Lawrence’s “Art Speech” and the Malady of Civilization in Women in Love

A number of interesting parallels concerning the role of aggressiveness in love can be drawn between the implications of Freud’s “Civilization and its Discontents” and those of Lawrence in his novel of ideas Women in Love. Freud’s views on aggression show affinities with Lawrence’s major theme of the doom of western industrial society in his “end-of-the-world” novel. In Women in Love dissolution is shown to be a ubiquitous process in industrial civilization. This is openly stated by Birkin, ...