Showing results by author "D. H Lawrence" in All Categories

The theme of the woman for whom the man is not "good enough" is worked out fully in Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers. The story is beautifully observed, as are the relationships in working families of the time. The suspense of "will she, won't she marry him" is kept on the boil until the last line of the story. "Fanny and Annie" is a small masterpiece of a short story.

"The Mortal Coil" is one of Lawrence's darker stories. From adversity the lovers find a kind of happiness in each other, only for death to snatch it away.

In "The Thimble", Lawrence moves to the world of the affluent middle classes, a world to which he perhaps aspired. The story is a touching one of a disfigured husband returning home from the war to a beautiful new wife. The thimble of the story can be seen to represent purposeless, surface beauty, which has no function. The husband casts the thimble away, but can this marriage survive the surface damage and find a deeper meaning?

"The Blind Man" is a delicate study of a loving relationship blighted by the man's blindness and disfigurement in the First World War. The arrival of an old friend of the woman brings into the open feelings and fears previously suppressed.

"The Horse Dealer's Daughter" is a story gripping in its content. It encompasses the terror of death and disgrace, which is redeemed by passion and sexuality. The question Lawrence leaves open is whether the doctor's avowal of love is genuine or driven by the awakening of his own sexuality and pity for the woman.

"The Wilful Woman" was written by D.H. Lawrence in 1922. "The Wilful Woman" remained unfinished, and so the tough, spoiled, rich American woman, used to having her own way, does not get the nemesis Lawrence may have had in mind for her. Whether it was the Wordsworthian lessons of nature as she battles her way through the American wilderness or the harder lessons of a waiting husband who may or may not want her, we will never know.

"Monkey Nuts" was written by D.H. Lawrence in 1922. "Monkey Nuts" turns the traditional love story on its head. It is the woman (the new liberated woman Lawrence had little time for) who does the chasing and the boy who is reluctant. Lawrence seems to be saying it is the unspoken love between the two men in the story which is more satisfying than the possible love between the man and the woman, which the boy rejects. Although the older man goes through the motions of chasing the girl, even he seems to realize the sterility of one-sided love.

The hero of this story returns to England to undertake a "respectable" marriage, but is drawn to see the passionate love of his life once more. Their mutual passion attracts and repels the couple in equal measure, but the young man pulls away in a literal fire of passion. He escapes from the witch of his desires to the respectability he craves, but we wonder if he can be truly happy without the sensual side of his life being satisfied.

In this beautifully observed study of a new marriage and the sexual tensions that run through it, Lawrence returns to his theme that happiness in marriage can only come with the submission of the woman to the man. The young wife strains against the bonds of being married and dallies with another man but returns to the arms of her husband once he shows his true feelings for her.

Lawrence is often accused of misogyny, and this story used as evidence against him. There is the simple but honest mine worker who has taken on a wife who is "above" him, but who is struggling to understand her and her feelings for him. Slowly, the story unravels the woman's past. The listener cannot be entirely unsympathetic to her plight - Lawrence is too good a writer to let that happen - but her dishonesty has probably ruined two lives, and our feelings are for the husband.

In "The Prussian Officer", there is an anti-militarism theme, unpopular as the nation drew near to war, and an examination of latent homosexuality as the officer in the story struggles with his feelings for his orderly. The young soldier is driven beyond his breaking point, but finds a kind of redemption in his final return to natural surroundings and, symbolically, he finds equality in death with his tormentor as they are put side by side in the mortuary.

"A Sick Collier". Lawrence returns in this story to the scenes of his childhood and the colliers he was brought up with. The wife in the story is probably based on his mother, although the husband is unlike the drinking, brutal father portrayed in Sons and Lovers, Lawrence's autobiographical novel. The story is a vivid portrayal of the life of a young couple when an accident strikes the husband down, but does not succeed as a short story, lacking any clear focus or message.

"The Thorn in the Flesh" was written by D.H. Lawrence in 1914. The story can be listened to in tandem with "The Prussian Officer", which was written in the same year and has a similar setting and theme. In this story, the young soldier fights against his own shortcomings as a soldier and as a man. He flees the scene of his crime into the arms of his lover, where he finds solace and comfort, but he cannot escape the inevitable military machine that Lawrence hated.

New Poems by D.H.Lawrence. Narrated by Denis Daly. This audiobook is a collection of 42 poems first published in 1920. In it, Lawrence explores the possibilities of free verse, of which he says in the preface: “This is the unrestful, ungraspable poetry of the sheer present, poetry whose very permanency lies in its wind-like transit.”

Set in the relentlessly grey-skied, grey-walled world of a Midlands coal mining village just after the First World War, this tells the story of the love that developed between Lady Chatterley and Oliver Mellors, her husband's gamekeeper. The full text was not published in the United Kingdom until 1960, more than 30 years after it had been written, because of its explicit content and use of prohibited words. And yet, one cannot help wondering whether without its excoriating and often still accurate depiction of the British upper classes, the book might have been less harshly received.

When Constance Reid's new husband, Sir Clifford Chatterley, returns from war paralyzed and in a wheelchair, she sees her future wither. As their marriage grows loveless, she mourns the desires fated to go unfulfilled. But a stirring fascination with Oliver Mellors, the estate's coarse, taciturn gamekeeper, blooms into feelings she feared had died. Soon the lovers find themselves entangled in scandal, and their taboo affair becomes as pernicious as it is passionate.

Over the far horizon the blanket of night begins to slowly dissolve. The sun is once more on its daily journey across the heavens. The light begins to sharpen and increase in intensity, revealing the landscape. Morning has begun, and dazed heads and sleepy faces come to terms with the new day. Our poets capture the mood, the emotions and all manner of other details in their descriptions of this time. But then with the calibre of wordsmiths such as Tennyson, Wordsworth, Milton, Southey, Donne and many more besides, we are almost spoilt.

The human race prides itself on being the most organised of animals. We manage the fate of all other species. All other animals bow to our control or suffer. In diminishing numbers we allow some to live in the wild, but in increasing numbers we domesticate them, and whether they become part of the family, a best friend or wonderfully decorative accessory, we take their compliance for granted.

The vast varieties of flowers that exist provide an exceptional burst of vivid and subtle shades of colours, inspiring a smooth transition from petal to paper for so many of our greatest poets including Wordsworth, Tennyson, Burns, Swinburne and Coleridge....

Constance Reid marries Sir Clifford Chatterley, Baronet, who comes home from the Great War grievously injured. He is paralyzed from the waist down and must rely on Constance for all his needs. Constance finds living in mining country formidable and depressing until she meets Sir Clifford's gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. They enter into an affair which makes Constance realize living with the mind alone is only half a life.