A Psychoanalytic Feministic Criticism of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover with its Possibility of Patriarchal Subversion

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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

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