Transcript D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) GROUP MENBERS Vann Roxanne Jasmine Vanessa • D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), English novelist, storywriter, critic, poet and painter, one of the greatest figures in 20thcentury English literature. "Snake"

D.H. Lawrence
(1885-1930)
GROUP MENBERS
Vann
Roxanne
Jasmine
Vanessa
• D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930),
English novelist, storywriter,
critic, poet and painter, one of
the greatest figures in 20thcentury English literature.
"Snake" and "How Beastly the
Bourgeoisie is" are probably
his most anthologized poems.
David Herbert Lawrence
• Born on September 11, 1885, in Eastwood,
Nottinghamshire, central England.
• The fourth child of a struggling coal miner, a heavy
drinker. Mother: a former schoolteacher, greatly superior
in education to her husband. Lawrence's childhood was
dominated by poverty and friction between his parents.
• Educated at Nottingham High School, to which he had
won a scholarship.
• Worked as a clerk in a surgical appliance factory and
then for four years as a pupil-teacher.
• After studies at Nottingham University, Lawrence
matriculated at 22 and briefly pursued a teaching career.
• Lawrence's mother died in 1910; he helped her die by
giving her an overdose of sleeping medicine.
Childhood
As a child, he hated physical
games like football or cricket
and preferred the quiet
company of little girls. Indeed,
he suffered bad moments at
Beauvale School...
Please note that
Eastwood was widely
open to the neighbouring
countryside as shown by
this photograph.
...where he was found girlish
by his schoolmates.
Achievement
Romance:
Jessie Chambers
Lawrence also received a good religious education
which gave him a thorough knowledge of the Bible.
Congregationalism was the religion of his family, or
rather of his mother.At the age of 12 he won a
scholarship to Nottingham High School ; and this meant
:- long days from 7am to 7pm,- financial difficulties for
Mrs Lawrence (but her ambition for her son was such
that she was prepared to make great sacrifices)- rather
good results at school, but nothing exceptional. In the
summer 1901, Bert met Jessie Chambers, the daughter
of a nearby farmer...
Mrs Frieda Weekley
In Sept. 1906 D.H. Lawrence was 21:
“Odour of Chrysanthemums”
One of D. H. Lawrence’s most accomplished stories,
written in 1909.
-- A dramatic moment in the life of Mrs.
Elizabeth Bates and the death of her
husband, Walter Bates.
-- Lawrence presents his parents’
marriage in the story
Characters (1)
Elizabeth Bates
- a Housewife
- a tall woman of
imperious mien
- a handsome woman
with definite black
eyebrows
- a pregnant woman.
John
-Elizabeth Bates' son
-a small, sturdy boy of five
- “nasty,” like destroying flowers
-indifferent to all but himself
Annie
- Elizabeth Bates' daughter
- a naïve girl
-a schoolgirl with curly hair that is
different from her father’s
blonde color
Characters (2)
Elizabeth Bates' mother-in-law
-an elderly woman about sixty years old
-Walter’s social superior, a teacher who was keen to
develop the talents of her children.
Walter
-Elizabeth Bates’ husband
- a miner who is a drunker
- blond, full-fleshed, with fine limbs
-died for suffocation
Summary
• Part 1- In a winter day, Elizabeth Bates, a
coal miner's wife, waited anxiously
for her husband to return for dinner.
Her husband didn’t come home.
• Part 2- Elizabeth looked for her husband, and
her mother-in-law came. Her husband
was killed accidentally that he died of
suffocation.
4:30- Elizabeth and her son, John, waited the father’s
coming to begin tea.
4:45- Elizabeth’s daughter, Annie, came home late, and they sat
down to tea.
5:40- Elizabeth complained her husband’s drunk behavior.
6:40- Children went to bed. Elizabeth concerned for the father’s
safety but still felt angry.
8:00-Elizabeth went out and looked for her
husband. John Rigley helped her look for her husband.
9:00~
9:30-She sat and waited in the house. She felt uneasy.
9:45- Her mother-in-law came.
10:30- Matthews and Jim carried Walter's corpse into the
parlor. Elizabeth washed the body with her mother-in-law.
They put clothes on him and locked the parlor's door.
Symbols
A. Chrysanthemum
B. Darkness
C. Suffocation
D. Broken vase
A. Chrysanthemums
-The chrysanthemums which opened Elizabeth’s married
life have now closed it.
a. Pink-beautiful smell
The beginning of Elizabeth’s marriage.
“Beside the path hung disheveled pink
chrysanthemums” (p2317 par.2).
