Necessity, Possibility, and the Revolutionary Landscape: D.H. Lawrence and the Search For a possible England.

Abstract

<p>The study is meant to show the evolution of D.H. Lawrence's vision in a discussion which moves from his first novel, The White Peacock, through his Mexican novel, The Plumed Serpent, before ending with Lawrence's last novel Lady Chatterley's Lover. Emphasis is placed on the importance of the physical landscape as it relates to the possibility of psychological and spiritual revolutions in Lawrence's characters. An argument is presented to illustrate that the first novel fails to make any serious attempt at upsetting conventional English cultural, emotional, and psychological standards, while The Plumed Serpent is able to attack, and destroy, many of these same standards largely because it is set in a "revolutionary landscape" which is not subject to the many "necessary conditions" Lawrence perceived in England. The return to the English landscape in Lady Chatterley's Lover is shown to represent a synthesis between the two earlier novels insofar as it recognizes both necessary and possible worlds. By emphasizing emotional and psychological, rather than political and social reorganization, the final novel brings a modest, but significant and authentic, revolution into the distinctly unrevolutionary English framework.</p>