Buoyant Celebration of Life and Blissful Blindness to Harsh Socio-cultural Realities: A study of D.H. Lawrence’s Pre-War Novels

Abstract

This article is an effort to explore D. H. Lawrence’s pre-War novels vis-à-vis the way they are different from his post-war fiction. A close study of D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love and other post-war novels shows that Lawrence in these post-war novels was full of cynicism, pessimism and hatred for European and English people, society, culture and modes of life. These novels depict European people and society as showing a flux of corruption, decay and death. The novels are replete with imagery of death, decay, rottenness and impotency. Prewar novels, on the other hand, do not show such distrust of life. These novels exhibit his buoyant celebration of life being blissfully blind to harsh socio-cultural realities. They are full of the images of life, fertility, nature and regeneration. There may be various reasons for Lawrence’s changing vision and attitudes but war looks to be the main deciding factor which made such a striking contrast between Lawrence’s Pre-war and Post-war novels. This study has less focused Lawrence’s post-war novels; rather it is mainly concerned with his pre-war novels to show Lawrence’s early zest for life and blindness to harsh socio-cultural realities.