“Love Your Enemy”: The Relativity of Absolute Love in D. H. Lawrence’s “The Ladybird”

Abstract

Preaching the value of love is D. H. Lawrence’s most distinguishable hallmark, which, thanks to H. T. Moore, justly earned him the “title” of “priest of love.” The writer’s edifying philosophies are religious in scale, based on certain absolutes (as in any religion) and are scattered throughout such fictional and non-fictional works as Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), the essays “Love,” (1918) “Nobody Loves Me,” (1936) “A Propos of Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” (1930) and Women in L...