Human relations in the works of d. H. Lawrence

2.2 Classification of male characters in later novels

The specificity of the presentation of male images (with which the ideological and plot emphasis of the works is usually associated) is also due to the peculiarities of the writer's "well-being" in the war and post-war period. Lawrence from his youth had a tendency to a split personality; the experience during the war years increased mental instability and, obviously, stimulated the indicated tendency so that the latter was reflected in the poetics of the novels. Beginning with "Women in Love", the position of the author in the novel splits, as it were, between the two main male images, opposed to each other; such a feature in this and subsequent novels was commented by A. Niven as "finding the irreconcilable Rupert ( Berkin - A.P.) and Gerald in his soul, ... objectifying the internal dilemma that Lawrence was the bearer of at that time", as well as DG Zhantiyeva - as a "dispute of the writer with himself" . This feature was noted in one way or another by M. Murray , G. Howe , F. Leavis , M. S. Day , N. P. Michalskaya and other critics. However, attempts to create a classification based on this feature, as far as we know (the volume of research on Lawrence's work is huge), have not been undertaken.

So, the position of the author in the novel is divided between two characters, one of which condenses most of the author's sympathies, acts as a carrier, conductor of his ideas, the second, to one degree or another, is his antagonist, performing actions, putting forward moral postulates that are in conflict with the life position of the first hero as a whole ( Burkin and Gerald , Mellors and Clifford) or with its individual points (Lilly and Aaron, Somers and Kangaroo). The confrontation between the two characters largely determines the development of the action and the ideology of the novels.
The first type of hero has features of a clear biographical, professional, spiritual, physical ( Burkin , Lilly, Somers ) or only spiritual and some biographical ( Mellors , Burkin ) resemblance to the author. The surname, and often the name (Rupert, Rawdon , Richard) of such a hero consists of two syllables, that is, there is a rhythmic and phonetic similarity with the name and surname of the author ( David Lawrence , David Lawrence, according to the rules of reading). The aesthetic of the author's outsideness does not have much power in Lawrence's later novels; a hero of this type always reveals his closeness to the author, despite the fact that the latter, in some cases, makes great efforts to distance himself from him. As W. Allen rightly notes , each new work of Lawrence "was the next release in the serial history of his life ." We will call the hero of the first type "author's" (without quotes). Its features are often directly related to the views, aspirations, state of health and whereabouts of its creator at the time of the writing of the novel.
The latter also partly determine the characteristics of the characters of the second type. The passionate pathos of the author's hero, his claim to be an exponent of the most important ideas of the era, the "messiah" of his time require a "counterweight" of a special kind - a comrade-in-arms or an enemy of worthy magnitude. He must have considerable intelligence and tangible power. This is how we see Gerald , the "Napoleon of the industry" ("Women in Love"), Clifford, another coal industrialist gaining strength ("Lady Chatterley 's Lover "), Kangaroo, the leader of the "diggers" ready to seize power in Australia ("Kangaroo"). The figure of Aaron Sisson ("Aaron's Rod") only at first glance seems modest in this "gallery of giants": by linking the image of a flute player with religious symbols, Lawrence encourages us to associate him with one of the grandiose figures of the Bible - the high priest Aaron, brother of the prophet Moses, the second of mortals who had the honor to speak on behalf of God, in his name to work miracles (Bible, book "Exodus").
The function of characters of the second type is to set off and emphasize the merits of the characters of the first type (author's) in the confrontation that arises in the novel. These characters, despite their strength and power, suffer complete (death of Gerald and Kangaroo) or partial defeat (fiasco in relations with women of Aaron and Clifford). The author's hero never loses in this confrontation, his mistakes and disappointments remain in the past, beyond the scope of the novel action (the formation of the "prophet" Lilly, failures with the women of Mellors , and the sad experience of the life of the pacifist Somers is taken out in a separate chapter ("Nightmare"), not directly related to the development of the plot in Australia). The author's hero, possessing the truth in a more finished form, can sometimes seem therefore more static in comparison with his antagonist and other heroes of the novel. So, Lilly mostly makes speeches, Aaron leaves the family, wanders, seduces women, Somers (in the Australian part of the novel "Kangaroo") ponders for a long time and consistently rejects offers of friendship and cooperation from Jack Calcott , Kangaroo, socialist leader Willie Struthers , and shows activity only in reflection (the only active character is a hero named Jack Calcott ).
