Showing posts with label sons and lovers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sons and lovers. Show all posts

23 Jul 2023

She Was Only a Farmer's Daughter ... Notes on the Case of Miriam Leivers

Heather Sears as Miriam Leivers in 
Sons and Lovers (dir. Jack Cardiff, 1960)
 

I.
 
The farmer's daughter is a stock character and comic stereotype drawn from the pornographic imagination. A fresh-faced country girl, often barefoot and with straw or ribbons in her hair, she likes to wear a short sundress or a halter top and is usually portrayed as both faux-naïf and sexually curious.
 
Bawdy jokes and stories about the farmer's daughter and her willingness to be seduced by any passing stranger - much to the fury of her father [a] - can be traced back to the medieval period, if not earlier; there are, for example, numerous ballads about valiant knights falling in love with comely farm girls and even the Vikings enjoyed hearing quasi-pornographic tales of love among the haystacks [b]
 
 
II. 
 
Interestingly, however, the farmer's daughter is often portrayed quite differently in works of literature; take the case of Miriam, for example, in D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers (1913) ...
 
Sixteen-year-old Miriam is depicted as an intelligent girl keen to escape her dreary life on the family farm. A voracious reader, she dreams of belonging to the world of culture and higher education and is resentful of the expectation that she will eventually marry and settle down, accepting her fate as a farmer's wife, tending the pigs [c]
 
Lawrence describes her as a romantic soul, inclined to religious mysticism, who imagines herself as a princess trapped in the body of a farm girl. Not only does Miriam consider her brothers brutes, but she doesn't hold her father in particularly high esteem for desiring a simple life in which his meals are served on time. 

"She hated her position as swine-girl [...] She could not be princess by wealth or standing. So, she was mad to have learning whereon to pride herself [...] Learning was the only distinction to which she thought to aspire." [d]

Whilst not sexy in the stereotypical manner, dark-eyed Miriam nevertheless had a quiveringly sensitive kind of beauty that combined elements of shyness with wildness. The protagonist of the novel - Paul Morel - is (unsurprisingly) keen to fuck her. He watches her closely as she moves around the farmhouse kitchen in a strange, dreamy almost rhapsodic (but acutely self-conscious) manner, wearing an old blue frock.

Unfortunately, Miriam is one of those spiritual women who thinks sex as something low and beastly - more a dutiful vicar's daughter, than a farmer's daughter, alas, or like "one of the women who went with Mary when Jesus was dead" [184], as Lawrence puts it.  
 
She's happy for Paul to teach her algebra and help improve her French, and she might even exchange a few kisses, but she isn't interested in taking him as a lover: 
 
"The slightest grossness made her recoil almost in anguish [...] perhaps because of the continual business of birth and begetting which goes on upon every farm, Miriam was the more hypersensitive to the matter, and her blood was chastened almost to disgust of the faintest suggestion of such intercourse." [198] 
 
Eventually, after years of frustration and increasing bitterness, it all becomes too much for Paul and he sends Miriam a rather cruel letter on her twenty-first birthday, in which he calls her a nun; i.e., one incapable of accepting love in the physical sense (and rendering him incapable of giving such). 
 
Naturally, Paul's words wound her deeply and, perhaps, puzzle her also; after all, she was only a farmer's daughter ... [e]     
 
 
Notes
 
[a] I suppose I first became aware of the angry farmer and his daughter trope via Carry On Camping (dir. Gerald Thomas, 1969), where the latter is played by Patricia Franklin (and the former by Derek Francis). 
 
[b] See the essay entitled 'Male Bedpartners and the "Intimacies of a Wife"', by David Ashurst in Masculinities in Old Norse Literature, ed. Gareth Lloyd Evans and Jessica Clare Hancock, (D. S. Brewer, 2020), pp. 183-202. Ashurst discusses a tale involving an erotic encounter between two foster-brothers and a farmer's daughter on p. 191.
  
