Author Description

D. H. Lawrence and Nine Women Writers sheds fresh light on how a number of women writers of his time and our own reacted, in their thinking and writing, to D. H. Lawrence's unbridled individualism, sensitive genius, creative energy, and his sometimes infuriating misogynistic resentments. Critic and scholar Leo Hamalian explores the ways that the sensibilities of nine important women writers were both extensively and profoundly influenced by the English author's fiction, poetry, criticism, and self-styled "polyanalytics.". Hamalian's series of comparative readings is illuminating. They demonstrate clearly that the hard questions of ideology, subject matter, and style, which engaged Lawrence throughout his turbulent, career, continued to challenge a number of women writers who were grappling with these issues from another vantage point. Through skeptical of some of Lawrence's theories, these writers valued the dynamic aspects of Lawrence's creativity, especially his emphasis on consciousness of wider meanings rather than character, on symbol rather than narrative - although he was a masterful storyteller. They realized that his intensely conceived and evocatively concentrated scenes could be turned into a highly rewarding technique for suggesting the emotional conflicts and moral dilemmas of their own characters. His primitivist philosophy struck them as healthy and his sensitivity as a kind of appealing vulnerability.