strange male
power. But quickly they recovered themselves, took the sex-thrill as a sensation, and
remained free (Lawrence, 1928b, p. 34).
Despite the shortness of this passage, it is of utmost relevance to understand Lawrence’s

views on modern attitudes towards sex, as he explicitly equated modern sex with power in
those few lines. Connie and her sister had quickly learned that although men might be
empowered by patriarchal society, it was not necessarily the case during sex. Through the
means of sex, Connie and her sister indulged in sexual pleasure without losing control, even
gaining power over men. One can say that this is a rather modern feminist interpretation of
agency of female sexuality. However, the reason why Lawrence depicted their sexual
coming-of-age as such surely must have been to criticise modern sexual relationships because
for Lawrence it was a negative aspect that ‘in modern sex, each partner arrives at orgasm
separately, remaining in rational control, rather than achieving mutual orgasm in an act of
submission for the ego’ (Ayers, 2004, p. 88). This means that for Lawrence, even though
traditional sex aimed at simultaneous climaxes, it required at least one lover to willingly
submit to the other person’s desire, resulting in one person having power and the other person
relinquishing theirs. As Williams explains it, ‘sex is not just consummation, but consuming- a
consuming which enables the absorber to rise above the absorbed’ (Williams, 1997, p. 75).
For Lawrence, the detachment of sex and power-relations in modern sexuality meant that
modern lovers both refused to hand over control and still remained separate and lonely even
though their sexual relationships should offer two lovers the closest possible form of intimacy
and connection. Yet interestingly, as Connie refuses to give her power away in traditional
heteronormative sex, she learns that she can gain power by controlling her climax:
A woman could take a man without really giving herself away. Certainly she could take
him without giving herself into his power. Rather she could use this sex thing to have
power over him. For she only had to hold herself back in sexual intercourse, and let him
54
finish and expend himself without herself coming to the crisis; and then she could
prolong the connexion and achieve her orgasm and her crisis while he was merely her
tool (Lawrence, 1928b, p. 33).
It is perhaps due to this absence of patriarchal-orientated power in modern sex that women
such as Connie were able to learn to empower themselves. It is as if modern sex had created a
power-vacuum in which Connie could learn to harness her own sexual powers. This is
perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, as Lawrence created
a female protagonist who was in control of her sexuality to the point that she had control over
her lovers, tipping over any prior heteronormative power-relations. As with all of the
previously discussed aspects of Lawrence’s writing, there is a certain irony in that Lawrence
bemoaned the loss of traditional heteronormative sexual power-relations in which a man
would have power over a woman, yet at the same time he gave Connie the power over her
own orgasm and through this gave her power over her lovers. Connie’s power over her
orgasm is one of the stronger arguments to redeem Lawrence for modern feminism, as female
sexual pleasure still seems to be a wildly discussed topic in society and on social media due
to issues of censorship, misrepresentation, and misinformation. By creating Connie
Chatterley, Lawrence had inadvertently created the blueprints for a sexually-liberated female
heroine who reclaimed her agency. Moreover, just like in Tickets, Please!, Lawrence
switched traditional gender-roles and power-relations, thereby upholding a mirror to society.
Whereas women were considered as passive and men as active during sex, Connie’s control
over her orgasm flipped the script:
But then she soon learnt to hold him, to keep him there inside her when his crisis was
over […] And as he felt the frenzy of her achieving her own orgasmic satisfaction from
his hard, erect passivity, he had a curious sense of pride and satisfaction (Lawrence,
1928b, p. 51).
In this example, it becomes clear that Lawrence gave Connie the active role and her male
lover was reduced to the passive role. It is interesting how Connie’s male lovers are
objectified through this process, as Simpson highlights that ‘the phallus becomes merely an
object that the woman can use for her own sexual gratification’ (Simpson, 1982, p. 139). As
nowadays modern feminism is still fighting against the objectification and sexualisation of
women, Lady Chatterley’s Lover can perhaps be used as an example to explain this issue to
“men who would just not get it”. Moreover, it is noteworthy to point out that the passivity
55
that Lawrence gave to Connie’s lovers is a departure from the ‘phallocentrism’ (Felluga,
2015, p. 217) that he had been accused of by feminist critics (especially by his harshest critic
Kate Millet (1970)), since in this novel the penis had almost been reduced to the state of a
living sex toy.
In order to see this, it is important to understand what phallocentrism is about. Phallocentrism
in feminist discourse describes the ‘tendency of masculine language to orient itself toward
not only the center and presence but also order, […] rules, and binary oppositions’ (Felluga,
2015, p. 98) with the masculine language being ‘a negotiation of the phallus’ (Felluga, 2015,
p. 217). Even though Lady Chatterley’s Lover also has the typical phallocentric elements of
Lawrence with plenty of descriptions of erect penises and vulgar language, it is surprising
that it has a female heroine with a sort of clitoral power at the centre of the narrative. This
might still be shocking to many people today, just as it was shocking in Lawrence’s time,
because in a patriarchal society power is associated with men and their sexual prowess. This
is what makes Lady Chatterley’s Lover so relevant to modern feminism, as ‘the clitoris was a
weapon, against the male’ (Lessing, 2006, p. xiii). As Connie was discovering her power, her
lovers could not keep up with her control over her orgasm, resulting in a feeling of inferiority
for the men. One example for this is Michaelis, one of Connie’s lovers, who complains to her
after one of their sexual escapades:
You know what I mean. You keep on for hours after I’ve gone off… and I have to hang
on with my teeth till you bring yourself off by your own exertions (Lawrence, 1928b, p.
71).
What is so fascinating about Connie’s clitoris-centred power is that her delayed orgasm
fuelled the insecurities of men, of which the origin was as Spilka explains ‘a fear of
castration, or of deficiency, as of displacement, dysfunction, or exclusion from what ought to
be a mutual process’ (Spilka, 1990, p. 182). Connie herself had an awareness of this, as her
controlled delayed orgasm could (physically and metaphorically) shrink any man:
He was the trembling, excited sort of lover, whose crisis soon came and was finished.
There was something curiously child-like and defenceless about his naked body: as
children are naked. His defences were all in his wits and cunning, […] and when these
were in abeyance he seemed doubly naked and like a child, of unfinished, tender flesh,
and somehow struggling helplessly (Lawrence, 1928b, p. 71).
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It is quite interesting that Lawrence, to some extent, admitted the weakness of a man post-
climax: stripped not only of clothing but of sexual stamina, struggling to keep the sexual act
going to please a woman in order to prove one’s sexual prowess, naked and shrinking. It is
through Connie’s experiences that Lawrence almost admits defeat in the face of the power of
a woman who has mastered her sexuality. This is perhaps the strongest argument regarding
women and sexuality to reclaim Lawrence for modern feminism.
Perhaps before proceeding with the analysis of Lawrence’s depiction of Connie’s sexual
powers, it is important to highlight that there might be a problem of authenticity. One finds
themselves asking the question whether a male author could truly write about female sexual
experiences in any authentic manner. This question has been the object of harsh criticism. For
instance, Foster strongly criticised Lawrence’s writing on the female orgasm by stating that
‘Lawrence’s views on the clitoral orgasm like his views on masturbation, are rubbish. They
are the product of fear, misunderstanding, and the urge to control every aspect of creative
activities’ (Foster, 1994, p. 20). Yet it is perhaps this fear that enables feminist criticism to
better understand the ‘male fears [that are] abound in this novel’ (Spilka, 1990, p. 180); fears
which ultimately come down to a ‘fear of female sexuality’ (Spilka, 1990, p. 186). This fear
is nothing else than the result of fragile masculinity since a man who could not please a
woman would disgrace his own sexual prowess and thereby would make himself inferior. As
Lawrence’s depiction of Connie’s sexual powers could be celebrated as feminist, his
depictions of her frail lovers could, as with his poetry, help feminism to better understand the
inner workings of fragile masculinity in order to dismantle it.
One such example happens just after the passage of Michaelis complaining to Connie in
which we can find echoes of Lawrence’s fragile poetry. When Connie is about to fall in love
with Michaelis, he uses his insecurity (or powerlessness) that comes from her climactic
control over him to break off his relationship with her:
Connie only half heard this piece of novel, masculine information. She was only
stunned by his feeling against her… his incomprehensible brutality. […]
But once he had started her, it seemed only natural for her to come to her own crisis
with him. Almost she had loved him for it… almost that night she loved him, and
wanted to marry him.
Perhaps instinctively he knew it, and that was why he had to bring down the whole
show with a smash; the house of cards. Her whole sexual feeling for him, or for any
man, collapsed that night (Lawrence, 1928b, p. 72).
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The spiteful tone of a frightened man towards a woman who is about to fall in love with him
is exactly the same as in Lawrence’s poetry. Whereas one might think that Connie’s control
over her orgasm and her dominance over the men in her life should redeem Lawrence for
modern feminism (as he portrayed a woman’s agency over her sexuality), the influence of
fragile masculinity on Lawrence yet again ruined the possibility of redemption as it appears
that Lawrence had to find a way for his male characters to overcome Connie. Unfortunately,
this was only possible through the notorious anal-sex scene in Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
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IV.2) The male’s ego-t(r)ip – Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Even though the anal-sex scene in Lady Chatterley’s Lover is not at all graphic, it became so
notorious because for Connie, ‘the biggest transformation comes from sodomy’ (Foster,
1994, p. 32). This scene defies all norms of Victorian modesty, and Connie seems to have
liberated herself from these Victorian shackles through anal sex:
Burning out the shames, the deepest, oldest shames, in the most secret places. It cost
her an effort to let him have his way and his will of her. She had to be a passive,
consenting thing, like a slave, a physical slave. […] But it took some getting at, the core
of the physical jungle, the last and deepest recess of organic shame. The phallos alone
could explore it. And how he had pressed in on her! (Lawrence, 1928b, p. 232).
One way feminism can interpret this notorious scene as empowering is that from a sexually-
liberating perspective it can be seen as an example of loss of a sense of shame or guilt
indoctrinated by religion and society. This point of view is represented by Becket, who states
that Connie was ‘deriving unsought pleasure from anal penetration where sensuality
obliterates the learned responses of shame’ (Becket, 2001, p. 226). This feminist approach
celebrates a heroine in full control of her sexual pleasures in spite of societal values. Even
though Lawrence wanted his female protagonists to explore shame and openness, it is
nevertheless an openness that invites them (and maybe the female readers too) to explore
sexuality in a way that inevitably allows men to enjoy it even more due to the women’s
willingness to explore and to offer themselves sexually to their lovers. This is the sort of
“sell-out/commercialised” feminism from which men can profit which is nothing else than
popularised “soft” feminism that men can tolerate as long as they are getting rewarded for it.
If this had been Lawrence’s intention all along, then he would have deserved all the harsh
feminist criticism he has received so far.
It might, however, be worth considering another feminist defence of this scene. For Connie,
anal sex is the only form of penetrative sexual practice that safeguards her from pregnancy.
Since Clifford wants her to have affairs in order to become pregnant and conceive a heir, anal
sex is one of the few practices during which Connie can seek out sexual pleasures without
fulfilling her husband’s wish, thereby liberating herself from him and the burden of
motherhood. Since her husband has asked her to become pregnant, he has in a certain way
always been on her mind during her affairs. Perhaps there is also a sense of shame on
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Connie’s part due to her inability to fulfil her husband’s expectations. This loss of shame
during the anal sex scene can perhaps also be read as a sense of liberation from the
patriarchal duties forced onto her as wife and potential mother.
Nonetheless, from a modern feminist point of view, this scene is far more problematic than
empowering. For once, it is one of Lawrence’s most phallocentric (Millet, 1970) scenes, as it
is the penis that is explicitly portrayed as the sole means to rid Connie of any shame by
means of ‘the most intimate penetration of the private being in the body’ (Kinkead-Weekes,
1978, p. 117). Moreover, what is deeply troublesome about this specific scene is that one
ought not to forget that it is about ‘heterosexual sodomy’ (Williams, 1993, p. 103) in which
Mellors reveals his ‘hostility of clitoral orgasm’ (Balbert, 1989, p. 6). Anal sex for Connie is
a form of penetrative sex that does not allow her to use her clitoral power to control and
delay her orgasm, thereby completely surrendering herself to Mellors by having no sexual
power over him. Additionally, anal sex is often considered as ‘degrading sexual behaviour’
(Russell, 2000, p. 50) which denies women pleasure, renders them passive, and is seen as a
dominating and humiliating practice. This is where Lawrence’s elements of fragile
masculinity and the projection of such onto Mellors come into play.
Indeed, the way the character Mellors is written invites readers and critics to read him as a
champion for Lawrence. Mellors’ working-class status, his sexual prowess, his physique, and
his manliness; all those characteristics are pointing to Mellors being a wishful projection of
Lawrence’s ideal of manliness in a time of dandies and ‘Willy wet-legs’ (Lawrence, 1929m,
p. 471), as Shiach points out that ‘the possible recovery of ‘manhood’ through labour is
imagined, through the activities of the gamekeeper’ (Shiach, 2001, p. 98). Yet the real way
for Mellors (and for Lawrence) to reclaim manhood was by dominating a woman who not
only was of a higher social status but who had previously sexually dominated her lovers by
being in control of her climax. Although the intersectionality of sex and class comes into
play, sex and power are used by Lawrence to show that ‘virility triumphs over the social
status of wealthy or even educated women’ (Millet, 1970, p. 36). This aspect could disqualify
any other positive feminist interpretations of this notorious scene because this scene
essentially sums up the patriarchal notion that male sexual prowess trumps all.
It is important to note that fragile masculinity not only affects men’s insecurities regarding
women but also other men. Mellors is reclaiming his masculinity and competitiveness ‘by
suborning the lady-class female, a feat which should give him courage to subordinate other
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males’ (Millet, 1970, p. 244). As Mellors could sexually dominate an upper-class woman
who would otherwise be unattainable or guarded from men of lower rank such as him, he
could reaffirm his manliness in spite of his lower social rank. One might even be tempted to
read this power trip as Lawrence’s own recital of the manliness he must have felt when he
eloped with his professor’s wife. One could say that as with Lawrence’s poetry, his writing
about anal sex is nothing more than a way for himself to overcome feelings of fragile
masculinity through a phallocentric power-trip.
Similar cases of phallocentrism intermixed with fragile masculinity in Lady Chatterley’s

