Lawrence and the Idea of the “People”

Abstract

As the present history reminds us, the idea of the people is as dangerous as it is problematic. Lawrence was of his generation and rather exhibits than solves the problems of thinking of human beings in collective terms. This is especially evident when it involves thinking in terms of race. I propose to look at a number of essays and fictions in the light of this question: Preface to Touch and Go, “Education of the People,” The Plumed Serpent, “England, my England,” and “The Woman who Rode Away.” I suggest that the understanding of collective experience may be taken as a matter of literal, causal psychology or as what Fredric Jameson calls “national allegory” and which he finds exemplified in a number of late twentieth-century novelists from around the world. Whatever Lawrence’s own understanding, these later writers provide a model for how we could now read his work.