Render the information into Russian.
Lesson 5 ANALYTICAL READING: D. H. Lawrence “England, My England”
You will learn to recognise elements that are valid for the multi-level interpretation of a story. We shall discuss different ways of making these elements work together.
What kinds of questions does Lawrence try to ask (or answer) in the story “England, My England” Give your own, some examples are given.
What was the naked elemental truth of the right relationship between man and woman in the ultimate sincerity of friendship? What was the proper relation between blood and brain? What was the secret of vital living? How would men and women behave, what would they be like if they had got their lives straight?
Read the following summary of the events in the story and if you find it satisfactory, enlarge upon it. If not, provide a summary of your own.
The story is about a young English gentleman who lives with his wife and three young children in a cottage in the south of England. His passionately happy relationship with his wife is already becoming uneasy, when, one day, his daughter is badly injured by a sickle which he has left lying in the grass. The accident estranges husband and wife further. Some months later, the Great War breaks out and Egbert volunteers for the army. He is sent to Flanders and a few months later is killed in the trenches.
3. You need to be a careful and accomplished reader to respond to all the ideas expressed and implied in the story: elements of realism and of symbolism, of social satire, of psychological analysis, of historical-emotional meditation, and of quasi-poetical passion. Such writing demands a complex multi-level interpretation, especially in any analysis of the central character. It is not simply characteristic of Lawrence’s writing, it is at the heart of what he was trying to do as a writer. He is always trying to break across boundaries, to reject stereotypical thinking about ourselves. Although he writes authoritatively, he never, (at his best) allows us to believe that men can be pinned down, fixed in a set of moral or social categories, nor that any symbolic treatment can adequately embody their reality. (Karen Hewitt. Understanding English Literature.)
Are all these elements present in the first five paragraphs of the story? Take one of the paragraphs and explain what information ‘a careful and accomplished reader’ might derive from it.
4. English readers at the time of the story was published (1915, 1922 – revised edition) would have recognised more easily than Russian readers (and indeed more easily than English readers in the nineteen nineties) the social distinctions that Lawrence is half-satirising. He takes the title of the story from a very patriotic poem by the popular and sentimental poet, W. E. Henley. Here is a verse of it:
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Mother of Ships whose might,
England, my England: -
In the fierce old Sea’s delight,
England, my own!
Chosen daughter of the Lord,
Spouse-in-Chief of the ancient Sword,
There’s the menace of the Word
In the Song on your bugles blown,
England –
Out of Heaven on your bugles blown!
Another social implication is the opposition of the two popular English stereotypes – ‘the blue-eyed, fair-haired English gentleman’ and ‘the canny Northern businessman,’ the first of them was used as an appeal to decent Englishmen to volunteer.
a) How does Lawrence play around with these stereotypes? What other oppositions work in the story? Are they social? moral? …?
B) What is so “English” about the story?
5. What does the metaphorical comparison “Egbert was a born rose” (p.109) suggest? Are there any other instances of ‘plant’ vocabulary?
6. ‘A careful and accomplished reader’ can’t but notice the persistence of the negative constructions Lawrence uses to describe Egbert. How do they reveal his personality and attitudes? Provide examples.
7. Does Lawrence’s tone remain the same throughout the story? How does it correlate with the point of view (the types of narration) employed by the author? with his repetitions?
How does Lawrence answer the questions you put forward in the first task? Concentrate on one or two.
9. The following tasks are yours. Do these tasks in good handwriting on separate pieces of paper, your classmates will be checking both for content and accuracy.
Render the information into Russian.
Paraphrase into English.
The snakes pervade the imagery of the story, but not very coherently. There is only one kind of poisonous snake in England, rarely seen, even on commons such as Lawrence describes. Its bite is only fatal in exceptional circumstances. In the first version of the story the snakes were absent; Lawrence added them when he was re-writing the story in Italy and much impressed by powerful and dangerous Italian snakes. (He wrote some superb poems about them.) Grafted onto a story about England, they are merely confusing.
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At an obvious symbolic level, the snakes infest a potential paradise. One day, Winifred hears a scream ‘like the very soul of the dark past crying aloud’ and scares away the snake, which has almost swallowed a frog. This acute observation of animal life, subtly anthropomorphic, is a hallmark of much of Lawrence’s best writing. But what has this moment to do with the rest of the story? Is Egbert a snake, harming his beloved daughter? The comparison lacks meaning. Later, Egbert is described unconvincingly as a harmless snake which swerves away from human contact.
But although I think Lawrence’s revisions have not been fully integrated into the story, I believe that behind the imagery are not just observations of Italian snakes, but also memories of Thomas Hardy’s novel The Return of the Native. Lawrence was fascinated by Hardy’s novels, with their desperate, passionate characters and constant evocations of an ancient mysterious, ritualised England. In one scene of The Return of the Native, Mrs. Yeobright, an elderly lady, is trudging bitterly across Egdon Heath in blazing sunshine. Eventually she collapses when she is bitten by an adder. In her case, grief, bitterness, physical exhaustion and snake venom prove fatal. She dies, surrounded by the country heath-dwellers, who attempt to save her with ancient spells and medicines.
Like ‘England, My England’, The Return of the Native concerns a young man who turns his back on the professional work of his social class in order to work on the land while he ponders how to live as an Englishman in the future. By echoing Hardy through his imagery of snakes, Lawrence is drawing upon the inspiration of the greatest English novelist in the generation before his own to confront his readers with some puzzling questions about the English.
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