D. H. Lawrence's Critique of Modernism in Women in Love

Viewing Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence as a critique of modernism, this essay analyzes the novel vis-à-vis “internalization” and its corollary “autonomy of art,” two key aspects of the ideology of modernism. Just as Friedrich Nietzsche posited internalization as both “pregnancy” and “illness,” so Lawrence celebrated and problematized it, thus distinguishing his version of modernism from other types, according to which internalization and its consequence the theory of autonomous art are just celebrated. Lawrentian modernism of this kind is embodied in Women in Love: on the one hand, the novel trenchantly registers a fundamental change in the consciousness of the mine laborers appearing in the “Industrial Magnate” chapter, and, on the other, it lays bare the detachedness of the modernist artist figure in the novel, Gudrun, represented by Clive Bell. More specifically, the novel not only criticizes the passive attitude toward life taken by Gudrun and her function as an “observer” of life, but also casts doubt on her framing of life as art and, ultimately, the “self-sufficiency” she achieves in the process. In Lawrence’s eyes, Gudrun, as prototypical modernist, believes she has reached a higher intellectual and spiritual plane, yet all she really has done is succumb to the unpardonable delusion of solipsism.