T H E S I S

Chapter I
INTRODUCTION
A, A, Victorian moralist or a case of sex in the head
Forty-five years after his death* D.H.Lawrence continues to
exert a remarkable influencee
He seems to speak to the modern
reader with the same forcefulness and freshness that impressed,
and sometimes shocked, his contemporaries,
- The first fact to begin with is that it is impossible to
separate Lawrence the man from Lawrence the writer* This iss at
least in Lawrence's case, the starting point of his lifelong dualities
or "double measures'1.
In Lawrencefs writings there is a
constant rhythm of powerful forces pulling against each other! a
contradiction between the man and the writer; an attraction or a
repulsion between man and woman; a struggle between life and
death forces, but most of all, a forked vision of human relationships
towards both the darkness and the lightness.
One way to understand the quality of Lawrence’s striking
achievements is simply to accept the assertion of F.R. Leavis (now recognized
as authoritative), who says that Lawrence is f,a creative
writer of genius”.(FRL 17)* He devoted himself entirely to liter­
* Quotations in this work are indicated by a three-letter abbreviation
followed by page numbers® Check work and author in the list
of abbreviations at the beginning.