Lover can be observed in other writings of Lawrence too. Some of Lawrence’s male
characters show tendencies of abusive and egotistical behaviour similar to the persona found
in Lawrence’s poetry. The relation between sex and power becomes evident when the male
protagonist in The Captain’s Doll is on a power trip and he is thinking about sexually
dominating his love-interest:
He wanted to make her love him so that he had power over her. He wanted to bully her,
physically, sexually, and from the inside’ (Lawrence, 1923a, p. 139).
Despite the shortness of this passage, it reveals the intensity of the misogyny that is a result of
the feeling of inferiority towards women. The protagonist clearly equates his sexual desires
with rape. Although Connie’s experiences appear to be consensual, Foster argues that Mellors
indeed had raped her during the anal-sex scene:
Ritual sodomy is historically a male domain in which male power is exercised. Connie
here is the underdog; she is initiated into the male mysteries of power and defilement.
She is raped, but Lawrence glosses over the fact, emphasizing the religious
transformation and catharsis she undergoes (Foster, 1994, p. 33-34).
Foster seems to be one of the few critics who interpret the anal-sex scene as rape, yet there
are other instances in the novel that are also very unclear on the consensual status of Connie
and Mellors’ sexual activities. One example is when Connie and Mellors are running naked
in the rain:
He gathered her lovely, heavy posteriors, one in each hand and pressed them in towards
him in a frenzy, quivering motionless in the rain. Then suddenly he tipped her up and
fell with her on the path, in the roaring silence of the rain, and, short and sharp, he took
her, short and sharp and finished, like an animal (Lawrence, 1928b, p. 210).
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Although Lawrence wanted perhaps to describe the spontaneous and animalistic tendencies
of Connie and Mellors’ sexual relationship, one cannot ignore the fact that this scene is rather
describing Mellors as forcing himself on Connie.
What is deeply disturbing is that if Lawrence had used sexual abuse and rape as a means for
his male characters to reclaim their masculinity or even for the female characters to undergo a
transformation or punishment (as will be seen in the next chapter), then any chance of
reclaiming Lawrence’s explicit writings on sex for feminism would be at risk. Lawrence
would then deserve William’s harsh labelling as ‘Lawrence the sodomite, the closet queen,
the anally excited, the playful sado-masochist’ (Williams, 1993, p. 108).
To conclude, Lawrence’s interplay of sex and power is ambiguous. On the one hand,
Lawrence created sexually liberated heroines with agency which was a bold move given the
societal constrictions of that time. On the other hand, Lawrence’s sex-scenes and the
dominance of the sexually-liberated heroines by their insecure lovers render his work
pornographic and misogynistic. For Millet, this ambiguity was clear to Lawrence:
Lawrence saw in [free female sexuality] two possibilities: it could grant women an
autonomy and independence he feared and hated, or it could be manipulated to create a
new order of dependence and subordination, another form of compliance to masculine
direction and prerogative (Millet, 1970, pp. 240-241).
The question relevant to feminism is of course which possibility Lawrence had wanted for his
heroines (and maybe for his female readership). Perhaps one way to solve this ambiguity
might be to analyse the perspective Lawrence was writing these scenes from, which mainly
was from the perspective of his heroines.
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IV.3) The gaze and pornography – Lady Chatterley’s Lover and short stories
As has been pointed out previously, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is ‘less misogynistically
overbearing than earlier ‘phallic’ writings, largely because of its privileging of Connie’s point
of view’ (Williams, 1997, p. 91). What is important to consider is that Williams not only
refers to Connie’s thoughts, but also to what she sees (Williams, 1997). Connie’s gaze is a
crucial element to Lawrence’s novel, yet this element creates ambiguities as to whether
Lawrence’s writing from his female protagonists’ perspectives might redeem him or further
label him as sexist.
One of the key aspects about Connie’s gaze (and the gaze of other female heroines of
Lawrence) are her observational skills. As Williams describes Lawrence’s depiction of his
heroines’ narratives, he
emphasises the power of women’s eyes, their unnatural ability to fixate and pin down
whatever their gaze rests upon, their role as the organs and agents of conscious control.
Lawrence’s women seldom fail to see, often initiate desire with a look (Williams, 1993,
p. 45).
Whereas the novel is full of moments of interlocking eyes and stares, it is Connie’s gaze and
the resulting stream of consciousness (Hanna, 2009) about what she sees that are akin to the
thought-process of a flâneur, which is a trait mostly associated with masculinity up till now.
A flâneur is basically a ‘figure of masculine privilege and leisure, with time and money and
no immediate responsibilities to claim his attention’ (Elkin, 2016, p. 3). There are many
instances in the novel during which Connie shows her skills as flâneur by observing people
from far and recording every minute detail. A good example of Connie’s activities as flâneur
is when she is going for a walk in the woods and passing her future lover’s hut:
She turned the corner of the house and stopped. In the little yard two paces beyond her,
the man was washing himself, utterly unaware. He was naked to the hips, his velveteen
breeches slipped down under his slender loins. And his white slim back was curved
over a big bowl of soapy water, in which he ducked his head, shaking his head with a
queer, quick little motion, lifting his slender white arms […] Yet in some curious way it
was a visionary experience […] Connie had received the shock of vision in her womb;
and she knew it; it lay inside her (Lawrence, 1928b, p. 81).
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Examples like this one celebrate Connie Chatterley in certain ways as one of the first literary
female flâneurs, or ‘flâneuse’ (Elkin, 2016). The reasons for this are that she not only has the
privileges from her status and wealth which give her the time and means to watch people, but
also because she has the observatory skills to do so.
As Lawrence himself and his works are full of paradoxes, it comes as to no surprise that
Lawrence portrays Connie as somebody who dislikes flâneurs:
Ah, these manly he-men, these flâneurs, the oglers, these eaters of god dinners. How
weary they were! weary, worn-out for lack of a little tenderness, given and taken. The
efficient, sometimes charming women knew a thing or two about the sensual realities:
they had that pull over their jigging English sisters (Lawrence, 1928b, p. 238).
Yet, to a certain degree, this portrays Connie as the better flâneur. Unfortunately, there is
something very problematic about the repeated insistence on Connie’s observations when it
comes to gender. Williams states that ‘[i]n gazing, woman becomes vicariously male’
(Williams, 1993, p. 47). As previously mentioned, gazing is a gendered/male activity not only
because of the privileges that enabled men to find the time and to move freely in society to do
so but also because of ‘male scopophilic fantasies’ (Felluga, 2015, p. 111) and the ‘male
desire for the mastery of the look’(Felluga, 2015, p. 112). This is perhaps because Lawrence,
as a male author, perpetuated these desires through Connie. Williams highlights this aspect
by stating that ‘[m]uch is made of the relationship between the gaze of the detached women
and the spectacle of what they see, their first sightings of the men they focus on from afar
who are to become their lovers’(Williams, 1993, p. 53). This is exactly the case for the
previous passage of Connie’s act of gazing upon Mellors while at the same time invading his
privacy. Despite the fact that the story is told from a woman’s perspective, the focus still lies
on the men. One has to wonder whether Lawrence was trying to uphold a mirror to society
just as he did with Tickets, Please! and Connie’s clitoral power, or if Connie’s gazing were
gendered because Lawrence as male author wrote them like this. Whereas Lawrence had the
chance to provide his readers with a refreshing take on his female heroines’ perspectives, it is
as if he wanted the readers to experience ‘the Phallic hunt’ […] the experience of being
hunted out and caught, exposed, invaded’ (Williams, 1993, p. 110).
This aspect of the gaze in Lady Chatterley’s Lover is what makes the redemption of
Lawrence highly problematic, as Williams points out Connie’s observation skills are used for
Lawrence’s own ‘sexual politics’ (Millet, 1970): ‘not only does Lawrence use women’s eyes
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to see masculine beauty, he uses their imaginary bodies to be on the receiving end of his own
phallic hunting-out’ (Williams, 1993, p. 111). The critique lies in Connie’s favourable
depictions of the physique of her male lovers, resulting in glorifications of the male body and
sexual prowess:
He dropped the shirt and stood still, looking towards her. The sun through the low
window sent in a beam that lit up his thighs and slim belly and the erect phallos rising
darkish and hot-looking from the little cloud of vivid gold-red hair. She was startled
and afraid. […]
And afterwards, when they had been quite still, the woman had to uncover the man
again, to look at the mystery of the phallos (Lawrence, 1928b, p. 200).
What is troubling is that it appears as if Lawrence himself might have liked to be described
like this. For Millet, Connie’s observations are a trick. To her, ‘Connie and the author-
narrator together’ (Millet, 1970, p. 239) are in cahoots:
Lawrence is the most talented and fervid of sexual politicians. He is the most subtle as
well, for it is through a feminine consciousness that his masculine message is conveyed.
It is a woman, who as she gazes, informs us that the erect phallus, rising phoenix-like
from its aureole of golden pubic hair is indeed “proud” and “lordly” – and above all,
“lovely” (Millet, 1970, p. 239).
It is as if Lawrence’s depiction of what Connie sees was turning into a sexualised

