Essays on Lawrence

BOOK REVIEWS academy and Joyce studies. It is also one way in which, in the midst of what we proclaim our postmodern moment, we have yet to become Joyce's contemporaries . Froula's investigation into the feminist underpinnings of Joyce and Joyce's fiction is thoroughly researched, eloquently written, and refreshingly stimulating. It challenges readers to re-think Joyce's conscious and unconscious construction of his own identity, meanwhile engaging a cross-section of theoretical approaches to modernism in a fresh construction of modernist consciousness and conscience. The work merits study by anyone in the fields of feminist studies, psychoanalytic studies, gender studies, and Joyce scholarship. Lesli J. Favor SuI Ross State University Rio Grand College Essays on Lawrence Rick Rylance, ed. Sons and Lovers: Contemporary Critical Essays. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. ix + 213 pp. $39.95 THE NEW CASEBOOK series of literary criticism is designed to present current critical approaches to an author. The 1996 volume on D. H. Lawrence's first important novel, with essays ranging from the late 1960s until 1990, comes almost thirty years since the last one on this writer, and, true to its times, substitutes ambiguities and subtexts for clarity and unity. Interrelated by themes and cross-referenced with the names of seminal critics, the essays are loosely grouped into three categories: autobiographical and psychoanalytical dimensions; gender and sexual relations; and historical and social contexts. Overall, the collection succeeds in "reflect[ing] both the controversy and excitement of current criticism," which is the general editors' aim for the New Casebook series as a whole. The first group of essays supplements—I would not argue that it supplants—earlier perspectives on Lawrence's life and psyche by widening the analysis to include the novel's historical/social setting and by uncovering hidden meanings that have been obscured by the narrative point of view. The second grouping also engages in the search for "the truth" of the characters, especially Miriam. The third group focuses on the relationship between literary forms and the social class of the writer, highlighting Lawrence's movement into instability and isolation. Throughout, the concept of the "realistic" novel comes into question because "modern thinking about literary language stresses not its 111 ELT 41: 1 1998 representational qualities, but the plurality of meanings it makes available , and most critics now agree that there is good reason to recognize strong, alternative currents of meaning below the ostensibly mimetic surface of Sons and Lovers." Browsing through the first Casebook on Lawrence, published in 1969 by Macmillan and edited by Gamini Salgado, one is struck by the importance of the essays collected there: Mark Schorer on "Technique as Discovery," for example, or Dorothy Van Ghent's analysis of Lawrence's use of flowers. Such essays have been mainstays of teaching and research for many years; they may have been updated since their publication, but they do not seem outdated. This new Casebook likewise promises to be a useful reference tool thirty years hence. Terry Eagleton, for instance, on "Psychoanalysis and Society," sensibly places Paul's psychological development in the context of his social milieu, fleshing out the character of Paul's father as well. If in the process he blames "predatory capitalism" for Walter Morel's shortcomings and ignores other causes of the man's character flaws, or overschematizes them, he nonetheless rounds out this character by showing this subtext—what Eagleton calls the "unconscious" of the work itself. Several essays in this volume, notably those by Louis Martz and Kate Millett, concentrate on Miriam; while coming to different and sometimes opposite conclusions, they seek in essence to rehabilitate her. The interpretational problem for these critics is that, taking the view of Paul and the narrator at face value, readers often see Miriam as insufferably possessive, spiritual, and even frigid. Confidence in the narrator's objectivity is inspired by the use of Victorian realism in the first third of the book, only to be undermined by the narrative voice of Part II, which reflects Paul's tormented confusion. To Martz, this is a clever and conscious technique, Lawrence's ploy to underscore not only Paul's immaturity but also the mother's possessiveness...