Race and Identity in D H Lawrence

With its focus on D.H. Lawrence's attitudes toward Indians, Gypsies, and Jews, "Race and Identity in D.H. Lawrence" examines how concepts about race are created and transmitted; how they are appropriated and sometimes transformed; and how individual and national identities relate to racial otherness. Setting Lawrence in his context(s) reveals how his personal circumstances combined with societal influences to shape his adoption and adaptation of stereotypes about minorities. His own ambivalent relationships with the racial other, and the ties between that ambivalence, his affiliation with 'Englishness', and his search for a better society, are at once revealing of his culture and particular to him as an individual. Lawrence's art tells 'the truth of the day', as he said good art does, but it also tells the truth of the artist, and of other days. His honesty on the subject, even if - even when - it offends, can inform and enliven our contemporary discussions of race and ethnicity.