instrumentalisation of Connie, a certain ego-boosting visual masturbation by means of
projection of the author onto his male characters as seen through the eyes of the female
heroine. Felluga, drawing on Lacan’s theories on the gaze (Lacan, 1977, cited in Felluga,
2015, p. 110-112), explains that the ‘fantasy image of oneself can be filled in by […] anyone
that we set up as a mirror for ourselves in what is, ultimately, a narcissistic relationship’
(Felluga, 2015, p. 111). It becomes evident that Lawrence did not want to hold a mirror to
society but to himself out of pure narcissism. This, again, reaffirms Woolf’s concept of
women being used to enlarge men’s egos (Woolf, 1928).
One even has to wonder whether these explicit passages render Lawrence’s works
pornographic and degrading for women, especially since he had to endure censorship on
multiple occasions. There is a reason why whether Lawrence’s work is pornographic or not
matters to the attempt to reclaim him for feminism. If Lawrence’s work were pornographic,
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that could disqualify him from a feminist point of view because of pornography’s ‘abusive
and degrading portrayal of females and female sexuality’ (Russell, 2000, p. 50) and because
pornography ‘appears to endorse, condone, or encourage abusive sexual desires or behaviors’
(Russell, 2000, p. 50).
The critic Foster claims that Lawrence’s work is not pornographic: ‘Pornography desires
gratification, titillation, quick sex: Lawrence cries out for tenderness, for intimacy and
openness’ (Foster, 1994, p. 97). Nevertheless, Lawrence ironically fits his own definition of
pornography when considering the gaze in his novels. In Pornography and Obscenity
Lawrence wrote that
pornography of today […] is an inviable stimulant to the vice of self-abuse, onanism,

