D.H. Lawrence and Attachment

Though we all face a tug of war between dependency and autonomy while growing up, British author D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) experienced the struggle with particular intensity. Later in life, his acute observational skills, high emotional intelligence, and expressive abilities would allow him to articulate this conflict in his works as few other writers have.Applying concepts from attachment theory, D.H. Lawrence and Attachment presents innovative readings of a broad swath of Lawrence’s fiction. Ronald Granofsky teases out hidden patterns in Lawrence’s work, deepening our understanding of his fictional characters and revealing new significance to key thematic concerns like gender identification, marriage, and class. Lawrence’s too-close relationship with his own mother, in particular, was the foundation for his lifelong interest in attachment, as well as the impetus for his literary exploration of the delicate balance between the desire for closeness and the need for separation. While the theories of Margaret S. Mahler, D.W. Winnicott, John Bowlby, and others were developed after Lawrence’s death, his writing about relationships - and how they are influenced by early childhood experiences - bears a striking resemblance to the concepts of attachment theory.The Lawrence who emerges from D.H. Lawrence and Attachment is a psychological writer of great power whose intuitive insights into the vagaries of attachment resulted in rich, complex fiction.

Ronald Granofsky is professor emeritus in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University and the author of D.H. Lawrence and Survival: Darwinism in the Fiction of the Transitional Period.