Showing results by author "D H Lawrence" in All Categories

"The Thorn in the Flesh" was written by D.H. Lawrence in 1914. The story can be listened to in tandem with "The Prussian Officer", which was written in the same year and has a similar setting and theme. In this story, the young soldier fights against his own shortcomings as a soldier and as a man. He flees the scene of his crime into the arms of his lover, where he finds solace and comfort, but he cannot escape the inevitable military machine that Lawrence hated.

"The Shades of Spring". In this story, the hero has moved on in the world and is married, yet cannot forget his old love. He retraces the steps to her farm, hoping for - what? He finds his old love attached to a physical young man who can give the girl what he could not - pure, physical love - and this she prefers to his more intellectual love.

"Her Turn" was written by D.H. Lawrence in 1912. Lawrence is at his best in this story, taken from the scenes of his childhood and based on characters he knew intimately. The scene can hardly be called a story in the traditional sense, being the altercation between a miner and his wife over the sharing of strike pay. Lawrence keeps the story lighthearted, almost comical, but the tensions of married life in hard times are just below the surface.

"The Miner at Home" was written by D.H. Lawrence in 1912. Lawrence is at his best in this story, taken from the scenes of his childhood and based on characters he knew intimately. The scene can hardly be called a story in the traditional sense, being the altercation between a miner and his wife over an impending strike, but as a picture of a working miner’s family, rich in detail and the Nottinghamshire dialect, it has a fascination and vividness.

"Once" was written by D.H. Lawrence in 1912. The story is largely autobiographical, written when Lawrence and Frieda (Anita in the story) had fled England together to live in Austria and Italy. Frieda had had an affair while they were in Austria and she told Lawrence about it. "Once" explores Lawrence's reactions to being betrayed while still being in love and desiring the betrayer.

"Delilah and Mr Bircumshaw" was written by D.H. Lawrence in 1912. Lawrence is beginning to move away from his working-class roots in this story and exploring the relationship of a middle-class couple who have a slight argument, egged on by the wife's friend. Bircumshaw loses his dignity and self-respect for the comforts of married life. For all his insights into women, the misogynist in Lawrence can be detected.

"Second Best" was written by D.H. Lawrence in 1912. In this delicate story of boy-girl love, Lawrence is at his best, intertwining the feelings of the two lovers with the natural world around them, the countryside, flowers, and fields, and the moles who are sacrificed to bring the lovers together. The young girl may consider her lover "second best", but his passion and honesty ring true.

"New Eve and Old Adam" was written by D.H. Lawrence in 1912. The story is largely autobiographical, telling the simple tale of an argument between a husband and wife, reflecting the difficult time Lawrence and his new wife Frieda were having. What was the place of a woman to be in a modern marriage? Lawrence argued that it was the woman's place to submit or unhappiness would ensue, at it did in this story. The wife is unable to submit to her husband and the marriage disintegrates.

In "Strike Pay", Lawrence returns to the scenes of his boyhood in Eastwood in Nottinghamshire. A group of miners, liberated from work by a strike, enjoy a day out, but the hard realities of home life and mothers-in-law await their return. Tinged with good humor and the sense of comradeship among the miners and finally between the miner and his wife, this story epitomizes working life before the Great War.

"Christs in the Tirol" is more of an essay on this peculiar art form than a short story. It is included in this series as forming part of Lawrence's record of his wanderings in Europe, and partly as a record of Lawrence's attitude to religion and death and foreshadowing his own eventual suffering and death.

"Odour of Chrysanthemums" was written by D H Lawrence in 1911. Lawrence is at his best in this story, taken from the scenes of his childhood and based on characters he knew intimately. He reworked the story in the play The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd, but in this short-story version, Lawrence sees the tragic episode through the eyes of the wife. The theme of a loveless marriage redeemed by death is one that Lawrence was to come back to in other stories.

"The Rocking Horse Winner" is one of Lawrence's more popular short stories with its mixture of the supernatural and its moral lesson of the corrupting nature of the love of money. But it has nothing new to say on the subject, and without the central core of Lawrence's passion for what he is writing, it seems somewhat trite.

"The Christening" was written by D H Lawrence in 1911. Lawrence is at his best in this story, taken from the scenes of his childhood and based on characters he knew intimately. The theme of the unmarried mother and the frictions the situation caused in the family and in the local community were further explored in his play The Daughter-in-Law. In this story, the emphasis moves around each member of the family and the visiting clergyman as the tensions in family life are released.

A Fragment of Stained Glass was written by D H Lawrence in 1911. Lawrence relates a story, supposedly from the Middle Ages, which tells of the possible triumph of love and the human spirit over the forces of religion, superstition, and social injustice.

A Modern Lover was written by D H Lawrence in 1909. A young man returns home to his first love to declare his feelings for her but the moment is lost when the girl will not give herself sexually. This theme was to be explored fully in Lawrence’s novel, Sons and Lovers.

Goose Fair was written by D H Lawrence in 1910. Lawrence sets his story against the backdrop of the industrial troubles caused by the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. A young woman is torn between her need for a lover and her contempt for what she perceives to be his dishonesty in the burning down of a mill. Is all love a compromise between the ideal and the reality of life?

Lawrence is at his best in this story, taken from the scenes of his childhood and based on characters he knew intimately. The main themes of the story are the class system that dominated society at the time and the pressures put on the young lovers who have to overcome it, and the position of women in society who have nothing to offer but their bodies. For the sake of security and position, one daughter makes a loveless marriage whilst the other daughter gives all that up for love.

The Woman Who Rode Away is a dark, troubling story set in the wilderness of South America. What makes this story compelling is that the woman is at the end of her personal tether and the Indians are at the end of their cultural one. They seek one another out for terrible but perhaps predictable uses. Each of them looks to the other for "salvation" in a way that expresses the desperation and futility of their situation.

A Lesson on a Tortoise is set at a local school and shows how Lawrence was ground down by the tiresomeness of teaching and longed to be free.

The Old Adam is a story set in lodgings in Croydon, and the incident may again be autobiographical, but the story examines for the first time in Lawrence’s writing the different and conflicting loves between men and women.