The Philosophy of Childhood

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses Lawrence's philosophical works "Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious" and "Fantasia of the Unconscious" as well as his novels, "The Rainbow" and Women in Love". The paper explains Lawrence's philosophical works in parallel with these two novels in order to show Lawrence's conceptions of both childhood development and the unconscious as well as the precise nature of the relationship between his fictional and philosophical texts. The paper explores the way Lawrence characterises childhood development as a fall from Edenic childhood to adult consciousness. The paper then portrays how Lawrence's narratives of childhood development function in terms of his writing as a whole.

From the Paper:

"D. H. Lawrence wrote in the foreword to Fantasia of the Unconscious that his philosophical works, or 'pseudophilosoph[ies],' were 'deduced from the novels and poems, not the reverse', thus indicating that his two closely-related works Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious and Fantasia of the Unconscious were to be seen as exegeses of the ideas presented within his novels. As the titles of these two works indicate, of primary interest to Lawrence was the concept of the 'unconscious,' a large part of his exploration of which was based around ideas of childhood development. Of Lawrence's novels, The Rainbow and Women in Love perhaps deal most explicitly with these themes, presenting the development of not just one character, but of several successive generations of the Brangwen family. This being the case, reading Lawrence's philosophical works in parallel with these two novels should provide an illuminating view of not only Lawrence's conceptions of both childhood development and the unconscious but also the precise nature of the relationship between Lawrence's fictional and philosophical texts."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Becket, Fiona, The Complete Critical Guide to D.H. Lawrence (London; New York: Routledge, 2002).
• Felman, Shoshana, 'Turning the Screw of Interpretation', in Yale French Studies, No. 55/56, Literature and Psychoanalysis, The Question of Reading: Otherwise, (1977), pp. 94-207.
• Fernihough, Anne, 'The Tyranny of the Text: Lawrence, Freud and the Modernist Aesthetic', in Modernism and the European Unconscious (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), pp. 47-63.
• Howe, M.B. The Art of the Self in D.H. Lawrence, (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1977).
• The King James Bible online at <http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=1&chapter=2&version=9>.

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