D. H. Lawrence and the Child

D.H.Lawrence is well known as the writer who brought explicit sexuality into the English novel, but his contributions to the literature of childhood are scarcely recognized. The author shows that Lawrence made a significant, pivotal contribution to the literary notion of what a child means and what it means to be a child. He made childhood central to his aesthetic opinions and literary achievements, offering a theory of child consciousness that stands in fruitful contrast to both the Romantic attitude and the Freudian model. Combining insights from narrative, psychoanalytic, and feminist theory with energetic readings of the child consciousness in Lawrence's fiction, this study offers detailed discussions of ""Sons and Lovers"", ""The Rainbow"", ""Women in Love"", and several shorter works. The interpretation of ""The Rainbow"" that occupies three chapters contributes a fresh perspective on that novel, one that is also provocative for the daughter-father relationships in literature. Additional chapters place Lawrence's work in the context of 19th-century representations of childhood by Wordsworth, Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, and Geroge Eliot, and consider his complex relationship to the subject of childhood in such later works as ""Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious"", ""Fantasia of the Unconscious"" and ""Lady Chatterley's Lover"".

“"Sklenicka has given us the first important study of the thematic value of [Lawrence's early life] for his fictional treatment of children, and for his lifelong fascination with childhood."--Novel”

Carol Sklenicka teaches at Marquette University, where she holds a post-doctoral fellowship in English.

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