masturbation, call it what you will. In young or old, man or woman, boy or girl, modern
pornography is a direct provocative of masturbation (Lawrence, 1929j, p. 429).
Considering Millet’s explanation that Lawrence used Connie’s point of view just to
compliment his male ego (Millet, 1970) and William’s notion of the gaze as a ‘phallic
hunting-out’ (Williams, 1993, p. 111), the portrayal of Connie’s gaze has self-arousing and
masturbatory qualities that render Lawrence’s work pornographic according to his own
definition.
To the self-stimulating pornographic qualities are added the charges of what Pollock
describes as ‘sadistic voyeurism’ (Pollock, 2013, p. 146). By this, Pollock means that through
the gaze of the female heroines, readers experience the
punishment or death of an often transgressively active woman, the femme fatale […],
the feminist, or narratives of conquest that lead to her domestication and marriage’
(Pollock, 2013, p. 146)
Unfortunately, many instances of this can be found in Lawrence’s short stories as Williams
points out: ‘This sense that predation is the reason for looking, violence the conclusion of
vision, runs through Lawrence’s work as an angry seam which hardly changes’ (Williams,
1993, p. 41).
In The Woman Who Rode Away for example, readers are introduced to the typical Lawrentian
heroine who is unhappy with her stale life:
At thirty-three she really was still the girl from Berkeley, in all but physique. Her
conscious development had stopped mysteriously with her marriage, completely
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arrested. Her husband had never become real to her, neither mentally nor physically. In
spite of his late sort of passion for her, he never meant anything to her, physically. Only
morally he swayed her, downed her, kept her in an invincible slavery (Lawrence,
1928c, p. 6).
This is reminiscent of the passage from The Fox describing March’s marriage to Henry in
terms of the numbing effect that heteronormative patriarchal marriage has on women. The
story quickly unfolds as due to a mid-life-crisis-inspired decision upon meeting Native
American tribesmen while riding out on horseback, she decides that she wants to visit their
isolated reservation. The protagonist is filled with ‘the pride of her own adventure and the
assurance of her own womanhood’ (Lawrence, 1928c, p. 12). As one of the natives is
provoking her, she defies him as ‘the passionate anger of the spoilt white woman rose in her’
(Lawrence, 1928c, p. 13) only to realise later on that she is being abducted: ‘[t]he woman was
powerless. And along with her supreme anger there came a slight thrill of exultation. She
knew she was dead’ (Lawrence, 1928c, p. 14). At the end of the story, she is stripped naked
and sacrificed in a religious ritual by being stabbed with knives at sundown:
Then the old man would strike, and strike home, accomplish the sacrifice and achieve
the power. The mastery that man must hold, and that passes from race to race
(Lawrence, 1928c, p. 37).
Despite the obvious racism of depicting Native Americans as savage tribesmen, what is also
deeply troublesome is the ‘sadistic voyeurism’ (Pollock, 2013, p. 146) which starts with the
heroine’s courage turning into despair and transitions into ‘voyeuristic pleasures of the text in
descriptions of the woman’s imprisonment and preparation for sacrifice particularly in the
face of her willingness to suffer any number of bodily humiliations’ (Becket, 2002, p. 97).
What makes this sadism worse is that through the eyes of the heroine, it offers a masochistic
experience from the safety of the reader’s room. By empathising with the heroine, the reader
can experience the sexualised, degrading, and dehumanising violence against the ‘white
heroine, descendant in a line of Lawrentian ‘cocksure’ women who know too much and
submit too little’ (Williams, 1997, p. 75) from her perspective. The ritualistic murder of the
heroine by ‘Lawrence’s phallic sect’ (Millet, 1970, p. 285) is in this sense a perversion of
empathy serving male fantasies of abuse and power. It does not use empathy to point out the
violence women face in a patriarchal society but it misuses readers’ empathy to provide them
with the thrills of what nowadays is referred to as ‘torture pornography’ (Collins, 2019).
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Besides the perversion of empathy, the story seems to be a part of Lawrence’s ‘cautionary
tale[s] for white women’ (Millet, 1970, p. 287). The fact that a woman had dared venturing
alone into the wild as well as considering abandoning her role as wife and mother could only
lead to punishment under patriarchal rule, in this case through ritual sacrifice with a ‘phallic
knife’(Millet, 1970, p. 292). This is an additional argument for the story to be deemed
pornographic, as according to Millet ‘[a]ll sadistic pornography tends to find its perfection in
murder’ (Millet, 1970, p. 292).
Moreover, although the ending line of the short story suggests that the tribesmen did this for
the sake of their tribe, this ‘mastery that man must hold’ (Lawrence, 1928c, p. 37) implies the
mastery of men over women. Within post-colonial criticism, one could even go as far as to
analyse the symbolism of this dominance of men of colour over a privileged white woman.
Yet for Millet, the story did not even need an exotic location and natives killing the heroine,
as the ‘ersatz Indians are ultimate maleness’ (Millet, 1970, p. 290). The heroine’s
transgression against patriarchy would either way have been punished in different settings by
different men. One further example of this can be found in The Princess.
The Princess is the story about Dollie Urquhart, ‘a woman of twenty-five, then a woman of
thirty, and always the same virgin dainty Princess, “knowing” in a dispassionate way like an
old woman, and utterly intact’ (Lawrence, 1925, p. 184). After the death of her father, Dollie
decides to travel to New Mexico with her closest friend Miss Cummins. There, they decide to
explore the region on horseback with their local guide Romero, whom Dollie feels attracted
to. After an accident with one of the horses, Miss Cummins returns to the ranch but Dollie
asks Romero to continue their adventure with the typical self-assurance of a Lawrentian
heroine:
And [Dollie] thought of her adventure. She was going on alone with Romero. But then
she was very sure of herself, and Romero was not the kind of man to do anything to
her, against her will. […] And she wanted to go with Romero, because he had some
peculiar kinship with her (Lawrence, 1925, p. 198).
As the story unfolds, they set up camp, and Dollie is freezing during the night, wondering
whether Romero could help her to stay warm:
She wanted warmth, protection, she wanted to be taken away from herself. And at the
same time, perhaps more deeply than anything she wanted to keep herself intact, intact,
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untouched, that no-one should have any power over her, or rights to her (Lawrence,
1925, p. 208).
Yet when Dollie asks Romero to come closer to keep each other warm, she is raped by him:
And he was warm, but with a terrible animal warmth that seemed to annihilate her. He
panted like an animal with desire. And she was given over to this thing.
She had never, never wanted to be given over to this. But she had willed that it should
happen to her. And according to her will, she lay and let it happen. But she never
wanted it (Lawrence, 1925, p. 198).
What is highly problematic about this scene from a feminist perspective is that the way it is
written feeds into a narrative of rape-culture and victim-blaming, as Lawrence portrays Dollie
having wanted this to happen to her by showing a ‘willed attraction to Romero which
develops alongside her denial of the life of the body’ (Becket, 2002, p. 91).
As the story goes on, Romero realises that he has committed a crime against a white woman,
so he decides to hold Dollie hostage by throwing her clothes and equipment into freezing
water. To avoid punishment for having raped and kidnapped a white woman, he tells her that
he will only release her if they get married; otherwise she has to stay with him in the
mountains until she agrees to his deal. Further adding to the problematic aspect of the story is
that Lawrence adds to the sadistic voyeurism the feeling of Stockholm syndrome (Collins,
2019) experienced through Dollie’s eyes. This appears to be a trick to only increase the
intensity of the sadistic voyeurism, as ‘the narrative voice speaks from the woman’s side, this
effectively feminizes the reader into identification with her position, regardless of the
reader’s own gender outside of the text’ (Williams, 1997, p. 108). One can say then that
Lawrence instrumentalises the reader’s empathy and identification with the female
protagonist (regardless of the gender of the reader) only to heighten the intensity of the
sadistic voyeurism. In this sense the use of the female gaze has become a tool to
sensationalise the heroine’s story and to have the reader indulge in a misogynist
sadomasochist narration; not to advance any values that could be deemed as feminist.
Nonetheless, Dollie shows the typical feminist signs of a Lawrentian heroine’s resilience by
telling Romero that she would never love him and that help must be on the way. It is then that
Romero reveals his thoughts, similar to Lawrence’s poet-persona, by not wanting to only
subjugate the body but to dominate the will of a woman:
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He could not conquer her, however much he violated her. Because her spirit was hard
and flawless as a diamond. But he could shatter her. This she knew. Much more, and
she would be shattered (Lawrence, 1925, p. 212).
As the story progresses, Romero is shot dead and Dollie is saved, but she is deeply
traumatized and has repressed the vilest part of her traumatic experience:
“Since my accident in the mountains, when a man went mad and shot my horse from
under me, and my guide had to shoot him dead, I have never felt quite myself.”
So she put it.
Later, she married an elderly man, and seemed pleased (Lawrence, 1925, p. 216).
One can say that these sexualised punishments of the heroines make these short stories
extremely anti-feminist. As Williams explains, many heroines of Lawrence are ‘set up only to
be knocked down, empowered only so that [they] can subsequently occupy the position of
defeated or submissive whiteness’ (Williams, 1997, pp. 104-105). This would mean that
Lawrence empowered his heroines only as a means to make their punishment and despair
more sadistic. Becket draws parallels between the punishment (by rape) of Dollie and the
punishment (by murder) of Banford in The Fox as the Lawrentian heroine is ‘punished by the
impersonal violence of the man, reflected in the impersonal contours of the ‘primitive’
landscape (Becket, 2002, p. 91). There is another parallel that can be drawn between The
Princess and The Fox. Although Dollie was not killed for her transgression, she was raped
and punished with a traumatic experience that left her in a sort of limbo, trapped in a
numbing marriage similar to the marriage of March from The Fox or to the marriage that the
heroine from The Woman Who Rode Away initially had tried to escape from, thus creating a
vicious circle.
When it comes to the female gaze in Lawrence’s work, one could say that Lawrence was
‘there, living it all with his characters’ (Foster, 1994 p. 34) through the eyes of his female
protagonists as a sort of masturbatory point-of-view pornography, gazing at what Foster calls
Lawrence’s ‘extreme and infinite sensual violence’ (Foster, 1994 p. 34). This self-centred and
egotistical use of the female gaze to experience the heroines’ punishments for their
transgressions thus risks disqualifying Lawrence from being reclaimed for modern feminism.
One could even consider the sexualised punishment of Lawrence’s heroines viewed through
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their eyes in a masturbatory way as the peak of Lawrence’s misogyny.