[c] For a discussion of female dissatisfaction with the world of the farm, see the post entitled 'Desperate Farmwives' (22 July 2023): click here
 
[d] D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, ed. Helen Baron and Carl Baron, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 174. Future references to this edition of the novel will be given directly in the post.

[e] Readers will probably be aware that Sons and Lovers has an autobiographical aspect; that the platonic relationship beween Paul and Miriam is (to some extent) based on Lawrence's own sexless relationship with the farmer's daughter Jessie Chambers. 
      In the winter of 1909, having been romatically fixated with her for eight years, Lawrence finally made a move, informing Jessie that, because he loved her, it was inevitable they would eventualy fuck - which they did, in the spring of the following year, consummating their relationship on several occasions (usually outdoors among the flowers and dead leaves). Unfortunately, it was, writes John Worthen, "an awful experience for them both", resulting in shame and regret all round.
      For full details of the relationship between Lawrence and the farmer's daughter, see Worthen's D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider (Allen Lane / Penguin Books, 2005). The line quoted is on p. 79.  


21 May 2023

Hooray for Male Hosiery

Men's tights by Gerbe 
(the famous French hosiery manufacturer, est. 1895)
 
I. 
 
There are not many advantages to being diagnosed with superficial vein reflux (and associated varicosties) in your leg and then having endovenous surgery to address this. 
 
Indeed, the disadvantages and risks are clear; lumps, bumps, bruises, scarring, pain and discomfort, not to mention possible sensory nerve damage (causing numbness) and the danger of deep vein thrombosis.
 
However, once the layers and layers of mummy-like bandaging and protective gauze are removed 48-hours after the operation, one is afforded the opportunity to parade around in full-length elasticated black stockings and that at least affords a frisson of pleasure. 
 
One can even pretend to be Paul Morel, who famously found it thrilling to pull on a pair of Clara's stockings when alone in her bedroom [1]; or Steve Jones, at the end of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, holding up Malcolm's ten lessons inscribed on tablets of stone, like a punk Moses, whilst wearing black rubber stockings [2].
 
 
 
II.
 
Of course, whilst men wearing stockings is today mostly seen as either comic or kinky, historically this practice was the norm for long periods; from the Middle Ages until the mid-late 16th century men wore hose and proudly displayed their legs (whilst covering their groin with a cod piece).
 
After this date, the fashion was for separate breeches and stockings, but men still loved to show a shapely calf and members of the nobility would wear stockings made of expensive silk or the finest wool (rather than the coarser fabrics worn by the lower classes).
 
Now, sadly, male legs are either hidden under trousers, or bare and exposed in shorts and it is only ballet dancers, super-heroes, and drag queens who get to regularly and openly wear tights [3].
 
 
 
Notes
 
[1] See Chapter XII of D. H. Lawrence's, Sons and Lovers, ed. Helen Baron and Carl Baron, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 381. 
 
[2] Actually, I have misremembered this scene; Jones wears a black rubber (or PVC) cape with bright red PVC thigh boots; not stockings. See The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, (dir. Julien Temple, 1980).

[3] Thankfully, at least women are increasingly wearing hoisery once more, as the fashion for bare legs wanes and coloured tights are bang on trend for 2023. And there are some who fly the flag for male legwear; see for example the blog Hoisery for Men: click here.     

 

7 Dec 2020

Hey Look, It's Me!

Do you see yourself on the T.V. screen?

  
D. H. Lawrence has a real problem with self-seeking in the negative sense identified by St. Paul. He particularly despises those men and women who stare into the eyes of their lovers only for the opportunity to see themselves reflected and who degrade sex (a flow of feeling) into sexuality (a will to sensation):
 
"The true self, in sex, would seek a meeting, would seek to meet the other. [...] But today, [...] sex does not exist, there is only sexuality. And sexuality is merely a greedy, blind self-seeking. Self-seeking is the real motive of sexuality. And therefore, since the thing sought is the same, the self, the mode of seeking is not very important. Heterosexual, homosexual, narcistic [sic], normal or incest, it is all the same thing. It is just sexuality, not sex. It is one of the universal forms of self-seeking. Every man, every woman just seeks his own self, her own self, in the sexual experience." [1]
 
