Date of Award
5-2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
College/School
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Department/Program
English
Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair
Monika Elbert
Committee Member
Melinda Knight
Committee Member
Adam Rzepka
Abstract
This paper aims to discuss the theme of displacement, specifically of men in early twentieth-century England experiencing the decline of the traditional masculinity model, in the short fiction of D. H. Lawrence. Displacement, fundamentally, it is removing that which belongs in a specific place or home to an unknown, unadapted environment. In the context of literature, displacement can take more abstract shapes, such as cultural, spiritual, and mental displacements that—as most great literature does—arouses our sympathies to the larger groups and concepts for which they stand. In these types of stories, physical displacement becomes the metaphor for these more abstract outcastings. Any problem of displacement within a society, and particularly relating to the societal roles we take on, is essentially a problem of how well traditions adapt in evolving worlds as well as what (or who) will be left behind—and what will fight to keep its place. The nuclear house and household structure acts as a representative mimicry, containing a microcosm of the social ranks that would be assigned to the household members in larger society. That form is familiar to us, the hierarchical structure of marriage and family as a descending order with the husband/father at the helm; so familiar, in fact, that once the structure begins to fail, confusion and panic rush in like water, sinking the ship. The twin prongs which bring about the displacement of men and masculinity in England at this time were the trope of the New Woman (and subsequent modernist reactions to it) and The Great War. A handful of short stories by D. H. Lawrence exemplifies this rhetoric: 'England, My England,' 'New Eve and Old Adam,' 'The Prussian Officer,' and 'The Man Who Loved Islands.' Furthermore, these stories illustrate Lawrence’s use of marriage and relationships to sharply define not only the shape of the displacement experienced by these characters but also to delve into disturbing and graphic consequences that this phenomenon has on our relationships to others and to ourselves.
File Format
Recommended Citation
Guido, Emily, "Disavowed: the downfall of England's men, marriages, and sense of self in the stories of D. H. Lawrence" (2024). Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects. 1394.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/etd/1394