The second hero, despite the emphasized difference in appearance, views, character, is always in some, perhaps not immediately realized, but nevertheless deep and undeniable affinity with the author's hero. The author himself repeatedly draws the reader's attention to the existence of "internal kinship", "brotherly intimacy" between Burkin and Gerald , Aaron and Lilly, Somers and Kangaroo. Researchers of Lawrence's work talk about the "genetic" relationship of these pairs of characters - a relationship mediated by the author's consciousness, the author's personality. So, F. Leavis considers Lilly ("Aaron's Rod") as a character, in many respects embodying the "I" of the writer, and Aaron - his alter-ego ", we find the same idea in G. Howe , A. Niven states that" Somers incorporates Lawrence's own "I", and the Kangaroo is "a form of his alter-ego ", M. Murray , equating Somers and Lawrence, believes that the Kangaroo is Lawrence's attempt "to imagine whether he can rule the nation", one of Lawrence's contemporary biographers, Brenda Maddox , considers Mellors and Clifford ("Lady Chatterley 's Lover ") "two aspects of Lawrence's own view of himself" [23,5].
Thus, it can be stated that two male images, interacting, arguing, and sometimes denying each other, complement each other in a peculiar way, needing each other. There is no doubt that the property of Lawrence's writing thinking is duality , and his characters are a special kind of doubles.
The prose of the “lost generation”, based mainly on the personal observations of the authors, is characterized by an appeal to the fate of a young man from the “middle class”, an intellectual living in the post-war period. [5, 343].
For David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930), the war and early post-war years were a difficult time. Sick of tuberculosis, he was released from conscription, but he was repeatedly called for re-examination. Lawrence made no secret of his hatred of war, which he perceived as the ugliest phenomenon generated by a sick civilization. In 1915, the circulation of his newly published novel "Rainbow" was banned for distribution, declared an immoral book that could have a harmful effect on the reader. However, the real reason for the dissatisfaction of the authorities was the writer's condemnation of British politics, his anti-war position. After the ban on "Rainbow" he experienced great financial difficulties. Since the writer's wife Frieda was German, the couple were accused of espionage and subjected to deportation from Cornwall, where they lived in 1916-1917. September 26, 1918 Lawrence is called for a third time for a medical examination and this time is recognized as fit for non-combatant military service, but on November 11, the First World War ends with the Peace Act. In 1919, Lawrence got the opportunity to leave England, he was there only on short visits, putting himself in the position of a voluntary exile. The writer lived in Europe, Australia, America. He spent the last years of his life in Italy.
work on the novel Lady Chatterley's Lover in Florence in October 1926, after another trip to the UK. The first version of the novel was first published in the United States in 1944, and in the homeland of the writer - only in 1972. Having completed his work by December 1926, the writer begins to work on the second version of the novel, entitled "John Thomas and Lady Jane", the first publication of which was carried out by in 1954 one of the Italian publishing houses. In December 1927, Lawrence began work on the third - and final - version of the novel, which he originally planned to call "Tenderness" ( Tenderness ). The whole of 1928 was spent in negotiations between the writer and London and New York publishers. They demanded a softening of the most sensual descriptions and the removal of some words that were not too familiar to the then public. The author prepared a "softened" version of the novel, but the publishers refuse to publish even this version. As a result, the full text of the book comes out in a small printing house of the Italian publisher Giuseppe Orioli in March 1928 in a circulation of a thousand copies and is distributed by subscription.
Lawrence's work is persecuted: in the middle of 1929, the London police forbid the exhibition of his paintings, copies of his new novel are confiscated from subscribers in England and the United States by decision of the judicial authorities. Only three years later, after the death of the author, was published, with the participation of Frida Lawrence, the edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover , reduced by one fifth of the text , which was of great interest to readers. Suffice it to say that this edition was reprinted more than thirty times in the writer's homeland until 1960. Only in 1960, a court decision finally allowed the publication of the full text of the long-suffering novel, but the author was not given to know about all this.