To be honest, this doesn't bother me as much as it does Mr. Lawrence. For unlike the latter, I don't subscribe to the metaphysical notion of sex as some sort of ontological anchorage point residing deep within us and possessing its own intrinsic properties etc. I'm just a bit too Foucauldian for that [2]
 
And whilst there may be an element of self-seeking in the various forms of sexual expression, so too are there many other elements. For love is not just one-sided or always rejoicing with truth; sometimes, it does involve falsehood, impatience, cruelty, envy, pride, rudeness, anger, and resentment; sometimes it does delight in evil and is a means of destruction; sometimes, sadly, love fails [3].          
 
What does irritate me, however, is when people self-seek within works of art; i.e., when they look or listen out for themselves in every image, song, or text, identifying either with the subject or the author of the work. It's very depressing. And, surprisingly, even some readers of Lawrence fall into this trap, despite his explicit warnings about the dangers of self-idolatry. 
 
I know people who only really enjoy his works based in or around the East Midlands so that they might better locate themselves and feel an intense sense of belonging. They thrill to imagine characters speaking with accents like their own and walking down streets they themselves have walked along. They turn Sons and Lovers, for example, into a giant mirror reflecting their own history and childhood memories. 
 
It's not so much parochialism, as a mix of narcissism and nostalgia. Either way, the result is the same; artworks which are intended to facilitate a radical becoming-other and deterritorialization, are made self-reassuring and all-too-familiar. If only people bristled like cats when they saw themselves reflected!     
 
    
Notes
 
[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Review of The Social Basis of Consciousness, by Trigant Burrow', in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 335-36.   

[2] See the post entitled 'Lady Chatterley's Postmodern Lover' (9 Sept 2013) where I discuss Lawrence contra Foucault: click here
 
[3] In giving this more negative - yet more rounded and more honest - portrait of love, I am suggesting the opposite of what St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13. Of course, it should be noted that the latter, writing in Greek, used the word agape [ἀγάπη] and that he was not referring to sexual love or érōs [ἔρως].     
 
 

12 Apr 2019

Paul Morel and the Sacrifice of Arabella



I.

Paul Morel was a pale, quiet child, slightly built, with reddish-brown hair, and highly attuned to the feelings of others (particularly his mother). As his elder brother, William, tended to ignore him, he transferred his affections to his sister, Annie, who was intensely fond of him. 

Annie also possessed a large doll "of which she was fearfully proud, though not so fond", called Arabella. One day, Paul accidently jumps on the doll and breaks her face; something that makes Annie cry and, consequently, makes Paul feel helpless with misery.

Seeing how upset he was - once her own tears dried - she immediately forgave her brother. A couple of days later, however, he shocks her with the following suggestion: '''Let's make a sacrifice of Arabella [...] Let's burn her.'''

Naturally, Annie is horrified - yet also, Lawrence writes with knowing insight into the cruelty of children - fascinated by the suggestion and keen to see what her brother would do once she (silently) gave consent to the proposal.      

"He made an altar of bricks, pulled some of the shavings out of Arabella's body, put the waxen fragments into the hollow face, poured on a little parafin, and set the whole thing alight. He watched with wicked satisfaction the drop of wax melt off the broken forehead of Arabella, and drop like sweat into the flame. So long as the stupid big doll burned, he rejoiced in silence. At the end, he poked among the embers with a stick, fished out the arms and legs, all blackened, and smashed them under stones.
      'That's the sacrifice of Missis Arabella,' he said. 'An' I'm glad there's nothing left of her.'"

Whilst the intensity of her brother's hatred for the doll disturbs Annie, she remains silent throughout and following the sacrifice. I think we, as readers, are obliged to say something, however ...


II.
   
Perhaps unsurprisingly, in much of the critical literature on Sons and Lovers, this scene, like so many others, is read symbolically from a psychoanalytic perspective.

