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Chapter 10 - ‘Myths of desire’: D. H. Lawrence, language and ethics in A. S. Byatt's fiction

from Part III - Reassessing the ethics of modernist fiction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2011

David James
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
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Summary

I

In the ‘Introduction’ to the 1991 reissue of her first novel, The Shadow of the Sun (1964), A. S. Byatt discusses her prolonged engagement with the work and ideas of D. H. Lawrence. Byatt recalls working on the novel during John Holloway's lectures on Lawrence at Cambridge in the mid 1950s. As she began to shape her first book, one of whose central concerns was the struggles of an ambitious woman to enter the world on equal terms with men, she had difficulty in finding usable literary models: ‘there is no female art I can think of that is like what I wanted to do’ (SS, p. x). Byatt acknowledges a number of influences on the final form of the novel, including Proust, Elizabeth Bowen, Rosamond Lehmann, Françoise Sagan and Iris Murdoch. ‘There is also’, she goes on, ‘Lawrence, whom I cannot escape and cannot love’ (p. xii). In terms of class and religious upbringing, Byatt claims, she has much in common with Lawrence, in particular, ‘a terrible desire for something more’ (p. xii) than what was offered by her home and local environment and culture. She describes how she ‘brooded and brooded about how Lawrence cheated with Birkin, who is only explicable if he is Lawrence and a driven artist . . . but who remains a school inspector driven by a need for sexual honesty and personal freedom’ (p. xii). But in spite of accusing Lawrence of cheating with one of his characters Byatt learned a great deal from Lawrence, particularly ‘that you can stop the action of a novel and move it into another dimension’(p. xii). ‘But’, she goes on,

I couldn't love the man who wrote the Plumed Serpent [sic] and I couldn't condone the God of Leavis's creed of wholesomeness and wholeness, partly because I was a woman, and partly because the two didn't in fact coincide, the priest and his creed, the God and his creed. He is violent and savage, as Proust is not, and altogether Proust has more to teach on every page, but is not close to my blood, as Lawrence is. I choose the words advisedly.

(p. xii)
Type
Chapter
Information
The Legacies of Modernism
Historicising Postwar and Contemporary Fiction
, pp. 187 - 202
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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References

Byatt, A. S.The Shadow of the SunLondonVintage 1991 xiiGoogle Scholar
Byatt's, The GameLondonChatto & Windus 1967Google Scholar
Byatt's, The Children's BookLondonChatto & Windus 2009Google Scholar
Williams's, RaymondLawrence in Culture and Society 1780–1950HarmondsworthPenguin 1963 199Google Scholar
Bloom, HaroldThe Anxiety of InfluenceOxford University Press 1997Google Scholar
Byatt, The Virgin in the GardenHarmondsworthPenguin 1981 34Google Scholar
Lawrence, D. H.Lady Chatterley's Lover and A propos of ‘Lady Chatterley's Lover’Squires, MichaelCambridge University Press 1993 139Google Scholar
Byatt, Still LifeLondonChatto & Windus 1985 42Google Scholar
Byatt, Babel TowerLondonChatto & Windus 1996Google Scholar
Byatt, A Whistling WomanLondonChatto & Windus 2002 135Google Scholar
Adelman, GaryReclaiming D. H. Lawrence: Contemporary Writers Speak OutLewisburgBucknell University Press 2002 31Google Scholar
Lawrence, D. H.Studies in Classic American LiteratureGreenspan, EzraVasey, LindethWorthen, JohnCambridge University Press 2003 14Google Scholar
Lawrence, D. H.Study of Thomas Hardy and other EssaysSteele, BruceCambridge University Press 1985 190Google Scholar

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