D. H. Lawrence: Reply to Malcolm Pittock

Malcolm Pittock makes a number of thoughtful reflections and raises some objections to my recent article on Lawrence (CQ 40/2). Let me begin with the points I would freely concede. The new method that Lawrence outlines in his letter to Garnett and tries to justify in his speculations on the unconscious applies most fruitfully to The Rainbow and Women in Love, less so to the novels that followed. If this is what Dr Pittock intends by 'limited relevance', the point is a fair one. I think of these two novels as Lawrence's most accomplished, so if the relevance is limited in scope, I hope it is not so in significance. Also, I agree that Lawrence, perhaps in imitation of Nietzsche, can lapse into strident assertion where one would have preferred calmer, more reasoned arguments (Ursula frequently accuses Birkin, espouser of Lawrence's ideas in Women in Love, of just this sort of bullying). The remaining, and more difficult, objections raised by Dr Pittock are (1) that Lawrence resorts to absurd pseudo-science in his theorising that no one ought to take seriously; (2) that these pseudo-scientific claims are used to support a mistaken view of our unconscious life; and finally (3) that Lawrence's faith in irrational emotion is ethically dangerous.

With regard to the first objection, Dr Pittock quotes me as acknowledging that Lawrence's writings on the unconscious are made up in part of 'silliness', but what I said more fully was that these two works were 'mixtures of insight and silliness in almost equal measure'. Dr Pittock sees the silliness but does not want to admit the insight. This brings up the tough question of whether, in a scientifically sophisticated world, Lawrence's nonsensical factual claims – 'The sun is materially composed of the effluence of the dead', for example – can be said to contain any metaphorical truth. Let me suggest that we place Lawrence's two speculative works not in comparison to the science of a Heisenberg, but in the tradition of Blake's The Four Zoas or the contemporary A Vision of Yeats, all as mythologies of the divided body and the possibility of its reunification. Admittedly, these other two authors were more sublimely secure in their visions, Lawrence more self-conscious in his need to engage science, but cannot we overlook that in order to glean what might be valuable? As I freely admitted, these two works are of value chiefly as they serve as help in getting clear on the more subtle and nuanced (and realistic) treatment of his often opaque views in the fiction. Thus, to take just one example, in these two theoretical books Lawrence works hard to establish that there is a substratum of the self to which all our activity can be related. In Women in Love, Gerald, as a boy, killed his brother with a gun, something that everyone takes to be accidental – everyone, that is, except Birkin and Ursula, who insist that the act is consonant with the dynamics of Gerald's essential self. In this regard, as so often, Lawrence is in agreement with Nietzsche, and here in opposition to a modern trend in social science that speaks of behaviours as if they were detachable and, if need be, amendable ad hoc.

The second objection is that Lawrence posits a misleading, unconscious reservoir of feeling when, in reality, these feelings are far closer to the surface of consciousness and far more retrievable than he indicates. Further, the objection claims that this realm can be found in earlier writers such as Tolstoy. Let me take up Tolstoy, who I agree is a legitimate precursor to what Lawrence is attempting, but cite Tolstoy against the notion that the source of these feelings can always with only minor difficulty be brought to light and articulated. I shall follow Dr Pittock's choice and refer to Anna Karenina. After Anna becomes emotionally involved with Vronsky, she revisits Dolly. Dolly's children, who had doted on Anna prior to this, instinctively ignore her. They have sensed a change, which they register and respond to but could...