Paul Metcalfe
61) A Sick Collier
Author
Language
English
Description
A Sick Collier'. Lawrence returns in this story to the scenes of his childhood and the colliers he was brought up with. The wife in the story is probably based on his mother although the husband is unlike the drinking, brutal father portrayed in 'Sons and Lovers', Lawrence's autobiographical novel. The story is a vivid portrayal of the life of a young couple when an accident strikes the husband down but does not succeed as a short story, lacking any...
62) The Lovely Lady
Author
Language
English
Description
The Lovely Lady' is a fine observation of a life - the lovely lady of the title - which thrives by sucking the life out of others. The two victims escape by a somewhat melodramatic and comical means but in the process destroy the lovely lady and form what will probably be a dull and passionless union.
63) The Blind Man
Author
Language
English
Description
The Blind Man' is a delicate study of a loving relationship blighted by the man's blindness and disfigurement in the first world war. The arrival of an old friend of the woman brings into the open feelings and fears previously suppressed.
64) Goose Fair
Author
Language
English
Description
Goose Fair was written by D H Lawrence in 1910. Lawrence sets his story against the backdrop of the industrial troubles caused by the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. A young woman is torn between her need for a lover and her contempt for what she perceives to be his dishonesty in the burning down of a mill. Is all love a compromise between the ideal and the reality of life?
65) The Thimble
Author
Language
English
Description
In 'The Thimble', Lawrence moves to the world of the affluent middle classes, a world to which he perhaps aspired. The story is a touching one of a disfigured husband returning home from the war to a beautiful new wife. The thimble of the story can be seen to represent purposeless, surface beauty, which has no function. The husband casts the thimble away, but can this marriage survive the surface damage and find a deeper meaning?
66) Monkey Nuts
Author
Language
English
Description
Monkey Nuts' was written by D H Lawrence in 1922. 'Monkey Nuts' turns the traditional love story on its head. It is the woman (the new liberated woman Lawrence had little time for) who does the chasing and the boy who is reluctant. Lawrence seems to be saying it is the unspoken love between the two men in the story which is more satisfying than the possible love between the man and the woman which the boy rejects. Although the older man goes through...
Author
Language
English
Description
'The Miner at Home ' was written by D H Lawrence in 1912. Lawrence is at his best in this story, taken from the scenes of his childhood and based on characters he knew intimately. The scene can hardly be called a story in the traditional sense, being the altercation between a miner and his wife over an impending strike but as a picture of a working miner's family, rich in detail and the Nottinghamshire dialect, it has a fascination and vividness.
68) Things
Author
Language
English
Description
Things' takes a cutting look at two 'idealistic' young Americans who travel Europe in an attempt to give their spoiled lives some meaning and in the end settle for suburban America, surrounded by their possessions, their 'things'.
Author
Language
English
Description
Christs in the Tirol' is more of an essay on this peculiar art form than a short story, it is included in this series as forming part of Lawrence's record of his wanderings in Europe and partly as a record of Lawrence's attitude to religion and death and foreshadowing his own eventual suffering and death.
70) The Christening
Author
Language
English
Description
The Christening' 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. The theme of the unmarried mother, and the frictions the situation caused in the family and in the local community were further explored in his play 'The Daughter-in-Law'. In this story, the emphasis moves around each member of the family and the visiting clergyman as the tensions...