A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick Permanent WRAP URL: http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/130206 Copyright and reuse: This thesis is made available online and is protected by original copyright. Please scroll down to view the document itself. Please refer to the repository record for this item for information to help you to cite it. Our policy information is available from the repository home page. For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: [email protected] warwick.ac.uk/lib-publications Women's Condition in D. H. Lawrence's Shorter Fiction: A Study of Representative Narrative Processes in Selected Texts Concepción Dfez-Medrano Submitted for PhD University of Warwick Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies June 1993 Table of Contents Acknowledgements Summary Introduction....................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: From Institutionalized Subordination to Gender Indoctrination: 'Hadrian' and 'Tickets, Please'..............................................................................................................................20 Chapter 2: The Haunting Ghost of Rape: 'Samson and Delilah', 'The Princess', and 'None of That' ............................................................................................................................................58 Chapter 3: Women Divided......................................................................................................... 109 Part I: Mothers and Female Siblings: ‘Mother and Daughter' and 'The Lovely Lady’ 111 Part II: "Compulsory Heterosexuality": The Fox........................................................148 Chapter 4: Women in Search of Utopia: 'The Woman Who Rode Away’ and St Mawr... 167 Concluding Remarks....................................................................................................................217 Bibliography of Works Cited and Consulted 225 Acknowledgements First of all, my gratitude goes to the Spanish Ministry of Education (M.E.C.) and The British Council, which jointly funded my two first years at The University of Warwick, thus enabling me to obtain the M.A. degree and set the present study in motion. I am also grateful to the M.E.C. for having agreed to extend its financial support so that I could bring the present study to its final completion. Especially, I would like to thank Dr. Cristopher Nash for his enthusiastic supervision, immense patience, invaluable criticism and continuous encouragement. Above all, I thank him for giving me the self-confidence without which this thesis could not have been accomplished. I am also indebted to Dr. Michael Bell's helpful comments and advice, especially during the early stages of my research; and to Dr. Lydia Blanchard (from Southwest Texas State University), who kindly spared her precious time in order to read an early draft; undoubtedly, this survey has gained from her very useful suggestions, incisive insights, and most welcome support. I am deeply grateful to the Language Centre of The University of Warwick, for whom I have had the pleasure to work over the last four years; apart from giving me the opportunity to acquire some expertise in teaching and translation, its staff (in particular, Arthur, Barbara, Domenica, Philip, and Salvador) has never failed to encourage me. Especially, I wish to thank Sandra Carr for being so tirelessly sympathetic. This thesis also owes much to Dra. Maria Luisa Dañobeitia: apart from being the one who first introduced me to the work of D. H. Lawrence, she unknowingly inspired the subject of this study; to Profesor Mervyn Smale, Dr. José Luis Martínez Dueñas, and Dr. José Manuel Martín Morillas, all of whom provided me with the sound undergraduate background I needed in order to start with my research; to Francisco Yus Ramos, for his lasting friendship and for contributing with material from which my survey has surely benefitted; to my father, my brother Juan, and Berit, who patiently dug in the libraries of the University of San Diego and Michigan in search of material essential to the present study. I wish to thank Alan and Joe Wilkinson for their friendship, and for enabling me to enjoy living in complete independence for the first time and without much financial strain; Glynn, Mike, David, and Desmond, the best of neighbours; Maria and John Turner, my all- encouraging and loving parent-surrogates in Britain; and José Luis González Medina, my dearest friend and fellow student, to whom I wish all the best in his imminent PhD submission at Oxford. I dedicate the present work to my mother and father, the best of friends, whom I thank for their love and understanding, and for helping me to go through the