The British Midlands
If there is one overarching theme that ties together Lawrence’s greatest stories which delve deeply into specific thematic concerns, it is one that seems to place the author into that particular grouping of writers known as “regional authors.” Lawrence did set quite a number of stories in the Midlands of the English countryside, but the stories which take place possess such a strange sort of universality that it is something of a stretch to say he is to this region what Faulkner is to Mississippi. While stories ranging from “Tickets, Please” to “The Fly in the Ointment” share the setting, that setting frames the story rather the other way around. One could take these out of the Midlands and drop them into a similar region of the country without too much change, but somehow despite that Lawrence’s gift is to make place vital to his stories. Note that this relates to plural: no single story captures the thematic power of place nearly to the degree that they all serve to work together toward that end. These stories are not about life in a northern town and they certainly aren’t about life in London, but while there is nothing to suggest that the events could not be replicated elsewhere, Lawrence manages to the specificities of working-class existence here something that truly is much closer to a thematic matter than one of setting.
Woman (and Men) In Love
Arguably, of course, Lawrence’s single most famous work is his novel Women in Love (though surely Lady Chatterley’s Lover is his most famous title). The title of the former applies as a thematic interest to nearly the same degree—some might well argue an even greater degree—than his portrait of central England. However, it remains inescapable fact that “The Witch a La Mode” takes place in London while “The White Stocking” is more ambiguously located, though likely somewhere in the Midlands. Both stories—along with almost literally countless others by the author—pursue a narrative much heavier on thematic weight than action and event: these are complicated love stories that are not really so much love stories as generally understood as they are stories about self-identity as viewed through the prism of romantic longing. The sheer number of women and men for whom true love is a rough course that populate the stories of Lawrence is genuinely prodigious. Word of warning: he’s not exactly writing fairy tales where happy endings are the logical conclusion.
Psychology
Lawrence himself tended toward a rather staunch denial of purposely pursuing a thematic interest in Freudian psychology, but then, of course, that is the entire point of Freudian psychoanalysis: to discover not necessarily what you consciously pursue, but the conscious manifestation of unconscious drives. At any rate, to suggest wholeheartedly that Lawrence’s short stories (and novels) are not an absolute gift to any student looking to write a Freudian analysis would be to utterly deny the obvious. One need only start with what is not just one of Lawrence’s most anthologized short-stories, but one of 20th century literature’s most anthologies short stories—“The Prussian Officer”—and its undeniably Freudian potential for interpretation as a tale of repressed homosexual desire sublimated into sadistic violence. “The Rocking-Horse Winner,” “Odour of Chrysanthemums,” and “The Woman who Rode Away” all provide fertile ground for a Freudian examination. Psychological symbolism throughout indicate potential subtext for a load of unconscious desires ranging from incest to patricide.
