Paul Metcalfe

In Love' handles a serious subject in a light, almost comic way. A couple are engaged but have no sexual feelings for each other. The tensions, as they try to do what is expected of them, explode until a compromise is reached. But will the marriage last?

Tickets Please' returns Lawrence to his native Nottingham during the first world war. The social revolution of women doing jobs previously done by men, also begins to change the relationship between the sexes and the women in the story are aggressive and wanting their rights. But are they happier for conquering the flighty male in the story or is the domination of man by woman one step too far only generating hate and unhappiness?

Two Blue Birds' tells the tale of the classic triangle of the man, the wife and the secretary, who struggle to work out what their relationships are with each other. Neither of the women seem to want the man sexually but the secretary offers devotion while the parasitic wife has more insight into the man and his work. All the relationships seem unhealthy, all three seem to want something different but are incapable of expressing what they desire.

The Blue Moccasins' has the charm of looking at some eternal human problems such as unequal marriage, the waning of sexual desire and a woman who cannot give herself wholly to her husband in a thoroughly English and local setting, the stage of an amateur dramatic society where all the passions and delusions come to a head.

Lawrence uses the story of a storm and the deaths it causes to revive the feelings for (if not an actual belief in) the old gods, in this case Mercury whose shrine is ignored by the tourists but who takes his revenge.

The Shades of Spring'. In this story the hero has moved on in the world and is married yet cannot forget his old love. He retraces the steps to her farm hoping for what? He finds his old love attached to a physical young man who can give the girl what he could not - pure physical love - and this she prefers to his more intellectual love.

The Mortal Coil' is one of Lawrence's darker stories. From adversity the lovers find a kind of happiness in each other only for death to snatch it away.

Odour of Chrysanthemums' was written by D H Lawrence in 1911. Lawrence is at his best in this story, taken from the scenes of his childhood and based on characters he knew intimately. He reworked the story in the play, 'The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd' but in this short story version, Lawrence sees the tragic episode through the eyes of the wife. The theme of a loveless marriage, redeemed by death is one which Lawrence was to come back to in other stories....

A Lesson on a Tortoise' is set in a local school and shows how Lawrence was ground down by the tiresomeness of teaching and longed to be free.

In 'Strike Pay', Lawrence returns to the scenes of his boyhood in Eastwood in Nottinghamshire. A group of miners, liberated from work by a strike, enjoy a day out but the hard realities of home life and mothers-in-law await their return. Tinged with good humour and the sense of comradeship among the miners and finally between the miner and his wife, this story epitomises working life before the Great War.