A literary trespasser: D. H. Lawrence's use of women's writing

Abstract

An aspect of D. H. Lawrence's work which has generally passed unremarked by critics is the extent to which he used women as actual or potential collaborators, and women's writing as source material. For example, The Boy in the Bush, which was published under the joint authorship of Lawrence and Mollie Skinner, has been largely ignored in critical studies) Again, it is now well-known that The Trespasser was based upon an autobiographical prose-poem of Helen Corke's, but when this fact is mentioned in passing it is usually to imply that any faults in the novel result from Lawrence's use of an 'inferior' writer's work as his starting-point. Little attempt has been made to examine the implications of this curious and significant part of Lawrence's technique, yet, from the involvement of Jessie Chambers and Louie Burrows in his earliest literary ventures, through to the novels that were planned in conjunction with Mollie Skinner, Mabel Dodge Luhan and Catherine Carswell in the 1920s, collaboration with women and reliance on their own writing remained a constant feature of his method. When commentators have remarked upon this fact, they have been careful to play down its possible significance. Thus, Harry T. Moore, in writing of the 'Miriam papers' (notes by Jessie Chambers which formed the basis for scenes in Sons and Lovers), warns against assuming that Jessie was in any real sense a collaborator in the novel, and merely adds: