Female Identity and Patriarchal Conflict in the Major Novels of D. H. Lawrence
Abstract
This paper examines the representation of female identity in four major novels of D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Lawrence is often read through a divided critical tradition. On one side, he appears as a writer who challenged Victorian silence about sexuality and gave unusual imaginative energy to women’s desire. On the other side, feminist critics have argued that his fiction frequently defines women through masculine needs, sexual symbolism, and ideas of biological difference. This paper approaches that debate by treating Lawrence’s women neither as simple victims nor as fully liberated modern subjects. Instead, it argues that his female characters dramatize the conflict between patriarchal social structures and the desire for self-definition. Gertrude Morel, Miriam Leivers, Clara Dawes, Ursula Brangwen, Gudrun Brangwen, and Constance Chatterley are placed under pressures created by family duty, marriage, class hierarchy, sexual morality, and male possessiveness. Yet these women also think, resist, withdraw, judge, and choose. Their identities are therefore formed in struggle. Lawrence’s fiction remains ideologically contradictory, but its contradictions are precisely what make it important for the study of modern womanhood.
How to Cite
Vishav Dev Sharma, Suman Devi, "Female Identity and Patriarchal Conflict in the Major Novels of D. H. Lawrence", Vol. 3, Issue 4, 25-07-2025, pp. 122-133.
