Abstract
The earliest manifestation of Lawrence’s desire for an ideal society can be found in a statement attributed to him by one or both of the Chambers sisters (Jessie and May) and was apparently uttered in his seventeenth or eighteenth year. Jessie, who was ‘the threshing floor’ for most of his early beliefs, reports: ‘When he was 17 or 18 he said to me how fine it would be if some day he could take a house, say one of the big houses in Nottingham Park, and he and all the people he liked could live together.’1 This general idea is fleshed out in an account supposedly written by May Chambers which not only supplies the setting for the extended family circle, but also draws attention to the advantages of communal living. Bert, as the young Lawrence was familiarly known, asks:
‘Don’t you think it would be possible, if we were rich, to have a large house, really big, you know, and all the people one likes best live together? All in the one house? Oh, plenty of room inside and out, of course, but a sort of centre where one could always find those one wanted, a place all of us could come to as a home. I think it would be heaps nicer than to be all scattered and apart. Besides, there’d always be someone one liked near at hand. I know I should love something of the sort. Haven’t you often felt sad at the thought of the gradual breakup of families or groups of friends like ours? I have — and it could be avoided, if we had the means. I should like to be rich and try it, shouldn’t you?’2
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Notes
Emile Delavenay, D. H. Lawrence: l’Homme et la Genèse de son Oeuvre (1885–1919) (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1969) p. 665.
This account, attributed to May Chambers, is printed in D. H. Lawrence: a Composite Biography, ed. Edward Nehls, vol. III: 1925–1930 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959) p. 601.
The attribution is disputed in George J. Zytaruk, ‘The Chambers Memoirs of D. H. Lawrence — Which Chambers?’, Renaissance and Modern Studies, XVII (1973) pp. 5–37.
E.T. [Jessie Chambers], D. H. Lawrence: a Personal Record (Cambridge University Press, 1980) p. 49.
The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, vol. II, June 1913-October 1916 (Cambridge University Press, 1981). Citations to this volume will be given in parentheses within the text and abbreviated as L. II.
‘Study of Thomas Hardy’ was published in Phoenix: the Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence, ed. Edward D. McDonald (London: William Heinemann, 1936) pp. 398–516. The original typescript from which McDonald printed the text is clearly titled by Lawrence ‘Le Gai Savaire’. This title should be restored when the book is edited for publication in the Cambridge Edition of the works of D. H. Lawrence. For some useful comments on the various versions of Lawrence’s philosophy,
see L. D. Clark, The Minoan Distance: the Symbolism of Travel in D. H. Lawrence (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1980) pp. 91–111.
See Lawrence’s letter to J. B. Pinker, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, ed. Aldous Huxley (London: William Heinemann, 1932) p. 414.
D. H. Lawrence, ‘Fantasia of the Unconscious’ and ‘Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious’ (London: William Heinemann, 1961) Phoenix Edition, p. 9.
H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia, Introduction by Mark Hillegas (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967) p. 30.
See ‘Selected List of Utopian Works 1850–1950’, in The Quest for Utopia: an Anthology of Imaginary Societies, ed. Glen Negley and J. Max Patrick (College Park: McGrath, 1971) pp. 19–22.
Mrs Henry Jenner, Christian Symbolism (London: Methuen, 1910) p. 150.
Beatrice, Lady Glenavy, ‘Today we will only Gossip’ (London: Constable, 1964) p. 91.
D. H. Lawrence, Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963) pp. 210–11.
S. P. Rosenbaum, ‘Keynes, Lawrence, and Cambridge Revisited’, Cambridge Quarterly, XI (1982) p. 257.
D. H. Lawrence, The Symbolic Meaning: the Uncollected Versions of ‘Studies in Classic American Literature’ (New York: Viking, 1964) p. 238.
The Collected Letters of D. H. Lawrence, ed. Harry T. Moore, 2 vols (New York: Viking, 1962) p. 768.
The Quest for Rananim: D. H. Lawrence’s Letters to S. S. Koteliansky 1914–1930, ed. George J. Zytaruk (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1970). Citations to this volume will be given in parentheses within the text and abbreviate as QR.
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© 1988 the Estate of Gāmini Salgādo and G. K. Das
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Zytaruk, G.J. (1988). Rananim: D. H. Lawrence’s Failed Utopia. In: Salgādo, G., Das, G.K. (eds) The Spirit of D. H. Lawrence. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06510-3_17
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