Nevertheless, a final attempt to try to defend the abuse and murder of Lawrence’s
protagonists in his short stories from a feminist perspective could be to consider that through
the heroines’ perspectives Lawrence might have wanted to appeal to the readers’ empathy
and show the despair and futility of attempting to flee that women endured in a patriarchal
society. His stories portray the harsh realities of women who dared to transgress patriarchal
laws in spite of some of the privileges that their class or ethnicity might have granted them.
Finally, one has to wonder why Lawrence so often chose to write from the female
perspective. Beynon elaborates that Lawrence’s female characters were far more developed
in the stories than their male counterparts: ‘his female characters moving towards a level of
self-determination, individuality and self-awareness that is far out of reach of most male
characters’ (Beynon, 1997, p. 132). To understand Lawrence’s choice to write from a female
perspective, one should have a look at the influence that the women in Lawrence’s life might
have had over him.
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V. Women’s echoes
Women’s echoes (Hrivniakova, 2019)
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V.1) Biographical influences and gendered writing
One of the most challenging aspects in figuring out whether Lawrence can be reclaimed for
modern feminism is to make sense of all of the paradoxes in his writing and to subsequently
decide whether his female heroines purposely were written as female heroines, or whether he
accidentally created sexually liberated, independent, and gender-roles defying women in
order to document and to express his disapproval of the changes that were happening
regarding gender and society. Moreover, one has to wonder why many of Lawrence’s
protagonists in his novels and short stories are women. Yet, ever since Roland Barthes’
literary theory of the ‘death of the author’ (Barthes, 1977), it has become a delicate subject
for literary critics to read any intention into a writer’s work. This also applies to feminist
criticism. As Andrew Bennet and Nicholas Royle explain, it depends on the interpretation
and not on the intention whether a text is feminist or sexist: ‘there is no such thing as a
feminist, or a masculinist or a sexist, literary work in itself: it all depends on how it is read’
(Bennet and Royle, 2004, p. 156). Consequently, any critique wanting to find an authorial
intention runs the risk of bias as the reader will automatically project their own belief of what
the author’s intention could have been onto the text. Bennet and Royle elaborate by using
Millet’s (1970) feminist criticism of Lawrence as an example:
For Millet, that is to say, the aim of literary criticism is to criticize the male author – a
figure whose male voice, male present and male ideas are unequivocally clear, for
Millet, in everything Lawrence wrote (Bennet and Royle, 2004, p. 156).
Nevertheless, it is almost impossible not to search for Lawrence’s possible authorial intention
when reading his stories and poems, a view equally supported by Williams who points out
that: ‘[p]olitical and sexual attitudes within the text, even those emerging from the mouths of
characters, have been identified directly as the political and sexual attitudes of the author’
(Williams, 1997, p. 1). Another important motivation behind critics looking for an authorial
intention is the argument regarding pornography and censorship. Beynon for example
explains:
Lawrence’s work is particularly resistant to any reading that dismisses the importance
of authorial intention because since the banning of The Rainbow in 1915, his intentions
have been a recurrent topic of legal discourse (Beynon, 1997, p. 129).
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Perhaps instead of arguing whether to look for any authorial intention of Lawrence or not,
one may be able to decide how to reclaim Lawrence for feminism by looking at the
dimensions of how his writing had been influenced by the women in his life. One could then
say that instead of looking for an authorial intention, one may look for a biographical
influence which could perhaps explain why Lawrence (consciously or subconsciously) ended
up having so many female protagonists in his fiction.
While discussing Lawrence’s heroines and the influence behind why he included so many
women in his fiction, Welsh argues that it was especially the case because Lawrence himself
had been shaped by so many women during his life.
Young Lawrence had sisters and many female friends. He grew up in a world where
women might address their husbands as ‘master’ or ‘mester’, but they worked as hard
as men. Lawrence had ample examples of women’s intelligence, but he was aware of
the restrictions that society placed on them (Welsh, 2007, p.xx).
What makes Welsh’s statement so relevant to feminism is that it points to an awareness of

Lawrence regarding women’s condition within patriarchal society. Even without looking for
any authorial intention in his works, one can find many instances that portray the challenges
and unfair situations women face in a patriarchal environment.
Despite the previous criticism of Lawrence’s sadistic voyeurism, in one of his early works he
seems to show strong feminist tendencies when writing from a woman’s point of view. In
New Eve and Old Adam he writes:
Your idea of your woman is that she is an expansion, no, a rib of yourself, without any
existence of her own. That I am a being by myself is more than you can grasp
(Lawrence, 1912a, p. 120).
Besides the self-explanatory title referring to the new generation of independent women (i.e.
New Eve) facing the old Victorian patriarchs (i.e. Old Adam), it is remarkable how strongly
feminist these lines appear to be for Lawrence. Despite the brevity of this quote, the
implications these lines carry are deep. Without knowing the text’s date of publication, one
might very well mistake it for the new feminist-infused form of social-media poetry referred
to as ‘instapoetry’ (Leszkiewicz, 2019). What is so striking about this quotation is that
Lawrence is not only writing from a woman’s perspective but he is showing an awareness of
the images and tropes men use when defining women. By using a biblical reference,
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Lawrence highlights the archaic way of men thinking of women as lesser individuals in
servitude of men, whereas he himself, in the persona of a modern woman, is celebrating the
modern woman’s own individuality. This interpretation is in line with Anaïs Nin’s view that
Lawrence ‘understands the problem of woman, who has effaced her real self in order to
satisfy man-made images. Men had the images, they conceived the patterns – women carried
them out to please the men’ (Nin, 1932, p. 49). Lawrence’s essay Give Her a Pattern seems
to confirm Nin’s thought about Lawrence:
And so, poor woman, destiny makes away with her. It isn’t that she hasn’t got a mind –
she has. She’s got everything that man has. The only difference is that she asks for a
pattern. Give me a pattern to follow! That will always be woman’s cry. Unless of
course she has already chosen her pattern quite young, then she will declare she is
herself absolutely, and no man’s idea of women has any influence over her (Lawrence,
1928a, p. 354).
Although the tone of this essay seems to be condescending, it might well be the case that
Lawrence was frustrated with the realisation that so many women were trying to fit the ideal
that men had created for them. This realisation must have come from his observations of the
women in his life. The influence that the women in Lawrence’s life might have had on him
and the way they shaped his views on women and thereby his portrayal of them can redeem
him for modern feminism, as writing from a woman’s perspective put him face to face with
patriarchal oppression. Lawrence was not merely influenced by the women in his life, he
seemed to actively try to understand the situations and injustice women were going through;
as Beynon points out that ‘Lawrence made actual women his study. He would ask the women
he knew to write down what they felt in certain situations, and he would use their accounts as
source material for his novels’ (Beynon, 1997, p. 120). Of course, just like with the clitoral
climax (as discussed previously), there is always the question of authenticity. Could
Lawrence as a man truthfully write about women’s experiences? Simpson’s stance on this is
clearly negative, as she states that when it comes to Lawrence’s depiction of the experiences
of the women in his life; in spite of the personal elements it is ‘still a question of ‘male
editing of women’s experience’ (Simpson, 1982, p. 139). Moreover, Lawrence himself did
not think that it was not possible for a man to understand women’s feelings. In Fantasia of
the Unconscious he wrote:
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Women can never feel or know as men do. And in the reverse men can never feel and
know, dynamically, as women do. […] Men learn their feelings from women, women
learn mental consciousness from men (Lawrence, 1921, p. 52).
There is a certain irony then to it that Lawrence ended up mostly writing from women’s
perspectives. It is therefore worth raising the question whether Lawrence, through his writing
of women’s experiences, might have been a feminist ally of sorts. To answer this question it
may be helpful to not only look at the influence of the women in Lawrence’s life but also at
the projection of biographical elements.
What is interesting about Lawrence’s female protagonists is that he appears to project himself
onto his female leads, just like he does with some of the male characters. In The Rainbow for
instance, Murry specifically identifies Lawrence’s projection on the character Ursula:
She is a composite figure, made of the hated sexual woman, and of some of Lawrence’s
own manly experiences. Thus she is made to carry much of his experience as a
schoolmaster, and of his own disappointment with the university (Murry, 1931, p. 72).
Ursula is described as the typical proto-Lawrentian heroine, ‘always in revolt against babies
and middle domesticity’ (Lawrence 1915, p. 255). It is difficult not to think that Ursula’s
teaching experiences are infused with Lawrence’s own experiences of teaching when reading
such passages:
Though she did not give in, she never succeeded. Her class was getting in worse
condition, she knew herself less and less secure in teaching it. Ought she to withdraw
and go home again? Ought she to say she had come to the wrong place, and so retire?
Her very life was at test. […] Some of the boys had dirty ears and necks, their clothing
smelled unpleasantly, but she could ignore it. She corrected the writing as she went
(Lawrence, 1915, p. 358).
What is so intriguing about this scene is that it appears that Lawrence tried to do a similar
empathetic exercise as Woolf did with ‘Judith Shakespeare’ (Woolf , 1928, p. 48) by writing
his own experiences lived through a female character. Woolf’s thought-experiment of the
fictional genius sister of Shakespeare was meant to point out the inequalities and lack of
opportunities women writers had to endure compared to their male counterparts (Woolf,
1928). In a certain way, Ursula is Lawrence’s very own ‘Judith Shakespeare’ (Woolf, 1928,
p. 48). Lawrence created a woman with a similar working-class background to his, teaching
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difficult working-class and lower-class boys just as Lawrence might have done. Yet Ursula
had to face many other challenges besides her social status because of her gender. This is
then perhaps the reason why Lawrence’s writing about women’s experiences (infused with
his own) may redeem him from a modern feminist point of view, as he tried to empathetically
highlight the injustice and lack of opportunities that women faced despite shared societal
backgrounds or goals of their male counterparts.
Nevertheless, it would not be a novel by Lawrence if it did not include a paradox. Millet sees
in Lawrence’s character of Ursula a contradiction:
Lawrence had made the same difficult climb through the horrors of slum school
teaching to the university, and his narrative of Ursula’s suffering along the way is an
odd mixture of sympathy – when he lapses into autobiography and identification with
the character – mingled with acrid resentment at the thought of one of her sex achieving
this much. The splendid maternal old women posed no threat, no competition or rivalry.
Ursula as the new woman clearly does (Millet, 1970, p. 260).
Following Millet’s interpretation, Ursula is then not ‘Judith Shakespeare’ (Woolf, 1928, p.
48) but a sort of Woolfian mirror (Woolf, 1928) to enhance Lawrence’s achievements as a
man in contrast to the achievements of a working-class female teacher. Moreover, Ursula
might be seen as a threat to her creator, because if she had been written as more successful
than her author, Lawrence would have been beaten by his own fictional character. This means
that instead of being empathetic towards women, Lawrence used them to embolden himself.
This interpretation implies that Lawrence had written Ursula as an insecure or less successful
character just so he could reassure himself that he had accomplished something. This is
obviously because yet again, Lawrence shows symptoms of fragile masculinity, this time
because of his position as an author:
On his own terms, he is feminised by his profession. Lawrence is a writer who