Margaret Storch, for example, wearing her Melanie Klein hat, informs us that the sacrifice of Arabella reveals that what lies beneath the triangular oedipal structure is the more primary mother-child dyad and that whilst one might imagine this to be a relationship founded upon love, it can also manifest violent hatred at its core.

She writes:

"The 'sacrifice' is an act of desecration against a figure who should be revered. This is apparent in [...] the aura of 'wicked satisfaction' that emanates from defying a taboo. The body of the mother is, in fantasy, dismembered and destroyed, disintegrating in a flash of fiery consuming anger, and liquified into the wax and sweat of elemental fluids. When already blackened and 'dead', the fragments are retrieved with phallic curiosity by means of a poking stick, and then further pulverized into nothingness, not 'with' stones but 'under' stones, suggesting both a final horror that cannot be looked at and the gravestones that cover the dead [...]"       

Storch concludes that the scene is "a vivid depiction of a child's sadistic fantasy against the mother" - a fantasy that Paul shares with his sister Annie, whose presence and complicity is an essential component; for little girls too can (secretly) resent the suffocating love of a devoted mother and her moral authority.  


III.

As much as I admire this reading, I don't quite buy into it. Which is not to say that it isn't true, only that something else is also true; namely, that children like mutilating dolls and action figures simply for the joy of destroying things, or because they hate the toys themselves - not because they hate their parents (although they might).

Interestingly, researchers at the University of Bath discovered in a study of 2005 that many 7-11 year olds grow to dislike their toys so much that they physically assault them. And of all the products the children were asked about, Barbie aroused the most complex and violent emotions.

Various torture techniques were gleefully experimented with in an attempt to express ambiguous feelings about the figure and common forms of mutilation included decapitation, burning, and even microwaving. What's more, the children interviewed saw these things as belonging to perfectly legitimate play activity; i.e., good clean fun.

It's adults who often find such activity deeply disturbing. Perhaps because they read so much meaning into it. Or perhaps because it's they - not their children - who anthropomorphise cheap plastic figures and get ridiculously sentimental about inanimate objects.


Notes

D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, ed. Helen Baron and Carl Baron, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 82-3.  

Margaret Storch, Sons and Adversaries: Women in William Blake and D. H. Lawrence, (University of Tennessee Press, 1990), pp. 98-100. 

Andrew McLaughlin, University of Bath Press Office, 'Barbie under attack from little girls, study shows', press release (19 Dec 2005): click here to read online.
 

20 Feb 2018

Case Studies from The White Stocking 2: Sam Adams (A Lothario Who Makes Love to Music)



I.

In an essay written in 1927, Lawrence examines the idea that dancing is essentially a form of making love to music, or rhythmic fucking with a melodious accompaniment. He asserts that this is what many - perhaps most - modern people long to experience; particulary those women who wished that man was not such a coarse creature keen to copulate and have done as quickly as possible.

For such women - women who find great pleasure in flirting and sexual foreplay - ejaculation is always premature and the act of coition always a let down; not so much a consummation as a humiliating anti-climax. If their physical desire was to be satisfied anywhere, then it was in the ballroom - not in the bedroom - with a man who intimately knew his way round the dance floor.

Lawrence writes, mockingly: "They wanted heavenly strains to resound, while he held their hand, and a new musical movement to burst forth, as he put his arm round their waist." For sex can be very charming and very delightful, so long as it's sublimated in 3/4 time, like a waltz, and you can keep your clothes on.

All of which brings us to the fascinating case of Elsie Whiston and her dance partner-cum-illicit lover, Sam Adams, in Lawrence's short story 'The White Stocking' (1914) ...


II.

