D.H. LAWRENCE’S PALETTE OF WORDS: A STUDY OF LAWRENCE’S AESTHETIC DELIGHT IN BEAUTY AND UGLINESS A Thesis submitted to the FaCulty oF the Graduate SChool oF Arts and SCienCes oF Georgetown University in partial FulFillment oF the requirements For the degree oF Master oF Arts in English By Erin Elizabeth DeSimone, B.A. Washington, DC March 25, 2016 Copyright 2016 by Erin Elizabeth DeSimone All Rights Reserved ii D.H. LAWRENCE’S PALETTE OF WORDS: A STUDY OF LAWRENCE’S AESTHETIC DELIGHT IN BEAUTY AND UGLINESS Erin Elizabeth DeSimone, B.A. Thesis Advisor: Rebecca Boylan, Ph.D. ABSTRACT In this thesis I illuminate a new reading of D.H. Lawrence through close-readings of the Hegelian dialectic of beauty and ugliness in his four novels: Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1920), and Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928). I argue that D.H. Lawrence’s opposition to his contemporary art theorists allows his writing to incorporate painterly images and painterly moments that teeter between beauty and ugliness. Lawrence’s deliberate aesthetic of oscillation explores the Vitalism of human relationships. My study of Lawrence’s aesthetic contributes to current studies of beauty and ugliness; thus I pair my work with 21st century aestheticians to prove Lawrence’s relevancy. The best method to study Lawrence’s aesthetic of intertwined beauty and ugliness is through the language of his novels. In each novel, Lawrence repeats the words ‘beauty’, ‘ugly’, ‘ecstasy’, ‘abstraction’, and ‘quiver’. These words become the verbal brushstrokes of Lawrence’s novels and they enable Lawrence to explore the Vitalism of human relationships through the language of aesthetics. My analysis of Lawrence’s verbal brushstrokes brings to light Lawrence’s belief that a dialectic between beauty and ugliness is vital in human relationships. Further, Lawrence believes in the phosphorescence of words; he believes that words do not signify one ‘thing’ but instead convey a phosphorescence of meanings. Through my study of Lawrence’s aesthetic a phosphorescent, multi-linguistic, understanding of the words ‘beauty’ and ‘ugly’ is revealed. For Lawrence, the iii word ‘beauty’ can signify tender, violent, or sacred, while the word ‘ugly’ can signify profane, delight, and frustration. In D.H. Lawrence's palette of words, beauty and ugliness are phosphorescent sensations, emotions, and impressions. iv In the spirit of D.H. Lawrence’s attention to family generations, the research and writing of this thesis is dedicated to my mother, Ann E. DeSimone, and my grandfather, Robert J. Leary. Many thanks for teaching me how to notice the beautiful and the ugly, ERIN E. DESIMONE v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction............................................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter I: Intimate.............................................................................................................................. 21 Chapter II: Wonder ............................................................................................................................. 45 Chapter III: Savage ............................................................................................................................. 70 Chapter IV: Mechanical .................................................................................................................... 99 A Propos................................................................................................................................................ 118 Figures................................................................................................................................................... 123 Works Cited......................................................................................................................................... 128 vi INTRODUCTION D.H. Lawrence writes with a distinct palette of words. He consciously selects specific words, which act as his brushstrokes, to illustrate his novels. His novels are dabbed repeatedly with these same words, but the verbal brushstrokes blend differently in each of his works to produce different aesthetic effects. I have discovered that Lawrence most likes to create his images and their impressions with the words ‘beauty’, ‘ugly, ‘quiver’, ‘ecstasy’, and ‘abstract’. In each of Lawrence’s literary canvases, these words are repeated frequently; but they smear together in different consistencies to depict different character relationships. In order to accent each new literary coloring, formed through the interplay of these verbal brushstrokes, Lawrence repeats novel-specific words in each of his narratives; these words are aesthetically dependent on the type of human relationships