The long-suffering novel by D.G. Lawrence in many ways fits into the context of the Lost Generation literature. Already in the first lines of the novel, the thoughts and moods of those who survived the catastrophe of the war are expressed. “Our age is inherently tragic, and therefore we refuse to perceive it tragically. A catastrophe happened to the world, we found ourselves among the ruins, but immediately began to build new dwellings, cherish new hopes. It is not easy for us now, the path to the future is full of obstacles, but we will overcome or bypass them. We must live in spite of all the difficulties that have befallen us” [1, 14]. The war to smithereens broke the happiness of Constance Chatterley , disabled her husband Clifford, broke the fate of the huntsman Sir Clifford, a former soldier Oliver Mellors . The life history of these three people, their relationship in the atmosphere of life in post-war England, resulting in the establishment of new principles of relations between a man and a woman, become the subject of artistic research in the novel.
Like other writers of the Lost Generation, Lawrence addresses the fate of a young man. Clifford Chatterley , who inherited the title of baronet after the death of his father and his older brother who died in the war, was twenty-nine years old when he returned on a visit from the front, married a twenty-three-year-old Constance (Connie) Reed. The action of the novel develops three years after this event, in 1920, when the Chatterleys settle in the Rugby Hall estate. After the wedding, Clifford spent his month's vacation with his young wife, and then returned to Flanders, to the front, from where "six months later, he, seriously wounded, hastily blinded from separate pieces, was sent to England" [1, 14] (But early in 1918 Clifford was shipped home smashed, and there was no child.) [27,14] He was under medical supervision for two years, and then “he was declared cured and was able to return to normal life, but the lower part of his body, starting from hips, was permanently paralyzed." Like Jake Barnes, the hero of E. Hemingway's novel "Fiesta", Clifford is forever deprived of the happiness of physical love. But this is perhaps the only thing that brings them together. Clifford can't get around without a wheelchair, he even got “another chair, smaller, with a motor; in it he could go around his beautiful melancholy park, which he was very proud of. (He was not really downcast . He could wheel himself about in a wheeled chair, and he had a bath-chair with a small motor attachment, so he could drive himself slowly round the garden and into the line melancholy park, of which he was really so proud, though he pretended to be flippant about it.) [27,1] “He has suffered so much that his ability to suffer has become dull. As before, he remained a cheerful, cheerful and even cheerful person, his face was ruddy and full of health, and light blue, shining eyes looked at the world with a bold challenge. He had broad, powerful shoulders and very strong arms. He dressed expensively, wearing fashionable Bond Street ties. Yet one could notice a certain wariness on his face, and his eyes sometimes became absent, as happens with cripples or seriously ill people. Looking into the face of death, he treated life, to which he had miraculously returned, as something fabulously precious. His restlessly shining eyes showed how proud he was of himself for the fact that after everything that happened he was still able to survive, but after the suffering he endured, something inside him died, and he was no longer able to feel as subtly as before. . Soul his became devastated " [1, 15 ].( Having suffered so much, the capacity for suffering had to some extent left him. He remained strange and bright and cheerful, almost, one might say, chirpy, with his ruddy, healthy-looking face, and his pale-blue, challenging bright eyes. His shoulders were broad and strong, his hands were very strong. He was expensively dressed, and wore handsome neckties from Bond Street. Yet still in his face one saw the watchful look, the slight vacancy of a cripple.
