Vampirism, Masculinity and Degeneracy: D. H. Lawrence’s Modernist Gothic

Abstract

To link D. H. Lawrence to a modernist and a Gothic discourse would appear to be an improbable task. That it is possible to do so is due to the links which Lawrence’s fascination with the body has to both a Gothic language of otherness and a modernist discourse of subjectivity. This Gothic dimension to his writings can be explored through an analysis of pseudo-scientific ideas about degeneration which were popular at the time. Such ideas, admittedly, are not usually regarded as underpinning modernism, but, as we shall see, Lawrence’s specific deployment of such ideas is a response to the perceived physical and mental harm posed by modernist aesthetics.