Lawrence seeks to explore in his novelistic canvas. Sons and Lovers repeats the word ‘intimate’; the relationships in Sons and Lovers seek ‘all-beautiful intimacy’ and the result is ‘counterfeit intimacy’. In The Rainbow, Lawrence illustrates generational relationships through the words ‘wonder’ and ‘transfiguration’. But when ‘ecstasy’ is sought through inhuman ‘wonder’, these character relationships struggle. Women in Love praises ‘savage’ human instincts; Lawrence often writes the word ‘savage’ in moments when a Hegelian dialectic of ‘beauty’ and ‘ugliness’ functions. And, in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, ‘mechanical’ ‘abstraction’ blots out the ‘quivering’ human instincts that Lawrence emphasizes in satisfying human relationships. By stroking these words into his writing, Lawrence develops his own aesthetic. Lawrence’s aesthetic is vital, deeply human, and it not coincidentally paints the life charged by human relationships. For Lawrence, true art and true human relationships must accept the presence of, and oscillation between, ‘beauty’ and ‘ugliness’. Through detailed study of the words of D.H. Lawrence, the importance of his human 1 aesthetic becomes visible. Further, Lawrence believes in the phosphorescence of words; he believes that words do not signify one ‘thing’ but instead convey a phosphorescence of meanings. Through my study of Lawrence’s aesthetic, a phosphorescent, multi-linguistic, understanding of the words ‘beauty’ and ‘ugly’ is illuminated. For Lawrence, the word ‘beauty’ can signify tender, violent, or sacred, while the word ‘ugly’ can signify profane, delight, and frustration. Beauty and ugliness are phosphorescent sensations, emotions, and impressions. Historicizing Lawrence Studies Contemporary Modernist fiction studies tend to invoke D.H. Lawrence as an aside, a figure for comparison with Woolf or with Joyce. In fact, most Modernist studies forget to mention Lawrence at all. When D.H Lawrence does become the primary figure of study today, his novels are most commonly analyzed for their curiously Christian or for their gender-study undertones. In order to resurface the importance of Lawrence in our academic endeavors, I deliberately want to leave out discussions of Lawrence’s Christian beliefs and I deliberately do not use to the word ‘erotic’; instead, I want to highlight his status as a writer-painter in an analysis of the aesthetics of his novels. I believe that Lawrence’s 1929 observation is still relevant in 2016: “Our aesthetic education is become immensely important, since it is so immensely neglected” (Lawrence, Pictures on the Walls). In this thesis, I offer a new reading of an author who has been neglected. In Pictures on the Walls Lawrence mourns the neglect of 20th century aesthetic education. Lawrence believes that the museum emphasis on the academic study of only particular works of art limits aesthetic education; Lawrence believes all pictures, including wall pictures, need to be studied for their visualizations of human relations. Like Lawrence, I too believe the study of aesthetics has been immensely neglected in the Humanities. I believe 2 close-reading Lawrence’s phosphorescent written and visual aesthetics generates a more holistic study of Lawrence. Through my attention to Lawrence’s aesthetics, I am able study multiple components of Lawrence’s novels, gender, eroticism, spirituality, without limiting Lawrence’s unconscious writing to one of these categories. Lawrence’s language is phosphorescent, thus studying his aesthetic words uncovers a phosphorescence of Lawrence’s ideas. Lawrence’s paintings more consciously focus on the human. I pair Lawrence’s unconscious phosphorescent language with his conscious painterly depictions of the human in order to study Lawrence’s conception of human relationships. To begin, I would like to acknowledge major research that has already been conducted on D.H. Lawrence. The discourse on Lawrence as a writer-painter began in the 1960s thanks to Lawrence scholar, Keith Sagar. Robert Millett, an American Lawrence scholar, Jack Stewart, professor at the University of British Columbia who specializes in the interrelations of literature and painting in the Modern period, and Andrew Harrison, professor at the University of Nottingham who specializes in late 19th and 20th century literature and specifically Lawrence’s literature, have since continued Sagar’s mode of Lawrence study. By comparing Lawrence’s various novels to different art movements, all of these critics wanted to discover the visual art that most influenced Lawrence’s writing. Sagar’s D.H. Lawrence’s Paintings (2003), and his earlier The Art of D.H. Lawrence (1966), prove that art movements contemporary to Lawrence’s time influence Lawrence’s writing. Sagar finds