Love and Sex in D. H. Lawrence

Although love and sex are central to Lawrence, critics have paid scant attention to the remarkably strange and unexpected ways in which these two topics are treated in his work. In this controversial study, David Ellis describes how the tortuous developments in Lawrence's relationship with Jessie Chambers are reflected in his writing, his struggle against his undoubted leanings towards homosexuality, the war he declared on the concept of romantic love and how, after insisting on male dominance, he returned (although only in part) to a more humane vision of relations between the sexes in the various versions of Lady Chatterley's Lover. His aim is to suggest that although Lawrence is undoubtedly a major writer, his greatest achievements are not to be found where he is popularly assumed to be at his most impressive.