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California State University, Northridge CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE A HIDWUST 'S GUIDE 1'0 D , H. LAl<JRENCE A thesis submitted in partial sati.sfaction of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors :Ln English by Eclie Good ,-- August, 1974 '' The thesis of Edie Good is approved: Conu~itt<k Chairman California State University, Northridge August, 1974 ii A HL~IST'S GUIDE TO D. H. LAWP~NCE On one level the novels and short stor:ie::; of D. R. l,&\vrence can be read as s:i.mple love stories. But to read them as such is to cheat: oneself and to debase L,awren.ce. To treat oneself to a fuller and deeper reading experience and to do justice to Lawrence, one should read the novels and short stories with an eye on the humanistic psychologists who followed Lawrence, for their theories inform many of LtnJr.ence 1 s works. In fact, in this paper 1 shall show how Lawrence actually anticipated the humilnlstic psychologists by presenting .fictional situations, character-s, and relationships which generate the theories of the humanists. Among the humanistic pf>ycholog{sts were vlilhelm. Reich lilho conceived the idea of orgone energy, the primordial cosmic energy which is at its optimum level in the orgastically pott~nt individual, the individual who can totatly surr.endt'.!r to the involuntary orgastic convulsion. Later, Alexander Lo·i>JEm incorpon1ted and refined Reich's conceptions in the theory of sophi~1ticatcd s~nsuality versus mature sexuality. Erich Fromm add,~d t:!H~ notions that }ovc is a way of over­ coming the sense of e::r.-i.stent:ial isol.e.tion, through fusion, giving, car:tng, responsibility, n'spe1..~t, end kno·-1ledge. Abraham .t-1aslow contributed the theor:y l:)f Deficiency-love versus Being-love, the latter charac.terized by mutual self-actualizati.on and peak experiences. Rollo May added that love must be joined to will, power, or self-assertion, that lovers must affect each other snd be open to being affected by each other. Finally, Arthur Janov said that love means allowing 1 2 another to express himself, letting another express his true feelings, whether it be sorrow, anger, joy, or pain. Sons and Lovers is the earliest of Lawrence's novels t~o generate the theories of the humanistic psychologists. For ex<1mple, in the novel when an unbridgeable gulf develops between Mrs. Morel .and her husband, she experiences a feeling of isolation and overcomes :tt by transferring her love and attention from her husband to her children. At first Mrs. Morel's love for her children seems to he positive normal love especially motherly love. For e:r..a.mple_. when her husband becomes violent and threatens to leave her, for her own sake she wishes that he would go but fQr the sake of her children she resists driving him a\-?ay: 110ne part of her said, it '.¥ould be a relief to see the last of him; another part fretted because of keephtg the 1 children, and inside her, as yet she could not quite let him go." Furthermore, when her son William gets into a fight she accepts his version of the event, intervenes when her husband tries to beat him, and later finds her son William a job. At another time she nurs€s her other son Paul through a critical illness and generally treats him with special consideration because he is so sensitive and delicate, These manifestations of Mrs. Morel's love for her children seem to be the positive love esp<;::cial.ly motherly love as Fromm defined it and the positive love in generul as Janov defined it, According to Fromm love is the knowledge, respect, care and responsibility for others as a way of overcoming the universal human feeling of isolation 1 D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers (New York: Viking Press, 1958), p. 44. All subsequent references to Lawrence 1 s novels and short stories will be w:Lthin the body of the paper. It is to be understood that the page numbers are those of the editions listed in the bibliography. 3 and separation. Motherly love is "affection given unconditionally, affirmation without condition of the child's life and needs, • . • the performance of the actions necessary for the preservation of the child's life and growth, ••. the instilling in the child of a 2 love of life." According to Janov love means allowing another to express his true feelings, whether it is sorrow, joy, or anger. 