D. H. Lawrence and the Cambridge-Bloomsbury Circle: the Class Issue

Lawrence and the Cambridge-Bloomsbury circle represent contrasting approaches to life and culture, art and society. Their positions are interlocked with the different sensibility which reflects distinct social backgrounds. Lawrence found facile self-complacency and shallow intellectualism in the bourgeois Enlightenment and individualism championed by the circle. The encounter of Lawrence and the circle was a mirror of a society riddled with the chronic problem of social separation. Leavis's criticism of the intellectual flippancy and self-conceit of the privileged coterie overlooks the homosexual issue involved in the skirmish of Lawrence and the circle and confines Lawrence's sexual theme to heterosexual relationship. Yet, unlike the claim of Quentin Bell and Rosenbaum, Leavis's evaluation of the ethos of the Keynes group and its cultural implications was not wide of the mark. The pretensions of the circle to the guardianship of civilisation, their alleged rebellion against conventional values, and their advocacy of individual freedom are significantly offset by the fact that ultimately, they served the empire and was a part of the status quo. 1n this sense, Raymond Williams's critical view of the limitations of the bourgeois ideology the circle stood for is still relevant. The class issue is a central theme in Lawrence's writings throughout his life.