He had so very nearly lost his life, that what remained was wonderfully precious to him. It was obvious in the anxious brightness of his eyes, how proud he was, after the great shock, of being alive. But he had been so much hurt that something inside him had perished, some of his feelings had gone. There was a blank of insentience .) [27,1]
However, Clifford gradually adapts to his new position and even develops a vigorous activity in the process of renovating the mines he owns, and then becomes a fashionable writer in London. However, in everything that Clifford does, there is a sense of emptiness and coldness. “The miners, in a sense, were his property, and he perceived them as inanimate objects or, at best, as brute labor, and not as human beings like him " [1, 29 ]. ( The miners were, in a sense, his own men; but he saw them as objects rather than men, parts of the pit rather than parts of life, crude raw phenomena rather than human beings along with him.) [27, 29]
Clifford's relationship with the inhabitants of the nearby mining village of Tevershell , to put it mildly, did not work out. Clifford did not cause much love or hatred among the miners - he was perceived as a reality independent of them, like a mine quarry or Rugby Hall itself. Clifford quietly hated them, "perhaps he was even afraid of them, it was unbearable for him to realize that every time they look at him, they see how crippled he is." However, this shows not just the class hostility of the workers to their master, not just the arrogance and disdain of the aristocrat towards those "who did not belong to his class." The author sees the reason for the situation described in the fact that Clifford generally "did not feel the need for human communication, he simply denied it" [1, 30]. Clifford knew that he would have no children and that the Chatterley family would survive as long as he and his estate lived in the sooty and smoky heart of England. In order to somehow entertain himself and amuse his ambition, Clifford began to write stories - “quite strange, very personal stories about people he knew. His observations were unusual and insightful. But they did not feel real contact with life, interest in it” (ibid.). Nevertheless, they appeared in the most fashionable magazines and received both laudatory and unflattering reviews. Writing even brought Clifford income. And therefore, new acquaintances began to appear on his estate - mainly critics and writers - those who could help glorify the owner's books. Frequent guests were Clifford's former Cambridge comrades, "modern young intellectuals." They willingly, not paying attention to the present wife of the owner, demonstrated their free-thinking, including in matters of morality. The topic of “free love” and sex, which was fashionable in the 1920s, became a frequent topic of their conversations. They did not believe in love, but advocated for sex, understanding it at the level of “natural administration”: “Sometimes I get upset by indigestion,” says Charles May, one of Clifford’s “classmates”, “sometimes hunger exasperates and in the same way does not give rest sex-hungry flesh” [1, 51 ].( Sometimes indigestion interferes with me. Hunger would interfere with me disastrously. In the same way starved sex interferes with me. What then?) [ 27,51] And therefore, “I don’t think I will hurt a woman more by sleeping with her than if I invite her to a dance or, say, talk to her about the weather” (ibid.). Connie, however, during her “silent presence” at these intellectual conversations did not leave the feeling that “they don’t really know what they are talking about” [1, 59], that behind their refined witticisms, behind refined intellectualism, there is emptiness and the absence of a genuine life. “Lord, what cold souls they have!” Connie realizes. Gradually, this assessment extended to her husband Clifford. Seeing her husband become more and more mentally paralyzed, more and more often he became isolated or fell into insane longing, Connie wanted to scream in despair. She understood that this was how “his spiritual wounds made themselves felt” [1, 91].
Mellors entered Connie's life , pity for her husband was replaced by hostility: “Connie herself was even amazed at how unpleasant Clifford became to her. Moreover, she caught herself thinking that, in fact, she never liked him. It cannot be said that she hated him - there was no passion in her dislike. No, it was about physical antipathy” [1, 134]. This feeling culminates in a scene in Chapter X when Clifford read to her after dinner with Racine. Connie came back that evening after another walk in the woods, after physical intimacy with Oliver. That evening, she didn't even take a bath, because his smell, his sweat left on her body, were her most precious relics. She came from the forest all transformed. From the look of Lady Chatterley , Clifford's nurse, Mrs. Bolton , guessed that Connie had a lover, even her husband did not see, but rather sensed some kind of change in his wife, which he did not yet know. Clifford's heart was restless. He did not let her go after dinner, although she so wanted to be alone. He offered to read aloud to her. The ability to read Racine in a genuine, stately French manner was Clifford's pride, but that evening Connie found his reading monotonous and loud. “Inside herself, she felt a ringing hum of passion, like a deep humming sound that remains in the air after the ringing of bells. …She had never been so soft and peaceful in her immobility. ... He continued to read Racine further, and the guttural sounds of French speech reminded her of the howling of the wind in the chimney. She did not hear a single word from Racine. She was immersed in her quiet ecstasy - such is the forest in early spring, emitting light, joyful sighs, sighs of opening buds. ... She was like a forest, like a dark plexus of oak branches, inaudibly buzzing with myriads of blossoming buds. ... And Clifford's voice did not stop, squawking and gurgling with foreign sounds. How strange is all this! And how strange he himself is, this man bent over a book - an eccentric and at the same time a predator, a man ruthless and at the same time civilized, a broad-shouldered athlete and at the same time a legless cripple! What an amazing creature, possessing the sharp, cold, inflexible will of some outlandish bird, but devoid of warmth, completely devoid of warmth! One of those beings who came from the future, who instead of a soul have an over- alert , cold will. Connie slightly flinched , she was afraid him " [1, 189-190 ].( It had been one of his stunts in the past, to read Racine in the real French grand manner, but he was rusty now, and a little self-conscious; he really preferred the loudspeaker .But Connie was sewing, sewing a little frock silk of primrose silk, cut out of one of her dresses, for Mrs Flint's baby.Between coming home and dinner she had cut it out, and she sat in the soft quiescent rapture of herself sewing , while the noise of the reading went on.
