RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

11
Everyone who writes on Lawrence is very much indebted to
his biographer Harry T. Moore.
The Priest of Love (1981) is a
book which is indispensable in any literary analysis of D.H.
Lawrence. Moore, one of Lawrence's more faithful disciples,
presents an almost religious view of the author, his ideas and
his works.
Like all disciples, Moore sometimes seems blind to
certain evidences of Lawrence's contradictions.
This critic
defends Lawrence as a passionate advocate of a god who has no
defects, only virtues.
Homosexuality has always been a controversial theme in
Lawrence's fiction.
Some critics tend to see homosexuality in
Lawrence as a feature of his character which he could not project
into reality and, therefore, he attempted to portray in fiction
by
means of his idea of bloodbrotherhood, as presented in
Women in Love through Birkin and Gerald (see "Gladiatorial").
Moore, in several passages of his book, defends Lawrence from
this attack.
Here are some of his arguments:
Lawrence does not seem to have been a homosexual;
at least not a complete or continually practicing
one. Frieda Lawrence used to insist that her
husband was not in any way a homosexual, but
towards the end of his life she changed her tune
somewhat; as she wrote in 1949 to Edward Gilbert,
who was studying Lawrence, 'Murry and he had no
'love affair'. But he did not believe in
homosexuality'... (p.84).
and
Certainly no one spoke out on sexual matters more
boldly and clearly than Lawrence, and there is no
passage.in his works in Which he writes approvingly
of sexual relations, that is, of sexual gratification,
between men. Indeed, he writes disapprovingly of
such things... (ibid).
It may have been as Moore claims but any reader of Lawrence's
fiction who reads him carefully is able to perceive that
Lawrence does not disapprove and/or approves of homosexuality.