More Radiant in Ourselves: Pauline Lawrence and Paul Morel

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between the recently published text of D.H. Lawrences novel Paul Morel and the writings of St. Paul, which form the cornerstone of the beliefs of the Congregational Church in which Lawrence was brought up Congegationalism has deep roots in English history generally and the history of Protestantism in particular One major earlier contribution to the subject is Matthew Arnolds St. Paul and Protestantism. The paper takes St. Pauls moral urgency, sense of imminent (and immanent) revelation, and reading of the signs and wonders of the natural world, as essentially Pauline, and links these up with the young hero (Paul)s hostility to forms of law and authority. Lawrences Paul also shares St. Pauls sense of a need to communicate a new vision and understanding to distant churches. The larger implications of the argument of the paper are that Paul Morel is in a direct line with later Lawrence (especially The Rainbow), while Sons and Lovers is a different kind of (more realistic or naturalistic) narrative inspired by the Freudianism which Lawrence took from Frieda and then discarded. Lawrences critical approach to other writings never lost the impulse to find the inner radiance of their spiritual significance rather than their historical or generaic properties.