DH Lawrence, Radclyffe Hall and the Socialization Ofmodem Texts

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DH Lawrence, Radclyffe Hall and the Socialization Ofmodem Texts Thinking Sex: D. H. Lawrence, Radclyffe Hall and the Socialization ofModem Texts David Balzer Department ofEnglish McGill University, Montreal Submitted December, 2001 A thesis submitted to the Faculty ofGraduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment ofthe requirements ofthe degree ofMaster ofArts. © Copyright David Balzer, 2001 National Library Bibliothèque nationale 1+1 of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A ON4 OttawaON K1AON4 canada canada The author bas granted a non­ L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library ofCanada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies ofthis thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership ofthe L'auteur conselVe la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts frOID it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permIssion. autorisation. 0-612-78986-1 Canada Balzer 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstracts (English / Français) ....Page 2 Acknowledgements ....Page 4 Introduction ....Page 5 Chapter 1 ....Page 9 Chapter 2 ...Page 31 Chapter 3 and Conclusion ...Page 64 Works Cited and Consulted ...Page 98 Balzer 2 ABSTRACTS i. English This thesis is an examination ofsex in D. H. Lawrence's Lady ChatterIey 's Lover and Radclyffe Hall's The Weil ofLoneliness as it relates to the social, linguistic and political elements ofliterary modernism. Both novels "think sex," allowing specifie concepts ofsex to act as methods ofcommunication between artists and readers. By writing sex, Hall and Lawrence address the modem reader, providing a script for ideal readerly and writerly approaches to the novel. The first chapter examines contemporary cultural and gender theory's understanding ofthe relationship between sex and discourse and relates this to political and literary considerations ofmodernism. The second chapter looks at psychosexual rnedical texts that influenced modernism's understanding ofsex and art; the final chapter examines "thinking sex" in Lady ChatterIey 's Lover and The Weil ofLoneliness by examining the content and reception ofboth works. Il. Français Ce mémoire examine le sexe présent dans les oeuvres Lady Chatterley's Lover de D.H. Lawrence et The WeIl ofLoneliness de Radclyffe Hall dans le mesure où il est relié aux éléments linguistiques et politiques du modernisme litéraire. Il y est soutenu que les deux romans "pensent le sexe", ou proposent des démarches par lesquelles le sexe agirait comme un moyen de communication pour les artistes et les lecteurs. En écrivant des actes sexuelles, les auteurs visent à s'adresser directement aux lecteurs modernes, fournissant un scénario, pour le lecteur ainsi que pour l'écricain, pour la façon idéale d'aborder Balzer 3 l'oeuvre artistique. Le premier chapitre examine les théories contemporaires des sexes et de la culture traitants de la relation entre le sexe et le discours et reli celles-çi au modernisme politique et litéraire. Le deuxième chapitre se centre sur des textes médicaux psychosexuelles qui ont infuencé les pensées du modernisme sur le sexe et l'art. Le dernier chapitre analyse le "sexe pensé" dans Lady Chatterley's Lover et The WeIl of Loneliness en regardent à la fois leur contenu et leur réception a leur parution. -------------_._----------------------- Balzer4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1would like to thank, in particular, my advisor, Dr. Miranda Hickman, for her always­ constructive criticism, and for her assiduous oversight and shaping ofthese ideas from their vaguest initial conceptions. My thanks must also go to Lindsay Holmgren, Derek Aubichon, Maria Simpson, MarIa Balzer, Simon Dardick and Vicki Marcok, for being a sounding board and an invaluable support system. Last, and most importantly, 1would like to thank my parents, Ron and Hannelore Balzer, without whom this thesis would not be complete. Balzer 5 INTRODUCTION This paper is about sex, but like most academic considerations ofsex, it bears very little resemblance to the act itself. This is a study ofsex as a social, linguistic and political concept; here, sex must remain discursive, sustained only as an ideal. This is also a study ofsex as it relates to literary modernism, a period marked by the emergence ofbrand new discourses on sex and sexuality, and a period that, as 1 will argue, enacts a thoroughgoing conceptualization ofsex. 