The Sensual Body in Lawrence’s Early Discursive Writing

Abstract

Primarily because of his reception in Britain, exemplified by the response of the establishment to The Rainbow, Lawrence articulated his desire to establish his reputation in America first. Of Lawrence’s two books on the unconscious Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious was first published by Thomas Seltzer in New York on 10 May 1921. Martin Secker published it in Britain in July 1923. Its sequel, Fantasia of the Unconscious, was published in America by Seltzer in October 1922, and in Britain by Secker in September 1923. They are commonly published in one volume in Britain, in reverse order of composition. To New York publisher Benjamin Huebsch, Lawrence described Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious as ‘six little essays on Freudian Unconscious’ (Letters, III, p. 466); Fantasia of the Unconscious was first considered under various titles, including ‘Psychoanalysis and the Incest Motive’ (Letters, III, p. 730), and later, ‘The Child and the Unconscious’, ‘Child Consciousness’ and ‘Harlequinade of the Unconscious’ (Letters, IV, p. 93, p. 82, p. 97). The early versions of the essays which became Studies in Classic American Literature, usually represented as a work of psychoanalytic criticism, initially included descriptions of ‘the biological psyche’ as Lawrence calls it in Fantasia of the Unconscious (F&P, p. 104), incorporating the infamous theories of dual consciousness which were largely removed as Lawrence revised his literary material into book form. Together these texts comprise an important body within Lawrence’s oeuvre.

So it is: we all have our roots in earth. And it is our roots that now need a little attention, need the hard soil eased away from them, and softened so that a little fresh air can come to them, and they can breathe. For by pretending to have no roots, we have trodden the earth so hard over them that they are starving and stifling below the soil. We have roots, and our roots are in the sensual, instinctive and intuitive body, and it is here we need fresh air of open consciousness.

(Complete Poems, p. 418)