Wish Fulfillment in the Wilderness: D. H. Lawrence and the Leatherstocking Tales

Abstract

IN D. H. LAWRENCE'S TELLING, THE FIVE LEATHERSTOCKING TALES REVEAL JAMES Fenimore Cooper's escape in wish fulfillment away from his wife and her effete, overcivilized Old World order into a beautiful but violent and, as each successive novel reveals, a progressively more vital New World. spell cast by Lawrence's short, interpretive essay on Cooper has been remarkable. No other criticism of a major American author has rivaled its ongoing possession of American Studies scholarship. Harold Kaplan called it of most enriched endowments of criticism in literary history. Leslie A. Fiedler considered it the only pertinent literary criticism of Cooper in print. Opinion about Cooper, declared Richard Chase, when it has been interesting at all, has had to be in one way or another an elaboration or revision of Lawrence. 1 Such acclaim was not immediate. Lawrence's interpretation of Cooper appeared in Studies in Classic American Literature in 1923, but received scant attention until after World War II. In postwar years Lawrence's literary reputation flouished as never before, followed by newfound interest in his criticism of American classics. Meanwhile, Cooper's literary reputation began to recover from Mark Twain's vilification a half century earlier.2 From 1960 onward Cooper's reputation has been closely linked to Lawrence, with much of most commanding scholarship on Leatherstocking novels invoking Lawrence or manifesting his influence.3 While Lawrence's magnetism affects studies of other American authors, in Michael J. Colacurcio's words, The classic case is, of course, Cooper.4 viability of Lawrence's interpretation in large measure depends on his authority, or rather our willingness to grant him authority, as a literary critic whose reading of literature is reliable. However, close examination of Lawrence's essay and novels themselves reveals a perplexing variety of errors. While some of these errors are separately trivial, taken together they present a consistent pattern of mistaken reporting, raising doubts about credibility of larger enterprise. Most especially, they suggest need to reassess Lawrence's wish fulfillment thesis and his role as a reader of Leatherstocking Tales. This essay will examine Lawrence's reading of Cooper and its legacy to American literary scholarhip.