polemicises against writing through writing, a masculine subject who is anxiously
implicated in the conscious femininity he reviles, one who writes of sex rather than
doing it (Williams, 1993, pp. 8-9).
Williams’ argument then implies that the more Lawrence was writing about the experiences
of his female protagonists and being empathetic towards the women in his life, the more he
was distancing himself from patriarchy and masculinity. For Nin, the empathy towards
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women and the lack of masculine writing is what qualify him as a feminist ally: ‘The
intuitional quality in Lawrence resulted in a curious power in his writing which might be
described as androgynous’ (Nin, 1932, p. 57) because he ‘had a complete realization of the
feelings of women’ (Nin, 1932, p. 57). Yet for Lawrence, this meant that he was further
drifting away from the ideal of masculinity, and it did not help that his writing was seen as
androgynous or effeminate due to the portrayal of emotions. This could then in return have
led to Lawrence using Ursula as a mirror to reassure himself of his manliness. Yet this leads
to another paradox, as Williams points out: ‘[the] paradox is that when Lawrence-the-grown-
up-Johnny makes his exhortation against writing and the women who teach him it, he is
deriding the very skill by which he earns his living’ (Williams, 1993, p. 59). It is almost as if
Lawrence, as an author, was facing a lose-lose situation. His writings from women’s
perspectives rendered him effeminate (in his eyes), feeding into his male insecurities. Trying
to regain his manliness by writing harshly about women and emotions only led to him
rejecting himself. Eggert summarises these paradoxes by explaining that ‘[h]is obvious male
insecurity, and reactive misogyny, clearly come from a man with a strong female
identification which has creative as well as personal dimensions’ (Eggert, 2001, p. 187).
Those paradoxes then perhaps explain why Lawrence alternated between an empathetic point
of view from his heroines and the ‘sadistic voyeurism’ (Pollock, 2013, p. 146) experienced
by his female trespassers.
In order to reclaim Lawrence for modern feminism, it is arguably not relevant whether his use
of the female perspective is authentic or not, but rather that he was empathetic to the women
in his life. This in return influenced his heroines. Nin even goes as far as stating that for her,
‘it is the first time that a man has so wholly and completely expressed woman accurately’
(Nin, 1932, p. 59). For a male author of the time, Lawrence’s identification with women was
very progressive. One simply cannot ignore the feminist qualities of Lawrence’s writings, as
Siegel elaborates:
In his high valuation of female sexual fulfilment, his sympathy with women’s direct
expression of rage against men […], Lawrence is unlike novelistic forefathers whose
use of female protagonists involves emphasis on the importance of virtues traditionally
demanded of women in patriarchal societies (Siegel, 1991, p. 15-16).
Yet does Lawrence’s creation of Ursula and other characters that rely on the readers’
empathy with women and their situation qualify Lawrence’s writing as feminist? For
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Lewiecki-Wilson at least, it makes his works less misogynistic: ‘experiencing the world of
the Other through the Other mitigates somewhat his distasteful phallic idolatry’ (Lewiecki-
Wilson, 1994, p. 244). What is interesting about Lewiecki-Wilson’s statement is that she used
the notion of the Other, a concept very much grounded in post-colonial discourse. Although it
might seem strange at first, one may borrow another concept from post-colonial discourse in
order to reclaim Lawrence for feminism, namely the theory of ‘speaking for’ (Spivak, 1999,
p. 28).
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V.2) Women’s voices
There are a lot of female voices in Lawrence’s novels which serve as a contrast to the male
voices in the stories, as Beynon points out: ‘Lawrence’s voices […] are almost always also
oppositely gendered’ (Beynon, 1997, p. 130). Nin emphasizes Lawrence’s use of the female
voice by referring to Lady Chatterley’s Lover: ‘there are constantly double points of view,
and every moment of the relationship reveals the woman’s feelings as well as the man’s, and
the woman’s with the most delicate and subtle acuteness’ (Nin, 1932, p. 58). It comes as to
no surprise then that some branches of feminist criticism argued for a ‘recognition of the
number of perspectives and ‘voices’ active in the novels’ (Beynon, 1997, p. 132). By writing
from his heroines’ perspectives, Lawrence had given a voice to the women who had
influenced these heroines. A modern feminist interpretation of this then leads to the
interpretation that Lawrence wanted to be the amplifier for these voices, as Siegel points out:
‘Lawrence attempts to ventriloquize the voices of his female acquaintances and friends, as
representative of the voice of woman’ (Siegel, 1991, p. 53). Ideally, from a feminist
perspective, this means that Lawrence used his position of privilege as a male author to carry
women’s voices, as Siegel elaborates: ‘far from wanting to still woman’s voice, he was often
so desperate for its continuance that he tried to make himself its medium’ (Siegel, 1991, p.
12). Lawrence’s writing from the female perspective with its potential amplification of
women’s voices is undeniably an argument that is in favour of reclaiming Lawrence for
feminism. However, there is one aspect that is problematic about Lawrence’s use of female
voices.
Borrowing from post-colonial literary theory, one has to ask oneself whether Lawrence was,
as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak coined it, ‘speaking for’ (Spivak, 1999, p. 28) the
marginalised women. In order to understand this concept, it might be helpful to look at
McLeod’s explanation of Spivak’s theory of the ‘subaltern’ (Spivak, 1999):
Can the subaltern as female, confined in the shadows of colonial history and
representation, ever be heard to speak? The answer, it seems, is no, so long as
intellectuals go searching for an original, sovereign and concrete female consciousness
which can be discovered and readily represented with recourse to questionable
assumptions concerning subjectivity. Rather than hunting for the ‘lost voices’ of
women in the historical archives in an act of retrieval, intellectuals should be aware that
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this kind of work will continue to keep the subaltern as female entirely muted (McLeod,
2000, p. 193).
Simply assuming that Lawrence was ‘speaking for’ (Spivak, 1999) the marginalised working
class and middle-class women is arguably too bold a statement. If Lawrence had been
‘speaking for’ (Spivak, 1999) those women, Lawrence would not only have risked
perpetuating gender roles and victimising women but he would also have risked talking over
women’s voices instead of amplifying, thereby keeping them silent. Thus, this implies that
Lawrence as a male author would have been listened to whereas women writing about the
same issues would have been ignored or overshadowed by him. Yet this is not the case.
Lawrence did not try to find a singular unified female voice representing all the marginalised
women from lower classes. Nor did Lawrence listen to the women in his life to study them
like Woolf’s ‘Professor von X’ (Woolf, 1928, p. 32) who ‘wrote his great book upon the
mental, moral, and physical inferiority of women’ (Woolf, 1928, p. 33). Rather, Lawrence
might have been speaking through women’s voices to challenge himself. As Schulze
suggests, it is through the use of the female voice in his novels that ‘the male position is
constantly questioned. Lawrence seems to use his protagonists in order to test out ideas on
love, sex, and marriage’ (Schulze, 2002, p. 118). By challenging himself through writing in a
female voice, Lawrence might also have challenged the readers’ views and patriarchal norms.
Combing the elements of biographical dimensions and female narrative voice, Beynon still
warns not to read any authorial intention into Lawrence’s work, not because of Barthes’
theory of the ‘death of the author’ (Barthes, 1977) but because of the risk of misinterpreting
Lawrence due to his many paradoxes:
the contradictions in Lawrence’s work and his life cluster around the same issue: the
relations between men and women. Perhaps the greatest mistake that a reader of
Lawrence can make is to treat the contradictoriness of his writing as an unconscious
intrusion of personal conflicts. […] On the contrary, some of Lawrence’s nonfictional
writing reveals his dedication to allowing what he perceived as an external, female
voice to intrude into his work to challenge the voice he identified with himself
(Beynon, 1997, p. 129).
This interpretation implies then that Lawrence’s use of the female voice, just like his use of
the female gaze, could be interpreted as a means to challenge patriarchal society as well as
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his own patriarchal indoctrination, therefore allowing Lawrence to be reclaimed for

