A Psychoanalytic Feministic Criticism of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover with its Possibility of Patriarchal Subversion
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Date
2012-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
D. H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) was initially, especially after the
1960 trial, hailed as a great achievement in depiction of tender love as the foundation of an
emotionally satisfying life for men and women. However, after 1970, the novel started getting
critical attention from leading feminist critics who took Lawrence to task for what they
perceived in the novel a thinly disguised patriarchal ideology, as endorsing only the malecentered
view of sexuality and heterosexual relationship as the only emotionally satisfying
sexual preference. The idea of womanhood as seeking pleasure and emotional fulfillment only
through mothering has also attracted attention of some critics.
The present study tries to look at the novel from psychoanalytic feministic perspective with
the view that since Lawrence spoke openly against British mainstream culture, especially
presenting in his novels a pithy criticism of the prevalent colonialist capitalist mindset and the
prejudice of the bourgeoisie against working class people, he does stand for women’s freedom
as well, and therefore, he does not endorse a patriarchal ideology. Thus, the present study is a
modest attempt to show that the feminist reading of Lawrence’s novels, especially of Lady
Chatterley’s Lover, is definitely a misreading which doesn’t take into consideration
Lawrence’s views on the industrialist capitalist world, the world torn apart through World
War I and his anticipation of the stress on the unconscious, the body and the irrational
motives in various areas of contemporary criticism.
The present study, through a reading of the novel from the psychoanalytic feministic
perspective, arrives at the conclusion that Lady Chatterley’s Lover is an attempt to find a
solution to the problems of man-woman relationship which, Lawrence felt, had gone
completely out of focus and thus scattered.
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Feministic Criticism of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s