Psychoanalytical and Feminist approaches to D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers

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Psychoanalytical and Feminist approaches to D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers

Psychoanalytical and feminist approaches are two relatively recent critical responses towards literary texts. When applied to D. H. Lawrence's Son's and Lovers, both can be insightful yet problematic at the same time.

The theories of psychoanalysis, primarily identified with Sigmund Freud, can be applied to imaginative literature and art in general, in order to study their manifest and latent content, in the same way as Freud studied dreams. Literature clearly lends itself to such a study, since, like dreams, the most significant meaning often lies below the conscious surface narrative of a text. Feminist approaches towards literature are concerned with the portrayal of female characters. Lawrence's representation of women in his work has been admired by many readers for it's insight, women among them, and has been strongly attacked by others for its prejudiced male perspective.

Classic psychoanalytic criticism applied the theories either to the author, or his or her characters, which were seen as internalised images that have come from the author's unconscious. The high autobiographical content of Sons and Lovers lends itself to this type of study. Also, if works of art are taken to be disguised expressions of an infantile wish driven into the unconscious, as Freud suggests, then Sons and Lovers is doubly of interest. It is about the fundamental infantile wish that all boys have and repress, according to Freud, the wish of Oedipus to kill their father and marry their mother.

Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex and of its frequent effect of psychical impotence, of which Paul is a classic victim, offers a valuable key to a coherent unde...

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...the whole picture, since each perspective has its own priorities, and several need to be incorporated in order to fully realise all of the characters and understand the true workings of the novel.

Works Cited and Consulted

Finney, B. (1990). Penguin Critical Studies: Sons and Lovers. Middlesex: Penguin Group

Kuttner, A. B. (1969). A Freudian Interpretation (1916). In Gmini Salgado (Ed.),

D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers A Selection of Critical Essays 1969 1994. Hampshire: Macmillan Press.

Lawrence, D. (1996). Sons and Lovers (1913). M. Daly (Ed.), London: Everyman

Lucy, N. (1997). Postmodern Literary Theory: An Introduction Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Millett, K. (1996). Sexual Politics (1969). In Rick Rylance (Ed.), Sons and Lovers: New Casebooks. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Pope, R. (1998). The English Studies Book. London: Routledge

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