“Then at last we may actually see free men in the streets”: Freeing the People in the Non-Fiction of D.H. Lawrence

Abstract

Focusing on Lawrence’s non-fiction, and particularly on Studies in Classic American Literature and Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine, I argue that Lawrence’s interest in people was motivated by a particular vision of human freedom, which saw humanity as being in need of salvation. To see how Lawrence articulates this vision involves looking at the different senses of freedom, firstly in a negative and positive sense (as defined by Isaiah Berlin and Erich Fromm), subsequently in a deeper, more Spinozistic sense. Lawrence thinks that what we ordinarily call freedom is illusory, and that genuine freedom can only be won by developing alternative ways of understanding what it means to be free. Consequently, Lawrence rejects collective solutions to the problem of freedom, and sees liberation as an essentially individual experience. These ways of looking at freedom also shed light on Lawrence’s attitude towards America, democracy and equality.