feminism.
To conclude, one could say that Lawrence was more than just using women’s voices as
source material; he was amplifying the voices of the women in his life. He did so by using the
women in his life as inspiration to tell stories from women’s perspectives. Depending on
one’s interpretation of Lawrence’s use of the female voices, one could say that he was not
necessarily ‘speaking for’ (Spivak, 1999) them but rather adding an echo to their canon of
voices. These voices challenged not only their author but patriarchy itself, as Beynon
elucidates:
Lawrence’s fiction does not present us with a female representation of nature lying
helpless in the grasp of a hermeneutics of male supremacy, but instead, with female
characters who […] constantly undercut the doctrinal pronouncements of both the
author and his fictional spokesmen (Beynon, 1997, p. 131).
It is especially because of those female voices, which came from strong female characters
that challenged patriarchy and Lawrence himself as a male author, that Lawrence deserves to
be reclaimed by modern feminism. The women’s voices in Lawrence’s works are perhaps the
strongest argument that speaks for Lawrence’s inclusion into modern literary feminist theory.
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VI. Conclusion
One of the issues one has to be aware of when discussing feminism and Lawrence is that
during his time, Lawrence was only able to experience what is referred to as the ‘first wave of
feminism’ (Walters, 2005). Regarding the context, one ought to give credit to Lawrence for
being aware of ‘intersectional’ (Crenshaw, 1991) elements that went beyond the right to vote
or to work for women. Some of Lawrence’s heroines clearly showed an agency and sexual
independence that was fought for during the so-called ‘second wave of feminism’ (Walters,
2005).
Regarding the topic of motherhood, Lawrence deserves to be reclaimed for feminism as his
critique of the Victorian ideal of motherhood was very progressive. As Lewiecki-Wilson
points out, Lawrence was ‘implicitly questioning family and gender relations before we, their
readers, were fully attuned to the cultural revisioning implicit in these issues’ (Lewiecki-
Wilson, 1994, p. 243). Lawrence might have had his own personal reasons to criticise
motherhood due to his emotional proximity to his mother and his developing fragile
masculinity, as Milne suggests: ‘Lawrence’s more immediate struggle, however, was with
individual women, notably his mother and his lovers, within a generalised refusal to
recognise the emancipation of women’ (Milne, 2001, p. 201). Nonetheless, he managed to
push the ideal of motherhood to an extreme in order to point out its consuming power. By
doing so, Lawrence also uncovered one of the possible origins of fragile masculinity:
dominating mothers not only reinforced patriarchal norms in their children but also made
young boys afraid of their mothers. This fear would then be projected onto women during
later stages of manhood. Unfortunately, as Lawrence himself seems to have succumbed to
symptoms of fragile masculinity, his misogynist poetry and problematic short stories risk
disqualifying him from being reclaimed for feminism. Yet they offer interesting case studies
for the subject of fragile masculinity. Moreover, a modern interpretation of Lawrence’s
attempt to negatively depict modern women in Tickets, Please! ironically celebrates strong
women. Thus, by focussing on Lawrence’s portrayal of strong women in his short stories, one
can look for arguments that allow him to be read in a feminist way. This can especially be
found in his novels that deal with sex, such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
Whereas some of Lawrence’s heroines show strong feminist tendencies by being in control
over their sexuality, Lawrence’s portrayal of their agency from their perspectives is
87
ambiguous, as on the one hand he described how these heroines defied patriarchy yet on the
other hand he almost seemed to enjoy punishing them for their transgressions. This is
unfortunately one of the biggest issues when discussing Lawrence and feminism, as Spilka
points out: ‘Lawrence’s hostility problems lie, in his flirtations with dominance and with
bending, if not breaking, a woman’s will’ (Spilka, 1978, p. 194). It is interesting to note that
as Schulze states,‘[w]hile in the first period of his career Lawrence felt threatened by woman,
in the second period he paid tribute to the female struggle for self-realisation’ (Schulze, 2002,
p. 183). Yet it is mostly in his short stories written during the 1920s (at the end of his career)
that Lawrence punished his heroines who transgressed patriarchal boundaries. For Lewiecki-
Wilson it is not because of misogynist reasons:
Lawrence’s so-called turn to fascistic, patriarchal, or authoritarian ideals in the twenties

should not be read in terms of any personal animosity toward women […] The
psychostructural relations in both early and late texts depend upon patriarchy. What is
important […] is understanding how both “liberal” – and “authoritarian”-seeming
positions equally depend on, and reproduce, the underlying structure/culture of
patriarchy (Lewiecki-Wilson, 1994, p. 25).
Perhaps a feminist interpretation of the paradox of Lawrence’s conflict between female

