Résultats lu par "Paul Metcalfe" dans Toutes les catégories

"Samson and Delilah" is set against a Cornish backdrop. Lawrence and his wife tried to settle in Cornwall during the First World War, but were hounded by the authorities and forced to leave. Lawrence pointedly describes the local people as "mindless" in this story. It is almost a Homeric story of a husband returning home after a long absence, having to fight to regain his wife. But in this story, it is the wife who is the obstacle. But she succumbs to the man's physical presence, as Lawrence demanded all women should if they were to attain happiness.

"Wintry Peacock" is, on the surface, a tale of misdirected love or even irresponsible love, the relationship between the wife and the peacock being the most strange, but it is the conspiracy of the two men in the story to prevent the truth coming out about the husband's love child that is most disturbing. The innocent are punished and the guilty get away with their sins, and the author goes laughing down the hill at the end of the story.

"Monkey Nuts" was written by D.H. Lawrence in 1922. "Monkey Nuts" turns the traditional love story on its head. It is the woman (the new liberated woman Lawrence had little time for) who does the chasing and the boy who is reluctant. Lawrence seems to be saying it is the unspoken love between the two men in the story which is more satisfying than the possible love between the man and the woman, which the boy rejects. Although the older man goes through the motions of chasing the girl, even he seems to realize the sterility of one-sided love.

"The Overtone" looks at a sterile marriage with no children and no spontaneous sexual feeling between the couple. Lawrence seems to lose interest in the story, although he introduces a younger woman who walks away baffled at the end. His purpose seems to be to analyze the relationship between men and women in religious terms - Christianity for the women and the old Pan religion for the men. Lawrence produces some fine writing, but the argument at the end of the story seems contrived.

"Rex" is a riotous story of the turmoil caused in a household by the arrival of a puppy. The setting is similar to the one found in Sons and Lovers, but Lawrence thought this scene deserved the fuller treatment of a short story. The question of the destructive force of unconditional love is left open.

"The Blind Man" is a delicate study of a loving relationship blighted by the man's blindness and disfigurement in the First World War. The arrival of an old friend of the woman brings into the open feelings and fears previously suppressed.

In "The Prussian Officer", there is an anti-militarism theme, unpopular as the nation drew near to war, and an examination of latent homosexuality as the officer in the story struggles with his feelings for his orderly. The young soldier is driven beyond his breaking point, but finds a kind of redemption in his final return to natural surroundings and, symbolically, he finds equality in death with his tormentor as they are put side by side in the mortuary.

"A Sick Collier". Lawrence returns in this story to the scenes of his childhood and the colliers he was brought up with. The wife in the story is probably based on his mother, although the husband is unlike the drinking, brutal father portrayed in Sons and Lovers, Lawrence's autobiographical novel. The story is a vivid portrayal of the life of a young couple when an accident strikes the husband down, but does not succeed as a short story, lacking any clear focus or message.

"The Thorn in the Flesh" was written by D.H. Lawrence in 1914. The story can be listened to in tandem with "The Prussian Officer", which was written in the same year and has a similar setting and theme. In this story, the young soldier fights against his own shortcomings as a soldier and as a man. He flees the scene of his crime into the arms of his lover, where he finds solace and comfort, but he cannot escape the inevitable military machine that Lawrence hated.

In this beautifully observed study of a new marriage and the sexual tensions that run through it, Lawrence returns to his theme that happiness in marriage can only come with the submission of the woman to the man. The young wife strains against the bonds of being married and dallies with another man but returns to the arms of her husband once he shows his true feelings for her.

Lawrence is often accused of misogyny, and this story used as evidence against him. There is the simple but honest mine worker who has taken on a wife who is "above" him, but who is struggling to understand her and her feelings for him. Slowly, the story unravels the woman's past. The listener cannot be entirely unsympathetic to her plight - Lawrence is too good a writer to let that happen - but her dishonesty has probably ruined two lives, and our feelings are for the husband.

"The Miner at Home" was written by D.H. Lawrence in 1912. Lawrence is at his best in this story, taken from the scenes of his childhood and based on characters he knew intimately. The scene can hardly be called a story in the traditional sense, being the altercation between a miner and his wife over an impending strike, but as a picture of a working miner’s family, rich in detail and the Nottinghamshire dialect, it has a fascination and vividness.

"The Shades of Spring". In this story, the hero has moved on in the world and is married, yet cannot forget his old love. He retraces the steps to her farm, hoping for - what? He finds his old love attached to a physical young man who can give the girl what he could not - pure, physical love - and this she prefers to his more intellectual love.

"Delilah and Mr Bircumshaw" was written by D.H. Lawrence in 1912. Lawrence is beginning to move away from his working-class roots in this story and exploring the relationship of a middle-class couple who have a slight argument, egged on by the wife's friend. Bircumshaw loses his dignity and self-respect for the comforts of married life. For all his insights into women, the misogynist in Lawrence can be detected.

"Second Best" was written by D.H. Lawrence in 1912. In this delicate story of boy-girl love, Lawrence is at his best, intertwining the feelings of the two lovers with the natural world around them, the countryside, flowers, and fields, and the moles who are sacrificed to bring the lovers together. The young girl may consider her lover "second best", but his passion and honesty ring true.

"New Eve and Old Adam" was written by D.H. Lawrence in 1912. The story is largely autobiographical, telling the simple tale of an argument between a husband and wife, reflecting the difficult time Lawrence and his new wife Frieda were having. What was the place of a woman to be in a modern marriage? Lawrence argued that it was the woman's place to submit or unhappiness would ensue, at it did in this story. The wife is unable to submit to her husband and the marriage disintegrates.

"Once" was written by D.H. Lawrence in 1912. The story is largely autobiographical, written when Lawrence and Frieda (Anita in the story) had fled England together to live in Austria and Italy. Frieda had had an affair while they were in Austria and she told Lawrence about it. "Once" explores Lawrence's reactions to being betrayed while still being in love and desiring the betrayer.

"Christs in the Tirol" is more of an essay on this peculiar art form than a short story. It is included in this series as forming part of Lawrence's record of his wanderings in Europe, and partly as a record of Lawrence's attitude to religion and death and foreshadowing his own eventual suffering and death.

"Her Turn" was written by D.H. Lawrence in 1912. Lawrence is at his best in this story, taken from the scenes of his childhood and based on characters he knew intimately. The scene can hardly be called a story in the traditional sense, being the altercation between a miner and his wife over the sharing of strike pay. Lawrence keeps the story lighthearted, almost comical, but the tensions of married life in hard times are just below the surface.

In "Strike Pay", Lawrence returns to the scenes of his boyhood in Eastwood in Nottinghamshire. A group of miners, liberated from work by a strike, enjoy a day out, but the hard realities of home life and mothers-in-law await their return. Tinged with good humor and the sense of comradeship among the miners and finally between the miner and his wife, this story epitomizes working life before the Great War.