Inside herself she could feel the humming of passion, like the after-humming of deep bells. Clifford said something to her about the Racine. She caught the sense after the words had gone.… She was like a forest, like the dark interlacing of the oakwood , humming inaudibly with myriad unfolding buds. Meanwhile the birds of desire were asleep in the vast interlaced intricacy of her body.
But Clifford's voice went on, clapping and gurgling with unusual sounds. How extraordinary it was! How extraordinary he was, bent there over the book, queer and rapacious and civilized, with broad shoulders and no real legs ! What a strange creature, with the sharp, cold inflexible will of some bird, and no warmth, no warmth at all! One of those creatures of the afterwards, that have no soul, but an extra-alert will, cold will. She shuddered a little, afraid of him. But then , the soft warm flame of life was stronger than he, and the real things were hidden from him.) [27,189-190].
In this scene, the world of wildlife and the deadly civilization of machines are symbolically opposed. “The image of Clifford embodies what is hostile to real life,” writes N.P. Michalskaya . – Clifford is a victim of war and inhuman civilization, but he himself turns into one of its ugly creatures. A discrepancy between external impressiveness and internal impotence is revealed” [2, 96]. Further development of the image of Clifford goes towards infantilism, which is especially evident in his relationship with his nurse, Mrs. Bolton . “The wound of Clifford, which deprived him of his masculinity,” rightly notes T.V. Stepanov, - was a symbol that took deep roots in post-war literature. It intertwined together the feeling of the irreparable catastrophe of the past war, the inability to heal the wounds inflicted on humanity by the madness of the militaristic battle, and the theme of infertility, which sounds in unison with T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and the thought of paralysis, which fettered not only the body, but also the soul of a man of the "lost generation". "The pain caused by the war, inhuman and lawless," does not subside from the first to the last lines of the novel" [4, 48]. The opinions of critics about Clifford coincided with the point of view of the author of the novel, who wrote in the article “Regarding the novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover ”: “Sir Clifford, the hero of the novel is a product of our civilization, a person who has lost all ties with his compatriots, men and women. The warmth of human relations is unknown to him, his hearth is cold, his heart is dead. He is kind, as the foundations dictate, but simple human participation is alien to him. And he loses the woman he loves... And when I read the first version, it immediately occurred to me that Clifford's injury was symbolic. She symbolizes the deep emotional paralysis of most modern men of the class to which Clifford belongs" [7, 56].
Love affairs of Lady Constance Chatterley with forester Oliver Mellors is reminiscent of Robert Lokamp 's relationship with Patricia Holman from the novel by E.M. Remark "Three comrades" by the fact that this is the love of a man for a woman of another, higher circle, to which he did not belong. Constance , a refined and educated society lady, at first aware of the social barriers separating her from Oliver, nevertheless instinctively reached out to him, “ attracted not only and not so much by his masculine beauty and charm, but by the genuine integrity of his personality, his incomprehensible confidence that that happiness is possible, that it is nearby, in the charms of rural nature untouched by civilization, in an unpretentious gatehouse in a forest thicket, which he rarely and reluctantly leaves” [3, 312]. And as some barriers that separated Lady Chatterley and the forester collapse, others arise associated with jealousy, mutual misunderstanding, mismatch of tastes and interests. At the end of the book, another problem arises - the unborn child, to whom Mellors begins to be jealous of his beloved. However, such relationships fit well into Lawrence's concept of love-rivalry. The main thing is that they had tenderness for each other, and therefore the words of Mellors in his final letter to Connie sound hopeful: “I believe in the light that has flared up between us” [1, 406].