agency and ‘sadistic voyeurism’ (Pollock, 2013, p. 146) could be that the punishment of the
female transgressor shows that there is no true freedom for independent women in a
patriarchal society. Another interpretation of Lawrence’s harsher portrayal of the fate of his
heroines during the later stages of his career could be that it was Lawrence’s own fragile
masculinity that rendered his tone harsher. The more he established himself as an author and
the more he wrote from his female protagonists’ perspectives, the more he felt effeminate.
This in turn influenced Lawrence to write in a more spiteful way about women in order to
reaffirm his manliness. As Eggert suggests, ‘Lawrence struggled with the question of sexual
difference internally as well as creating a variety of strong and complex female characters’
(Eggert, 2001, p. 187). It must have been a struggle for Lawrence to overcome his fragile
masculinity to write about strong heroines in control of their sexuality. Yet, the fact that
Lawrence seems to have overcome his own fragility by writing stories from the female
protagonists’ perspectives and about women claiming their agency is the reason that one
should consider reclaiming Lawrence for feminist studies. This holds especially true for the
perspectives and voices from his heroines, as Beynon suggests:
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even if we want to believe that Lawrence wrote his fiction with misogynous intentions,
the texts confound us because of their presentation of patriarchal discourse within […]
a feminized cosmos that most often seems to affirm a female character’s point of view
(Beynon, 1997, p. 132).
Perhaps instead of trying to reclaim Lawrence for feminism, one should ask oneself whether
there have been ‘feminist misreading[s]’ (Balbert, 1989 p. 12) of Lawrence in the past that
misdirected the subsequent feminist critics to constantly see him in a negative light. In this
sense, Lawrence might not need to be reclaimed but redeemed. Similarly, Siegel warns of
categorizing Lawrence simply as sexist, as it is an oversimplification of gender and identity
similar to an oversimplification found in patriarchal sexism: ‘We should look as sceptically at
feminist descriptions of Lawrence that reduce him to a symbolic Other as we do at patriarchal
reductions of women writers’ (Siegel, 1991, p. 6).
Foster may actually offer a better way of understanding the recent change in critical and
academic tone on Lawrence by stating that ‘[e]ach generation invents D.H. Lawrence anew’
(Foster, 1994, p. 25). With each new discourse within feminism and gender politics one can
rediscover Lawrence’s works and revaluate them. As such, one can compare the decade-long
criticism of Lawrence’s sexism to the recent modern feminist interest in some of his female
protagonists as heroines of ‘ecofeminism’ (Bo, 2018; Hooti and Ashrafian, 2014): those
heroines not only fought for sexual freedom but also for economic independence. This in turn
brings us back to the intersectionality of class, gender, sex, and power which Lawrence
documented so well in his novels. Moreover, as Siegel summarised Lawrence’s female
protagonists’ actions, the ‘choices made by Lawrence’s heroines go against the male
supremacist doctrines of his fictions’ (Siegel, 1991, p. 18). These choices deserve to receive
positive feminist criticism and should be rediscovered by modern feminism. Finally, the
approaching centenary anniversary of his major works, the recent publication of a collection
of his essays entitled Life with a Capital L (Lawrence, 2019), and the release of a new book
on Lawrence’s lover Frieda will certainly further the interest in and analysis of Lawrence’s
women in his fiction and his life. Especially the publication of Annabel Abb’s Frieda: the
real Lady Chatterley will certainly spark new discussions around Lawrence’s biographical
influences, his inclusion of women’s voices, their authenticity, and the agency of the fictional
an biographical women. This in return should spark a new interest in feminist criticism
around Lawrence. Lawrence may then even be redeemed from his position of ‘feminism’s
bête noire’ (Williams, 1993, p. 16).
89
To come back to Schulze’s question of how to ‘be a feminist and a Lawrentian’ (Schulze,
2002, p. 4), one can perhaps solve this dilemma by choosing what to focus on.
On the one hand, Lawrence’s poetry is full of misogynist elements, yet he ‘still contributes to
our concept of gendered literary heritage, through the role he plays as a subject of feminist
criticism’ (Beynon, 1997, p. 129). One can say then that Lawrence’s poetry should not simply
be dismissed, as it offers enough helpful material for feminist criticism to analyse the inner
workings of fragile masculinity.
On the other hand, Lawrence’s prose still offers enough heroines that ought to be celebrated
as inspirational from a feminist point of view; not to forget that ‘Lawrence’s obsession with
the relationship between the sexes [is] itself part of a wider ongoing discussion about
inequality’ (Williams, 1997, p. 73).
It is perhaps in this stark contrast between Lawrence the novelist and Lawrence the poet, or
Lawrence the ‘sexual liberator and high puritan’ (Williams, 1997, p. 11), that one can find a
compromise. It is exactly in duality of Lawrence being a sexist feminist that allows the
possibility of being ‘a feminist and a Lawrentian’ (Schulze, 2002, p. 4). Taking this idea of
two personas of Lawrence further, Eggert even suggests that there are many ‘Lawrences’
(Eggert 2001, p. 157). One only needs to decide whether one wants to reclaim Lawrence the
novelist as a feminist ally or to make of Lawrence the poet an example of fragile masculinity.
Or maybe, one could just simply embrace this dilemma as a paradox, just like Lawrence
defined himself through all of these paradoxes.
90
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D.H. Lawrence, Wordsworth Editions Limited: Hertfordshire, pp. 419-420.
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D.H. Lawrence, Wordsworth Editions Limited: Hertfordshire, pp. 399.
92
——— (1929j) Pornography and Obscenity. In Lawrence, D.H. (2019) Life with a Capital L,
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Wordsworth Editions Limited: Hertfordshire, p. 382.
——— (1929l) Tarts. In Lawrence, D.H. (1994) The Complete Poems of D.H. Lawrence,
Wordsworth Editions Limited: Hertfordshire, p. 443.
——— (1929m) Willy Wet-Legs. In Lawrence, D.H. (1994) The Complete Poems of D.H.
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Complete Poems of D.H. Lawrence, Wordsworth Editions Limited: Hertfordshire,
pp. 374.
——— (1930a) Love among the Haystacks. In Lawrence, D.H. (2007) Selected Stories
——— (1930b) The Virgin and the Gipsy. New York: Vintage.
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Woolf, V. (1928) A Room of One’s Own. London: Penguin Books.
——— (1931) Professions for Women. In Woolf, V. (2008) Selected Essays, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, pp. 140-146.
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illustrations:
Hrivniakova, J. (2019)
99
Thanks:
I would like to thank Agnès for her guidance.

Moreover, I would like to thank Rory, Anne, Anouk, and Micky for their advice.
I would also like to thank my family for their support.
Finally, I would like to thank Jana not only for the illustrations she provided for this thesis
but mostly for her patience and moral support.
100

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TRAVAIL DE CANDIDATURE

Reclaiming Lawrence for

Helmsange, the 27th May 2019

Candidat-professeur de lettres au Lycée

Reclaiming Lawrence for 21st Century

Patron: Ms. Prüm Agnès

Lycée technique du Centre, 2019

Literature review and critical framework:

One of the most important elements in determining whether Lawrence deserves to be

I. Introduction: Why and how to reclaim Lawrence for feminism?

Motherhood (Jana Hrivniakova, 2019)

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;

Lawrence’s worshipping of the mother and motherhood is sexist because it elevates

While discussing mothers in Lawrence’s fiction, Simone de Beauvoir states that

Parent–infant synchrony is impacted in that depressed mothers tend to be slower to

Similarly, symptoms of being overwhelmed by motherhood become even more apparent in

Additionally, a more obscure side of motherhood (or parenthood in general) is found in

Here, Lawrence’s portrayal of the idolisation of motherhood is perversely transformed into a

II.2) The Queen-Mother - The Virgin and the Gipsy

It is perhaps this imbalance of relationships as a result of the worshipping of motherhood that

To conclude, it is important to acknowledge Lawrence as an author responded to early on and

III. Fragile masculinity and queer utopias

Fragile Masculinity (Hrivniakova, 2019)

III.1) Fragile rhymes – Lawrence’s poetry

The fragile masculine self-reverberates and emasculates—rippling through the entirety

Close your eyes, my love, let me make you blind!

Am I doomed in a long coition of words to mate you?

Between your thighs, far, far from your peering sight?

We’ve made a great mess of love

The moment I swear to love a woman, a certain woman, all my life

This poem addresses a certain unwillingness of Lawrence to commit to or to connect with

without having to make the polite effort of loving her

Elderly discontented women ask for intimate companionship,

It is then hypocritical of Lawrence to show an awareness of this vicious circle of ideals

Any woman who says to me

It is almost as if Lawrence wanted to create this masculine image of himself as an

Why are women so energetic?

I suppose when the men all started being Willy wet-legs

I can’t stand Willy wet-leg,

If men only fought outwards into the world

I never saw a wild thing

I suppose tarts are called tarts because they’re tart,

And I suppose most girls are a bit tarty today,

fragility of masculinity is the sticky space of enacting masculinity within narrow

III.2) Fragility and reversed roles – Tickets, Please!

III.3) Masculinity under threat -The Fox

Ego-bound women are often lesbian,

Perhaps the ego-bound can only love their own kind,

And of all passions

It is one thing to assign death-wishes to spiteful lesbians, quite another to sanction

Women don’t want wistful

IV. Sexual and visual dominance

Sex and Power (Hrivniakova, 2019)

IV.1) Sex and power – Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Despite the shortness of this passage, it is of utmost relevance to understand Lawrence’s

IV.2) The male’s ego-t(r)ip – Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Similar cases of phallocentrism intermixed with fragile masculinity in Lady Chatterley’s

It is as if Lawrence’s depiction of what Connie sees was turning into a sexualised

pornography of today […] is an inviable stimulant to the vice of self-abuse, onanism,

their eyes in a masturbatory way as the peak of Lawrence’s misogyny.

Women’s echoes (Hrivniakova, 2019)

V.1) Biographical influences and gendered writing

What makes Welsh’s statement so relevant to feminism is that it points to an awareness of