“It was chrysanthemums when I married
him. .................”(p2321 par.4).
b. Pale and brown
-Elizabeth’s husband got drunk and came
home late.
“…,and the first time they ever brought him
home drunk,..” (p2321 par.4).
“And he may sleep on the floor till he wakes
himself…”(p2321 par.17).
c. Cold and deathly smell
-The death of Elizabeth’s husband
“There was a cold, deathly smell…”
(p2326 par. 8).
B. Darkness
a. Disappointment
“She opened the door once more…”
(p2319 par.3).
“She went out. As she dropped piece
after piece of…” (p2320 par.10).
b. Loneness
“John, at the end of the table…”
(p2319 last par.).
c. An unhappy life
“…, they had met in the dark and had
fought in the dark,…” (p2329 par.3).
d. Death
“ The man turned away, looking at the
darkness” (p2325 par.9).
C. Sphyxiated ( Suffocation)
- Oppression
“Sphyxiated, the doctor said” (p 2327
par.6).
D. Broken vase
- Broken marriage
“As soon as she could get... and the
flower.” (p2327 par. 2).
Theme
A. Industrial Revolution
-Industrial blight against nature beauty
B. Life and death
-The chrysanthemums, which bloom a little while in the fall
and then die, are symbolic of the fragility of the inner
lives.
C. Marriage.
-Their marriage had been dead before her
husband lost his life that night in the mine.
-Elizabeth never appreciated what she could have had
with Walter.
Study Questions:
-What dose the title, "Odour of Chrysanthemums," mean?
- What are the effects of environmentally, unfriendly
industrial practices in the story?
- Elizabeth Bates thinks her husband drinks too much.
What kind of medical, social, psychological, or
economic effects of alcohol abuse are related to her
husband’s drunken behavior?
-What dose Elizabeth feel when she sees Walter's body?
-What new understanding does it give her about Walter in
her life?
-What is the contrast between Elizabeth and Walter's
mother?
“Piano”
-Present v.s. Past
-Conflict between mother and lover
-Rhyme : aabb
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling
strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles
as she sings.
-A singing to the speaker brings him
back the memory of his mother
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to
belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with the winter
outside
And the hymns in the cozy parlour, the tinkling piano
our guide.
-Ignoring the singer again and back to
his childhood.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for
the past.
-Appassionato:
to perform passionately
-The speaker is overwhelmed by his
memory.
Study Questions:
• What is the connection between
music and memory?
• Why does the speaker start “Piano”
with the word “softly”?
” Snake”
A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark
carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at
the trough before me.
A snake: asp viper~ a poisonous snake
carob-tree: Mediterranean region
anthropomorphous: snake-human being
Asp Viper
Carob Tree
•
The raw materials for our
products come from the Sicilian
Carob Tree, majestic
evergreens diffused in Sicily
more than 1000 years ago. But
the carob fruit has an even
older story, as we find it in the
Bible (St. John’s Bread), and its
seed, called also ‘carat’, was
used as a weight unit for gold
measuring.
• Italy is the second country,
after Spain, for Carob
production, and the Ragusa
Area, where LBG Sicilia is
located, contributes to 70% of
the whole national production.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the
gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down,
over the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small
clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long
body, silently.
“reached”: snake-hand
Alliteration: “s”-the hissing sound of the snake
Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.
He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and
mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning
bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
Compare to domesticated farm animals (cattle)
Authoritative look
Mt Etna: an active volcano in Sicily
Mt. Etna
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the
gold are venomous.
And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him
off.
Black snake: western whip snake
Education: to destroy the destroyer
Social convention: “man”
But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink
at my watertrough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?
Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.
Pleased: guest
Interaction with readers: considering the poet’s
thoughts
And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!
And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,
But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.
Fear: Christian education (Garden of Eden);
too much reason, intellect but
ignore instinct and passion
He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so
black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
Compare to God
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and
entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his
withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing
himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.
Christian’s idea: devil in hell
I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind
convulsed in undignified haste,
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wallfront,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with
fascination.
The pressure of society wins
And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human
education.
And I thought of the albatross,
And I wished he would come back, my snake.
regret : inner conflict:
Albatross: an innocent bird in Coleridge's Ancient Mariner
Coleridge, Ancient Mariner
• The albatross = the
important object
associated with the
taboo introduced [good
sign, messenger of God
• Ending, abruptly, with
the mariner killing the
bird [hence “plague”
coming]
For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate;
A pettiness.
Compare to a king
Compare to a lord of life