Capsized Classes: The Aristocracy and the Annihilation of History in D.H. Lawrence's Later Works

In spite or because of his working class origin, D.H. Lawrence always had a problematic relationship with aristocracy, which played a crucial role in his life and work. This relationship allowed him to have a direct experience of the social and epochal revolution which took place in the first decades of the 20th century and which implied the annihilation of history and a yearning for the roots (cf. Northop Frye's ‘radicalism goes to the roots’). Lawrence was attracted by the aristocrat who distinguishes himself from the masses and at the end of World War I he developed the somewhat nebulous concept of the “natural aristocrats”—as opposed to hereditary and wealthy aristocrats -- who would become the leaders in a rebirth and regeneration of a European Culture and Civilization on the brink of the abyss. In Lady Chatterley's Lover, within the frame of an erotic rebirth, implying the discovery of a new language of the body and the annihilation of the historically inherited patriarchal language, Lawrence highlights the physical, cultural and social paralysis gnawing at the ruling classes (spectres of a decaying, degenerating Old Rural England). Sir Clifford is slowly turned into an obsolete puppet, a ghost, whose body and soul are consumed by a malaise, which is the mirror of the evil and decadence of Western Civilization at the dawn of the 20th century.