most difficult moments of my staying in Britain; to the best of brothers, Juan, Javier, and Jaime; and to my beloved grandparents, Conchita and Juan. Summary The condition of women in D. H. Lawrence's fiction has often been examined from a psycho-biographical viewpoint. Concentrating on the content of his writings some scholars have argued that Lawrence 'turned against women' after the war and that this change is reflected in his post-war fiction. This thesis shifts the focus to the form that shapes the contents of Lawrence's fictions: drawing from the works of narratologists, it closely examines a formally and thematically representative sample of Lawrence's post-war short fictions with a view to demonstrating that the allegation is inaccurate and textually unfounded. What these readings ultimately evince is that the failure to apprehend Lawrence's complex mode of representation in combination with subjectivized narrators has often led to a misapprehension of the political import of Lawrence's narratives. The texts examined have been thematically grouped around four common indictments against Lawrence: his advocacy of woman's submission to man, his exultation over the infliction of physical violence on women, his delectation in breaking female bonds, and his silencing of rebellious women characters. After a brief examination of the extant criticism on Lawrence's short story production on the one hand, and on Lawrence's relationship to feminism on the other, and an exposition of the theoretical premises informing this thesis, four chapters follow. Chapter one examines 'Hadrian' and 'Tickets, Please' in the light of institutionalized and subliminal modes of patriarchal domination of women; it particularly aims to illuminate Lawrence's technique of narrative organization. Chapter two focuses on the theme of rape in 'Samson and Delilah', 'The Princess', and 'None of That'; here the main emphasis is on the handling of point of view and narrative voice. Chapter three explores 'Mother and Daughter', 'The Lovely Lady' (Part I) and The Fox (Part II) in relation to the question of women's division by/in a male hegemonic order; Part I focuses on intertextuality, whereas Part II concentrates on narrative ambiguity, structural fragmentation and open-endedness. Chapter four analyses 'The Woman Who Rode Away' and St Mawr in the light of the possible alternatives to patriarchal capitalism which they represent respectively; the techniques examined here are more broad-ranging, ultimately seeking to articulate the essential and paradigmatic quality of these texts: their intrinsic "volubility". The concluding chapter summarizes findings and situates Lawrence's narrative techniques within a post-Jamesian context. I INTRODUCTION Kate Milieu's feminist polemic, Sexual Politics, published in 1970, finished off what Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex started in 1949: the identification of D. H. Lawrence as one of the arch-enemies of twentieth- century woman.1 Elaine Feinstein's Lawrence's Women: The Intimate Life of D. H. Lawrence, when set alongside other recent publications whose focus is also on Lawrence's relationship to feminism, actually proves that Kate Millett did not 'finish o ff any polemic as Maddox suggests in the introductory statement (quoted above) to her review of Feinstein's book.1 2 In fact, Millett only re-opened a discussion which dates back, not to Simone de Beauvoir, but to John Middleton Murry's Son o f Woman — published only one year after Lawrence's death.3 Moreover, Maddox's claim that Lawrence is 'one of the arch-enemies of twentieth- century woman' does not take into consideration contemporary dissenting feminist voices such as those, to cite only a few, of Carol Siegel, Sandra M. Gilbert, Mara Kalnins, and Lydia Blanchard.4 1. Brenda Maddox, 'Reluctant to Kiss: Elaine Fcinstcin's Lawrence's Women', The Tunes Literary Supplement, IS January (1993), p. S. 2. Elaine Feinstein's Lawrence's Women: The Intimate Life o f D. H. Lawrence (London: Harper Collins, 1993); other recently published works on this subject are: Margaret Storch's Sons and Adversaries: Women in William Blake and D. H. Lawrence (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 1991), also reviewed by Brenda Maddox in her 'Damages of the Breast: Infantilism in Blake and Lawrence', The Tunes Literary Supplement, 7 June (1991), p. 10; David Holbrook's Where D. H. Lawrence Was Wrong About Women (Lewisburg: Buckncll University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1992); Carol Siegel's Lawrence Among the Women: Wavering Boundaries in Women's Literary Traditions (Charlottesville.VI, and London: University Press of Virginia, 1991). 3. John Middleton Murry, Son o f Woman: D. H. Lawrence (London