T H E S I S

33
The actual meaning we find in dictionaries today for
"puritan” is "a person of or affecting extreme strictness in religion
or morals.’*
The Victorian moralists associated puritan-
ism with middle class to what the Lawrences belonged. Lydia
Beardsall’s education laid a great emphasis on Law (the Bible)
and later on, young Lawrence would use what he learned from the
Scriptures in his writings. G.H.Ford says that Lawrence was affected
by the Bible in the composition of The Rainbow and dedicates
a whole chapter to this. (DDM 115-137) Lawrence’s prophetic
side and preacher’s habits are also indications of his
biblical background.
So that in a broad sense the background of Lawrence's family
was really puritanical# Indeed his mother's father was a
minister, but his father seems to have had no religious education.
However, some critics even call his mother a "back-street Victorian
age Puritan”.
from Lawrence himself:
Harry T. Moore does not go so far but quotes
’From early childhood I have been familiar with Apocalyptic
language and Apocalyptic image: not because I spent my time
reading Revelation, but because I was sent to Sunday school
and to Chapel, to Band of Hope and to Christian Endeavour,
and was always having the Bible read at me or to me.u(TIH38)
In his introduction to Sext Literature» and Censorship Moore adds:
"Lawrence, growing up in the Nottinghamshire coal-field in
the decline of the Victorian age, was conditioned by that
era and by the Congregationalism of the miners’ bethel of
his childhood.”(SLC 8)
R. Aldington states' that religion was a more important factor
in Lawrence’s puritanic background than education and adds:
"The family were Congregationalists, a fact in which Law-