Sam Adams is a forty-year old bachelor with an eye for the ladies. In fact, his fondness for the girls employed in his lace factory - and, to be fair, their fondness for him - was notorious. And he was particularly taken with Elsie, whom he had once ravished on the dance floor at the firm's Christmas do, as she blissfully liked to recall, even though she was now married to another:

"That dance was an intoxication to her. After the first few steps, she felt herself slipping away from herself. She almost knew she was going, she did not even want to go. Yet she must have chosen to go. She lay in the arm of the steady, close man with whom she was dancing, and she seemed to swim away out of contact with the room, into him. She had passed into another, denser element of him, an essential privacy. The room was all vague around her, like an atmosphere, like under sea, with a flow of ghostly, dumb movements. But she herself was held real against her partner, and it seemed she was connected with him, as if the movements of his body and limbs were her own movements, yet not her own movements - and oh, delicious! He also was given up, oblivious, concentrated, into the dance. His eye was unseeing. Only his large, voluptuous body gave off a subtle activity. His fingers seemed to search into her flesh. Every moment, and every moment, she felt she would give way utterly, and sink molten: the fusion point was coming when she would fuse down into perfect unconsciousness at his feet and knees. But he bore her round the room in the dance, and he seemed to sustain all her body with his limbs, his body, and his warmth seemed to come closer into her, nearer, till it would fuse right through her, and she would be as liquid to him, as an intoxication only.
      It was exquisite. When it was over, she was dazed, and was scarcely breathing. She stood with him in the middle of the room as if she were alone in a remote place. He bent over her. She expected his lips on her bare shoulder, and waited. Yet they were not alone, they were not alone."

Indeed, not only were there other couples on the dance floor, but her soon-to-be husband, Ted, was in the next room playing crib and drinking coffee with the old ladies 'cos, as he informed Elsie, he wasn't made for the dance floor. And so, in a sense, he's a deserving cuckold; for, unlike the older man, "Whiston had not made himself real to her. He was only a heavy place in her consciousness."

That is to say, he embodies the spirit of gravity, whilst Adams allows her to float and fly and spin round the dance floor, and holds her in close physical contact, his limbs touching her limbs.

Adams is also first off the mark when Elsie (accidentally on purpose) takes out what she pretends to be her handkerchief and drops it on the floor, only to discover with mock-embarrassment it's actually something quite different:

"For a second it lay on the floor, a twist of white stocking. Then, in an instant, Adams picked it up, with a little, surprised laugh of triumph.
      'That’ll do for me,' he whispered - seeming to take possession of her. And he stuffed the stocking in his trousers pocket ..."

What Adams chooses to do with the stocking, we can only guess; perhaps he takes it home and tries it on - just as Paul Morel tries on the stockings belonging to Clara Dawes in a memorable scene in Sons and Lovers. Or perhaps he masturbates with his fetishistic trophy, before later returning it to Elsie in the post as a semen-stained Valentine's gift; sexually exciting her whilst further humiliating poor Teddy Whiston.


Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Making Love to Music', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 41-8.

D. H. Lawrence, 'The White Stocking', The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, ed. John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 143-64. 

The University of Adelaide have made The Prussian Officer and Other Stories (1914) freely available as an ebook: click here (or here if you want to go straight to 'The White Stocking'). 

For the first of the White Stocking case studies - on Elsie Whiston as a prick tease with pearl earrings - click here.

For the third of the White Stocking case studies - on Ted Whiston as an abusive husband with a cuckold fetish - click here


17 Sept 2016

Sons and Killers

A still from the death-bed scene in Sons and Lovers (dir. Jack Cardiff, 1960)
Dean Stockwell as Paul Morel and Wendy Hiller as his mother, Gertrude 


One of the key scenes in Lawrence's Sons and Lovers is the death of the mother, Gertrude Morel, due to an overdose of morphia administered by her son, Paul (in complicity with his sister, Annie).

This termination of a terminal condition by Paul - his mother has cancer and is suffering acutely - is little discussed in the critical literature, leading one to surmise that euthanasia remains a more problematic and uncomfortable subject even than incest.

It's arguable, however, that whilst Lawrence proclaimed himself a priest of love, he's as devoted to Thanatos as to Eros and as death-intrigued as he is sex-obsessed. Indeed, there are times when Lawrence seems to value death as a limit-experience, far more than fucking. And so I think we're justified in exploring the tragic scene in chapter 14 closely and without reserve.  