Life, humanity, warmth, embodied in the image of the huntsman Mellors , those qualities that, along with social position, oppose him to Sir Clifford. Oliver Mellors comes from a mining family, who worked in the face in his youth, volunteered for military service and rose to the rank of officer in the colonial troops in Egypt and India, did not make a military career; educated and well-read, Mellors could take not the last place in society. However, he - and in this he does not change the traditional image of the Lawrence hero - does not want to compromise with society. He is hired as a forest ranger to be able to live away from people and communicate with nature. Mellors is a staunch opponent of modern civilization, which, in his opinion, kills the personality and life itself in a person. In the image of Mellors , the escapism characteristic of the heroes of the literature of the “lost generation” is embodied. Like Frederick Henry, the hero of the novel A Farewell to Arms, Oliver Mellors , who for the time being thought himself invulnerable in the shell of his imaginary egocentrism, overcomes him in love, runs into it just as he had previously fled from people into the loneliness of the forest thicket. The ending of Oliver and Connie's love is not as tragic as in the novels "Three Comrades" or "Farewell to Arms", but very sad - separated by hundreds of miles and the need to go through the hell of divorce proceedings, lovers write letters to each other in the hope of standing up to the trials.
The motif of "barren land", the antithesis of infertility - fertility, fundamental for the famous poem by T.S. Eliot, are also embodied by Lawrence in the image of the surrounding Rugby estate surroundings. Directly behind the estate began the village of Tevershell , where a mine dominated over small, miserable, smoky brick houses, a huge pipe of which smoked and smoked. From the dark chambers of Rugby Hall Constance Chatterley “heard the rumble of coal screens, the chugging of a mine cage engine, the rumble of freight cart wheels, and the hoarse whistles of locomotives. The Tevershell coal quarry burned, burned for years, and it would cost many thousands to extinguish it. And for this reason, he was destined to burn in the future. And when the wind blew towards the house, as it often did, the rooms were filled with the sulphurous stench of burning underground excrement. But even on windless days, the smell of the underworld was constantly felt in the air - sulfur, iron, coal or acid. The soot, like the black manna of doomed heaven, settled even on Christmas roses” [1, 26]. “The people here were emaciated, colorless, gloomy, like the surrounding area, and just as unfriendly. If there was anything special about them, it was only the guttural, unintelligible dialect and the characteristic clatter of their nailed mining boots as they returned in groups along the asphalt road home after work” [1, 27]. Lawrence writes about the degeneration of society and people, their meaningless existence and the absence of a future. So many eschatological assessments are scattered on the pages of the novel, and Mellors's projects to revive humanity are so utopian that they are drowning in a sea of hopelessness. In this way, Lawrence's novel is consonant with the tragic tone of the literature of the "lost generation".
Summing up, we note that the novel by D.G. Lawrence "Lady Chatterley's Lover " has both typologically similar properties to the prose of the "lost generation" and significant originality. As a similarity, one can note the appeal to the fate of a young man, physically and spiritually crippled by the war, who cultivated individualism in his soul as a kind of protection from a society that deceived them, seeking to find himself, who is in pursuit of success (Clifford), who is in love ( Mellors ); interest in the topic of self-knowledge, disappointment and escapism, tragic tone, uncompromising criticism of the foundations of a hypocritical civilization, as well as lyrical tension. As peculiar features, it can be noted that Constance became the true heroine of the novel. Chatterley , who had to make a choice between real values and mirages, to determine her place in life. The main accents are made not on the social side of life, not on the plot action, but are transferred to the area of categories of a psychological and moral and ethical nature, the main conflict of the novel is the opposition of cold intellect, rational consciousness, afraid of feelings and suppressing them, and sensual consciousness , freely surrendering passions [9, 267]. A specific feature of the novel is the presence of neo-mythological consciousness, mythological elements “highlight” the outwardly realistic narrative [8, 176].