検索キーワード： 著者 "A.D. Lawrence" すべてのカテゴリー

This overlooked work of Lawrence contains both beautiful descriptions of his travels in Italy during this period as well as a thoroughly engrossing portrait of a man, M, who he meets and can't quite get away from for months until the end. This true story grabs at you on several levels. Originally published as the introduction to M's work, Memoirs of the Foreign Legion, it stands on its own.

Heiress Stella Burke is plagued by insincere suitors and nonstop headaches. Exhausting all other medical aides for her migraines, Stella reads Fasting for the Cure of Disease by Linda Hazzard and determines to go to the spa the author runs. Stella’s chauffer and long-time friend, Henry Clayton, is reluctant to leave her at the spa. Something doesn’t feel right to him, still Stella submits herself into Linda Hazzard’s care. Stella soon learns the spa has a dark side and Linda a mean streak. But when Stella has had enough, all ways to leave are suddenly blocked.

Following the death of her parents, a young and innocent Fanny Hill travels to London to find work. She has barely arrived, however, when she is lured into a brothel and has a sexual experience with another woman. A costumer gets her out of there and becomes her lover, but a whole new world has opened to Fanny, who sets out to explore all the pleasures her body has in store for her. Considered the first prose pornography ‘Fanny Hill - Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure’ (1748) is one of the most prosecuted and banned books of all time.

Lawrence wrote three drafts of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ between 1926 and 1928: ‘The First Lady Chatterley’s Lover', this audiobook, ‘John Thomas and Lady Jane’ and the final version, ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’. Although all three books have the same story line of an aristocratic woman falling in love with a working-class man, there are differences in their tone and sensibilities.

"In Love" handles a serious subject in a light, almost comic way. A couple are engaged but have no sexual feelings for each other. The tensions, as they try to do what is expected of them, explode until a compromise is reached. But will the marriage last?

"None of That" concerns itself with the nature of desire. The man in the story is no more than an animal with base instincts but is attractive to women. The woman looks for something deeper with imagination, but in the end is brought down by the more instinctive man. Lawrence again seems to be saying that a woman cannot exist beyond the control of a man, however crude, and can only bring unhappiness on herself if she tries to live on her own terms.

Two Blue Birds tells the tale of the classic triangle of the man, the wife and the secretary, who struggle to work out what their relationships are with each other. Neither of the women seem to want the man sexually but the secretary offers devotion while the parasitic wife has more insight into the man and his work. All the relationships seem unhealthy, all three seem to want something different but are incapable of expressing what they desire.

"The Man Who Was Through With the World" picks up the same themes as in Lawrence's short story "The Man Who Loved Islands". He asks if we can ever withdraw from the world, no matter how much it disgusts us. The ironic part of this fragment is that the hermit vainly seeks to think holy thoughts while all around him is the natural world which could provide his life with meaning. The fragment is unfinished, leaving the listener to wonder if the hero would return to the world, if the world would come to him, or if nature would take its course and let him die in his hut.

"The Undying Man" is a slightly unfinished piece, drawing its inspiration from Shelley's Frankenstein about the creation of life and the fear of death. It is interesting to speculate where Lawrence would have gone with the story, but the sound of broken glass is the most likely ending.

"The Lovely Lady" is a fine observation of a life - the lovely lady of the title - that thrives by sucking the life out of others. The two victims escape by a somewhat melodramatic and comical means, but in the process destroy the lovely lady and form what will probably be a dull and passionless union.

"Rawdon's Roof" is a slight comic piece, relying for its humor on the folly of a man throwing away his chance of happiness because of an unexplained and unlikely vow.

"Mother and Daughter" can be understood as one of Lawrence's diatribes against women. Two women do their best to get along without men, but in the end, as Lawrence always proposed, a woman cannot be fulfilled without a dominant man, however unsuitable he may be.

"A Dream of Life" is unfinished, but there is enough extant to let us know where Lawrence was going in this story. He begins by looking back and bemoaning what has become of his generation, under the thumb of women and lacking the spark of his father's mining friends. Then, in a scene reminiscent of Pilgrim's Progress, he travels forward in time and sees his village in the distant future. The people are living in an idealized commune, but do they have the spark of life?

Just as the lovely Alvina Houghton comes of age, her widowed father’s business starts to dry up. In a drastic effort to regain his fortune and secure his daughter’s standing in society, James Houghton buys, of all things, a theater. Her father’s plans and dreams go misunderstood in the town, but the theater itself does quite well...for a time. One of the traveling players employed at the theater, a sensual Italian man named Ciccio, catches Alvina’s eye, and she finds herself intensely attracted to him.

"Jimmy and the Desperate Woman" tells the improbable story of an intellectual editor persuading a working woman to live with him. We would say now "on the rebound" from a failed marriage, but Lawrence crosses the class divide and poses questions about what makes us attracted to other people. The intellectual twists and turns of the magazine editor contrast nicely with the stark honesty of the spurned miner husband.

"Smile" is one of Lawrence's shorter pieces, a thumbnail sketch of an idea. A man is relieved that his wife is dead and struggles to hide his relief when confronted with his wife's body. The relief breaks out into a smile, which he struggles to excuse. How much better it would have been, Lawrence seems to be saying, if he had just laughed out loud!

"The Border Line" is unusual in that Lawrence dabbles in the supernatural (as he was to do again in "The Rocking-Horse Winner" two years later) and that this is less a story in the traditional sense and more an exploration of the mind of a particular woman, based on his own wife, Frieda. Katherine, in the story, realizes that her real love was her first husband, whom she should, according to Lawrence, have submitted to to gain real happiness. As Lawrence says in the story, thinking of his German wife, perhaps, "Beyond all race is the problem of man and woman."

"Glad Ghosts" is another of Lawrence's supernatural stories, set in the archetypical country house. He doesn't attempt to explain the supernatural happenings which occur, but uses them to extol his own ideas of the power of the sex drive and the triumph of life over death.

"Sun" is a sensual story of a woman rediscovering her sexuality through the power of the sun. But for the unexpected arrival of her businessman husband, she was ready to give herself to a local peasant, but is finally pulled back to respectability by her husband. But she is free to remain apart from him in the sun.

"The Flying Fish" is unfinished, but tells the story of an Englishman, Gethin Day, returning home after years in South America. There is a hint of the homesickness Lawrence may have felt during his long exile. The bulk of the story is the time spent on the ship which is taking Day back to England. It is a ship of fools, a "plague ship", and the only positive note is the joy Day sees in the play of the flying fish and porpoises around the ship. It is tantalizing to speculate how Day would have adapted to English life again, confined to an old house in an old country.