It's difficult to do so, however, without referring to Lawrence's own experiences, as loath as I am to read fiction as a disguised form of autobiography and to seek extra-textual support for literary analysis. For Lawrence, like Paul, had a fatal role to play in the mercy killing of his own mother, who, like Mrs Morel, was dying a painful death with cancer.

Doubtless both Lawrence and Paul experienced the same sense of helplessness and horror that many people feel when obliged to watch over loved ones in pain or distress; it's not easy, it's not pleasant, and it's not edifying. Most will secretly wish that the burden of providing palliative care is lifted sooner rather than later. Some will be tempted to bestow the gift of a good and gentle death.

But only a very few will have the courage to actually do what needs to be done and risk not only a lifetime of grief and guilt, but criminal prosecution for murder. For there are times when death doesn't always set quite so free as hoped and as promised by the chapter's title, 'The Release'.

Thus I admire and respect Lawrence/Paul for being generous with the morphine in the milk and for understanding that there are times when one best expresses fidelity to life's promise not by preserving it at all costs and under all circumstances, but by killing those who are incapable of either living or dying with an affirmative will; i.e., those who linger on, afraid to die, but effectively already dead-in-life, feeding off of the vitality of those around them.

Euthanasia - like suicide - is, at it's best, not only a practice of joy before death, it's also the active negation of the negative; a form of counter-nihilism. Ultimately, we must all learn to remove the grey hairs off our jackets and let them go up the chimney (even those of our mothers).


Notes   

D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, ed. Helen Baron and Carl Baron, (Cambridge University Press, 1992).

For an excellent essay on this topic see Claudia Rosenhan, 'Euthanasia in Sons and Lovers and D. H. Lawrence's Metaphysic of Life', in the D. H. Lawrence Review, 2003/04, Vol. 32/33. 

See also the related post on Torpedo the Ark: In Praise of Euthanasia as a Practice of Joy before Death


9 Aug 2016

The Test on Miriam

Heather Sears and Dean Stockwell as Miriam Leivers and Paul Morel 
Sons and Lovers (dir. Jack Cardiff, 1960)


An anonymous member of the D. H Lawrence Society has emailed to complain that in a recent post I "inaccurately and unfairly portray the actions of Paul Morel towards Miriam as cruel and rather sordid".

If only, they continue, I "understood more about their relationship and the complex character of love", then I would be able to see that "Paul throws the cherries at the girl with affection in a teasing, playful manner" and his subsequent seduction of her in the pine woods is "an expression of phallic tenderness".

I think the only way I can answer this criticism is by looking closely at the text in question; Chapter XI of Sons and Lovers, entitled - tellingly enough I would have thought - 'The Test on Miriam'.   

Firstly, it's true that Paul feels real tenderness for Miriam. But although he courts her like a kindly lover, what he really wants is to experience the impersonality of passion. That is to say, he wants to fuck her dark, monstrous cunt oozing with slime, not stare into her lovely eyes all lit up with sincerity of feeling. Her gaze, so earnest and searching, makes him look away. Paul bitterly resents Miriam always bringing him back to himself; making him feel small and tame and all-too-human.    

And so, in my view at least, when he throws the cherries at her, in a state of cherry delirium, he does so with anger and aggression - not affection, or playfulness. He tears off handful after handful of the fruit and literally pelts her with them. Startled and frightened, Miriam runs for shelter whilst Paul laughs demonically from atop the tree and meditates on death and her vulnerability: so small, so soft.   

When, finally, Paul climbs down (ripping his shirt in the process), he convinces the girl to walk with him into the woods: "It was very dark among the firs, and the sharp spines pricked her face. She was afraid. Paul was silent and strange." Lawrence continues, in a manner which suggests that whatever else phallic tenderness may be, it isn't something that acknowledges the individuality, independence, or needs of actual women:

"He seemed to be almost unaware of her as a person: she was only to him then a woman. She was afraid. He stood against a pine-tree trunk and took her in his arms. She relinquished herself to him, but it was a sacrifice in which she felt something of horror. This thick-voiced, oblivious man was a stranger to her."

