D. H. Lawrence and Post-natal Depression

This essay takes as its starting-point an intriguing claim made by Lawrence critics: that the character Juliet in Lawrence's short story 'Sun' might be understood as suffering from post-natal depression. The essay explores the gap between what is suggested by the story, and what Lawrence could have known about, considering fraught accounts of childbirth in 'Sun' and Sons and Lovers (1913). It argues that something like post-natal depression in Lawrence's work raises questions about the limits of the imagination, and focuses a nexus of concerns relating to illness, selfhood, and hope.