Abstract
D. H. Lawrence's aversion against Platonic idealism evidences itself in his repeated attempts to debunk in his fictions the way in which women disown their own bodies by unconsciously moulding themselves according to "men's theories of women." One of such fictions would be "The Lovely Lady," a story which characteristically engages in a silent dialogue with traditional discourses about women. In so doing, it cogently exposes the male glance that inhabits the mirror in which the woman protagonist sees herself reflected and, concurrently, subvert the traditional binary paradigm witch/angel in which she has been kept a prisoner all her life.
Highlights
As noted in the introduction, the exposure of the male gaze as chief originator of the double bind of the beauty game in which women like Pauline and Cecilia appear to be enmeshed already permeates earlier Lawrence works
The link which Syson establishes between his idealization of Hilda on the one hand, and women in Art on the other is precisely what lies at the heart of "The Lovely Lady." In effect, looking attentively into the first narratorial descriptions of Pauline it soon becomes apparent that here is something more than a literally ageless mother: Mrs Attenborough's/ace was of Üieperfect oval, and slightly fíat type that wears best
Lawrence's story entertains a silent dialogue with Wilde's— augmenting the intertextual forcé which permeates "The Lovely Lady." It is not, a repeat of The Picture ofDorian Gray; rather, it is a revisionist re-writing of it insofar as it centralizes what Wilde pushes to the margins of the novel: Sybil's episodic tragedy, or the tragedy of a woman who "would not follow the [beauty] game" and henee "[exposed] herself for what she [was]-not the fair sex" (Stannard 192)
Summary
As noted in the introduction, the exposure of the male gaze as chief originator of the double bind of the beauty game in which women like Pauline and Cecilia appear to be enmeshed already permeates earlier Lawrence works.
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