D. H. Lawrence and Freud

Paper Summary:

This paper attempts to take a psychoanalytical view of the work of the novelist D. H. Lawrence and discusses the underlying reasons for the obscenities in some of his works such as "The Rainbow" which was was prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act and destroyed by order of the court. It evaluates whether Freud's two books, "Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious" and "The Fantasia" which were published in the two years following Lawrence's success in finally securing the publication of "Women in Love", are, in part, explanations--perhaps even justifications--of that shocking book and of other facets of his literary production up to that point. It examines how the two books lay out the views on human psychology and the promptings of the unconscious that had contributed so much to the underlying scheme of "Women in Love" and others.

From the Paper:

"The characters in Women in Love were deliberately created in a way that rejected, as Lawrence put it, "the old stable ego of the character" and plumbed, instead, the depths of the unconscious (quoted in Kinkead-Weekes xiv). These characters were subject to change in accordance with the pull of forces and drives which they only partially comprehended but were acutely interested in understanding more fully. They were, and, as Lawrence suggested, we all are, "unstable and governed by subterranean impulse" while moving through lives that are in constant flux--ideas which his readers "found much more threatening or even outrageous than mere sexual explicitness" (Kinkead-Weekes xiv). The basic difficulty of expressing such ideas through the construction of literary characters and finding the language that was best suited to this purpose would have made the composition of Women in Love difficult enough for a writer who believed that his book could be published. But Lawrence, in spite of all his difficulties, was intensely moved and fascinated by the process of writing that spurred him to go deeper into the unconscious than, he believed, anyone had delved before."

More papers on D. H. Lawrence and Freud:

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• Analytical Essay # 56062 : "Five Stages of D.H Lawrence's Poetic Maturation"
• Analytical Essay # 53683 : "Hades in Toyland: D.H. Lawrence's "The Rocking Horse Winner"

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