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416 The twentieth century: 1900–45
new big Primitive chapel, primitive enough in its stark brick and
big panes of greenish and raspberry glass in the windows.
Tension in sexual feeling is a recurring theme in Lawrence’s fiction.
Lawrence saw sexuality as a driving force in human relationships which
could be both creative and destructive. Sexual love could be destructive
if it were too mechanical or based on rationality or reason; if it were
created on an instinctive level it would be positive and could help
individuals achieve a wholeness of personality through their love for
each other. He described relationships with uncompromising originality
and genuinely sought ways of reconciling tensions and contrasts, of
‘only connecting’ seemingly irreconcilable opposites. Above all, Lawrence
was concerned to find ways of describing the deepest experiences of
his characters. He once wrote that the human personality was like an
iceberg, with the major part of it under the surface. His art attempts to
capture the submerged parts of the self and to develop forms and
techniques in the novel which render those intense experiences. To
this end, readers have to abandon conventional understandings of ‘plot’
and ‘character’, and immerse themselves in the total pattern of rhythm,
episodic structure and poetic symbolism which is the experience of
reading his fictional work. A relevant comment on his own practice as
a novelist is contained in a letter by Lawrence to a friend, Edward
Garnett. He wrote (about the writing of The Rainbow):
You mustn’t look in my novel for the old stable ego of character.
There is another ego, according to whose actions the individual is
unrecognisable and passes through, as it were, allotropic states
which it needs a deeper sense than we’ve been used to exercise
to discover.
Not all his fiction is so successful, however. Some of the later novels
such as Aaron’s Rod (1922) or The Plumed Serpent (1926) are uneven,
somewhat formless, and given to preaching rather than exploring ideas:
some of D.H. Lawrence’s writing in the 1920s has been accused of
displaying Fascist ideas (of racial superiority). But a full belief in such
ideas would go against his consistent display of sympathy with a
wide range of cultures and classes. Lawrence’s prolific output covers
novels, short stories, travel writing, criticism, drama, and poetry.