"I Am Not England": Narrative and National Identity in Aaron's Rod and Sea and Sardinia

D.H. Lawrence's novel Aaron's Rod has suffered since its publication from accusations of sloppy construction, an unlikable protagonist and a directionless plot. This essay contends that the flaws in Aaron's Rod are purposeful manipulations of established narrative form that seek to disunite the genre from its socializing function. By considering the novel alongside Lawrence's contemporary essays and travel writing, I seek to demonstrate how his preoccupations with the modern novel in general are intrinsically related to his frustrations with the constrictions of national identity, telescoped by the passport. Lawrence's struggles with the British government to secure his right to mobility under the new passport system bleed conceptually and rhetorically into his literary efforts of the time. This essay argues that Aaron's Rod and its narrative logic of de-socialization should be read in the context of the emergence of the passport regime and the accompanying anxieties about external impositions of identity.