D.H. Lawrence (Prophet of New Life and Art)

This book deals with the centrality of Laurentian concern—how to live. It establishes that Lawrence is essentially a moralist. But his moral ideas on life and art are unconventional. He offers a non-repressive alternative vision to the traditional Christian morality. The book abundantly presents the significance of "new" and "present" in Laurentian concept of life and art. It analyses Lawrence's work in the following aspects—the intrinsic delight of the moment which is inherent in it; the wisdom of the body and the physical being as an essential part of the spiritual and hence the value of sex, love and marriage in human life; and the realization of self. Dr. Singh has attempted to forge Lawrence's moral cogitations on life and art scattered in his miscellaneous prose works into a moral vision, and conscientiously explored the author's courage of conviction to carry out his moral ideals in his major novels. The book vindicates Lawrence's stand on sex; it shows that Lawrence's attitude toward sex is full of reverence.

Dr. Omendra Singh has been teaching English in various government colleges of Rajasthan for upward of a decade. He has a dozen of articles and features in The Times of India to his credit. He obtained his Ph.D. from University of Rajasthan, Jaipur. Currently he is teaching in Government College, Sambhar Lake, Jaipur and working on a project of feminist subsictivity in post modem American fiction.

Lawrence's work by its very nature and complexity runs the risk of being misread and misinterpreted. So, it comes as no surprise that Lawrence is one of the few writers in English literature whose work generated so much of controversy and, at the same time, scholarly work. However, it is an irony that Lawrence wrote unremittingly for upward of a quarter of a century, his work was largely ignored, except as scandal, during his life time and for many years after his death. As a result he was denied his rightful place among the literary pantheon for a long times, till F.R. Leavis put him in "the great tradition".

Lady Chatterley's Lover was certainly, for the most part, misunderstood. It had always seen a subject for music hall sniggering. The novel was taken as an encouragement to talk more openly about copulation, and by those who have not read it, as a sort of Bible of the new religion of promiscuity. The true essence of the book was wilfully ignored.

Lawrence was described as sex prophet, voice of natural man, a wilful and foolish rejecter of both science and religion. But his intensely moral vision obviates any of these categorizations. He was too great a writer to be relegated to a slot. Lawrence was acutely aware of the existing polarities between man and man, between man and society and between man and cosmos. He, there-fore, committed himself to a cause—to his people, to his social environment, to awaken the emotional conscience of mankind—for, due to the intensity and purpose of his belief, it was not possible for him to escape in the ivory tower of pure art.

Lawrence was convinced that-the Western civilization constitutes the denial of life. It is repressive for it sacrifices the body to the mind, the present to the future, spontaneity to foresight and happiness to progress. Lawrence offers a non-repressive alternative to the Western cul-de-sac. I have attempted to show that Lawrence's alternative vision is rooted in an unselfconcious acceptance of the erotic and aggressive instincts and in a living awareness of the non-human universe. From Richardson Onwards, the English novel admitted enough human passion but strictly within the framework of Christian ethics and social conventions. In Lawrence's novels I find the impression of forces getting outside the grip of society and of nature reclaiming human beings as irrational complexes of blood and nerves.

Lawrence's novels are, in the Arnoldian sense, "a criticism of life", insisting on real and living values. They have a corrective moral effect as they revive individuals capacity for direct, pre-mental responses. His art chiefly focuses on the recesses of individual consciousness, where is characters encounter their generic natural self and make a crucial adjustment to it. Typical of his artistic temperament, Lawrence stands up in defence of spontaneity, free creative self expression at all levels by every living human being.

The book establishes that Mathew Arnold's the pioneer of modern moralist, view that how to live is itself a moral idea reaches its culmination in D.H. Lawrence. His concern for the health of human race and 'to cultivate the right people' runs all through his works. Though a confirmed moralist, his moral ideas on life as well as on art are unconventional. In this book I have endeavoured to forge Lawrence's moral cogitations scattered in this miscellaneous prose works into a moral vision and examined that how for Lawrence has been able to carry these ideas through his novels.

**Contents and Sample Pages**