1 choose two best-selling, banned novels from 1928 to illustrate the relationship between sex and modernism: D.H. Lawrence's Lady ChatterIey 's Lover and Radclyffe Hall's The Well ofLoneliness. Well and Lady Chatterley's indictments (1928-30 and 1959/60, respectively), as weIl as their mutual fame as books ofsexual scandaI, provide initial reasons for this coupling. Ofcourse, both are aIse about affairs: Lady ChatterIey presents a relationship between Constance Chatterley and her Oliver Mellors with frankness and strong language, and Well of Loneliness posits a sentimental plea for heroine Stephen Gordon's lesbian desires and subsequent relationships. 1 argue that both Hall and Lawrence consider sex in remarkably similar ways, despite superficiaI, and immediately apparent, disparities ofsexuality. Lady Chatterley may be a prototypical straight narrative, and The Weil ofLoneliness a classic oflest>ian fiction, but it is on the topic ofsex that Lawrence and Hall have the most in common. Both posit "good" sex in their novels as a Platonic convergence, a gesture of"purity": the kind ofsex that the sexologists oftheir day most often approved of. Sometimes Hall's and Lawrence's sex is entirely conceptual, even laced with an asexuality that transcends physical action. Here, sex confidently enters the realm ofthe discursive, often Balzer 6 becoming entirely conversationaI. But this sex act is as social as it is intimate, looking outside the bedroom and into the world. By removing sex from its physical gestures, Lawrence and Hall seek to further connect a practice of''thinking sex" to readerly communities. They speak ofreproduction in its many modern forms - aesthetic, mechanical and sexual - and allow it to serve as the ultimate goal ofthis conceptual union. Like the politicians oftheir day, they use sex and biology as a way to articulate one's relation to astate, to a readership, to modernity. Reproduction occurs in Lady Chatteriey and Well in order to serve this purpose, to posit the novel as something that bears new and different discursive children, giving meaning to a compulsively shifting modern society that constantly claims it is in need ofsorne stable means ofregeneration. Sexology provides a framework for my reading ofHall's and Lawrence's conceptualizing ofsex, as does recent work on the connection between sexology and modernism by Lisa Rado and Wayne Koestenbaum. Rado and Koestenbaum explore, as 1 do, issues ofsexual identity (as it spans the personal and national) and aesthetics that recur again and again in the works ofRichard von Krafft Ebing, Havelock Ellis and Edward Carpenter. Rado's work in particular allows me to posit a number ofconnections between modernism and sexology. To begin, sexology texts identify the artist as sexual, suggesting that artistic growth mirrors sexual development. Many moderns take these configurations ofaesthetic and sexual identity seriously; as Rado notes in The Modern Androgyne Imagination, modernists "felt the weight" ofpsychosexual studies. The writers ofthis study certainly bear this weight demonstratively, making overt connections in their novels between artistic and sexual identity: Radclyffe Hall through Stephen Gordon shows the relationship between a writer's ability and her sexual (or sexologicaI) Balzer 7 self-knowledge; Lawrence, though writing ofstraight sex, follows Hall in his depiction of Connie Chatterley's concurrent sexual and ideological awakening. Furthermore, l add to both Rado's and Koestenbaum's studies by arguing that sexology sees sex as more than a personal, biological phenomenon, and instead connects the sexual selfwith the functionally social self. Edward Carpenter, for instance, suggests that the homosexual artist be a self-actualized part ofmodern society by generating art, which, he argues, takes the conceptual place ofstraight reproduction. Lawrence and Hall use these utilitarian proclivities to calI attention to their own novels as similarly functional, society­ driven artworks that, through a consideration ofsex, attempt to communicate with and to improve a modern readership-cum-citizenship. Ultimately, largue that both Lawrence and Hall use sex, like their sexological contemporaries, to suggest ways in which the modern reader and the modern artist, both as members ofa modern society, should approach aesthetics. For Hall and Lawrence, sex is a way ofarticulating aesthetic goals and is thus more than a private interaction, the stuffofillicit affairs. In both works, sex takes on proportions both national and mythic; Hall's and Lawrence's writing on sex often acts as an aesthetic manifesto, forcefully articulating a literary work's relationship to culture through sex. Both novels, moreover,
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