3 But gradually Mrs. Morel's love for Paul develops into a perversion of the positive love of a mother for a child. Gradually, her love degenerates into a negative form of motherly love bordering on the erotic if we rely on Fromm's definition of erotic love as an exclusive relationship based upon a "craving for complete fusion, for 4 union with one other person, 11 both physically and spiritually. For example, when Paul goes to work in a nearby town he returns at night and '~is life-story, like an Arabian nights, was told night after night to his mother. It was almost as if it were her own life" {p. 113). Mrs .. Morel, indeed, seems to live for and through Paul, and when he wins an art contest her own life seems rich with promise. She also seems to see Hiriam as a sexual rival and tries to cut off Paul's relationship with Miriam so that mother and son can be together. Finally, when she is dying of cancer, Paul imagines that his soul cannot leave her. Between Paul and his mother there is also the exclusivity that 2 Erich Fromm, The Art of Lovi~ (New York: Bantam Books, 1956), p. 41. 3 . Arthur Janov, The Primal Scream (New York: Dell Publishing Co., pp. 290-297. 4F'romm~ p. ·44. 4 Fromm and Maslm-1 too attributed to erotic love. For example, when Paul has bronchitis he only '"ants to be near his mother.. When Mr. Morel goes to the hospital because of an injury Paul urges his mother not to sleep with her husband anymore and tells her "I'm the man in the house now" (p. 83). Furthermore, Mrs. Morel resents 'Paul's soci.al life and is hostile and jealous toward his girlfriends. When Paul's relationship with Hiriam intensifies, Hrs. Morel tries to get Paul to renounce her because, as she says, "I've never--you know, Paul--I've never had a husband--not really'' (p. 213). Paul retreats from his relationship with girls because he "still loved his mother best." Finally, Hrs. Horel develops cancer, a psychosomatic illness according to Re:f.ch, which binds Paul even closer to her and captures him from his girlfriends. In Fantasia of the Unconscious· Lawrence explores this sort of perversion of a woman's natural love for. her child. According to Lawrence, a mother like Mrs. Morel tries to establish in her child "the idealism of love and of the spirit" and the "pure sympathetic 1 115 communion and 'understanding , She puts persistent pressure on the child to suppress the deep sensual impulses originating below the diaphragmand to concentrate on the upper sympathetic centers of "higher" emotions and spirituality, When the child reaches puberty as Paul does he is unable to respond to another woman on the deep sensual instinctive level but only on the spiritual level because in other women he looks for the ideal of spiritual love which he found in his mother. However, although this love bond between mother and child 5 D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious (N ew York: Viking Press, _1960), p. 150. 5 seems spiritual, because of the union of the polarities of the human psyche, the spiritual love arouses the dynamic sensual activity on the lower plane and the mother-child love becomes quasi-sexual and inces- tuous, thus making lt all the more difficult for the child to form 6 bonds with other women. This is why Paul first develops a relationship with l1iri.am. Paul is drawn to Miriam because she represents the idealized spiritual love that he experienced li'ith his mother and longed to reexperience with another woman. Thus, in a letter to Miriam, Paul writes, '~ou see, I can give spirit love, I have given it to you this long, long time, but not embodied passion. See, you are a nun. I have given you what I have given a holy nun--as a mystic monk to a mystic nun. Surely you esteem i.t best 11 (p. 251). Conversely Miriam can satisfy this spiritual longing in Pa~l because she is a sensitive, refined, chaste, pious, intellectual girl. According to Lawrence's ~ychoanaly~:i.s and the Unconscious and Fantasia of the Unconscious, she is focused in the mind, the cul de sac, the seat of secondary consciousness and has lost the unison of 7 the upper and lo,~er planes of the body. In other words, according to Reich, she is orgastically impotent and unable to surrender herself to the involuntary orgastic convulsion. For example, when she falls in love with Paul, "Quivering as at some annunciation," she says, "O Lord, let me not love Paul Morel. Keep me from loving him if I ought not love him. But • . if 6 Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, pp. 150-154. 7 D. H. Lawrence, Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious (New York: Viking Press, 1969),· pp. 34 ££., 42 ff.; Fantasia of the Uncons('.ious_, p. 74 ff. 6 it is Thy will that I should love him, make me love him--as Christ would, who died for the souls of men.
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