And thus Paul takes Miriam's virginity (and loses his own): in the rain, among the strong-smelling trees, and with a heavy-heart; "he felt as if nothing mattered, as if his living were smeared away into the beyond ..." Miriam is disconcerted (to say the least) by his post-coital nihilism: "She had been afraid before of the brute in him: now of the mystic."

Anyway, I leave it to readers to decide for themselves whether my portrayal of Paul - and my reading of Lawrence - is inaccurate and unfair. Or whether my anonymous correspondent and critic has, like many Lawrentians, such a partisan and wholly positive view of their hero-poet - and such a cosy, romantic view of his work - that they entirely miss the point of the latter and do the former a great disservice. 


See: D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, ed. Helen Baron and Carl Baron, (Cambridge University Press, 1992).

It is interesting to note that Lawrence makes the same connection between cherries, sex, cruelty and death in his poem 'Cherry Robbers', which anticipates the scene in Sons and Lovers described above. Click here to read the verse.


7 Aug 2016

I Love Cherries (But I'm Not a Royalist)

Cherries on a Pale Orange Background 
 SA/2016


Your tastes change as you get older, so they say. 

And, annoyingly - 'cos I hate it when experience lends support to anything that Das Man has to say - I've discovered this summer that I much prefer eating cherries to strawberries.

It's not that I've suddenly been seduced by the somewhat dodgy sexual symbolism of the former, subscribed to by writers including Lawrence (in Sons and Lovers, for example, Paul cruelly pelts poor Miriam with a handful of cherries from atop a very large tree hung thick with scarlet fruit, before then popping her cherry in the pine woods).

Nor is it merely that I find the sleek, cool-fresh cherries more aesthetically pleasing to look at in a bowl.

Rather, I now genuinely like the sophisticated sour sweet taste of them more than the simple sweetness of strawberries which, let's be honest, usually needs to be supplemented with sugar, or enhanced with cream.

So I suppose I should be grateful to Henry VIII who, when not having heads cut off or dissolving monasteries, ordered the introduction of cherries into England at Teynham, in Kent, having tasted them in Flanders.

But the words Thank you, Your Majesty will never pass my lips - not for all the cherries in the world! 


29 May 2013

More than Just a Son and Lover



Today is the 100th anniversary of the publication of D. H. Lawrence's third and some would say greatest novel, Sons and Lovers

It was certainly highly acclaimed at the time and has long since remained popular with those readers who like to think of Lawrence first and foremost as a working-class collier's lad growing up amongst the haystacks and the Nottinghamshire coalfields and a bit smutty in every sense of the word: 'Our Bert' writing his semi-autobiographical fiction in a late nineteenth-century realist tradition, but with twentieth-century knobs on.

It's never been my favourite work (despite some fantastic scenes and passages of writing) and this is a characterization of Lawrence that I find particularly loathsome and depressing; an attempt to possess and limit and keep in place on behalf of the Bestwood mafia who continue to wield a powerful influence over Lawrence's reception. Oh, how they love to forever remind us of Lawrence's remark about the East Midlands being the country of his heart. But let them recall also how he wrote: 

"It always depresses me to come to my native district. Now I am turned forty, and have been more or less a wanderer for nearly twenty years, I feel more alien, perhaps, in my home place than anywhere else in the world. I can feel at ease in ... Rome or Paris or Munich or even London. But in Nottingham Road, Bestwood, I feel at once a devouring nostalgia and an infinite repulsion."

- [Return to Bestwood], Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (CUP, 2004), p. 15. 

This is the Lawrence I admire: nomadic, cosmopolitan, and refusing to belong to any class or people; refusing to be anyone's son or lover. A singular individual who is no longer their Bert - and probably never was.