Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Lawrence on individual liberation

Just realized that one limitation of this application in Ning is that it's practically an adjunct of Amazon. So you have to go through the Amazon collection first before you can post anything in Ning. Well, guess what Amazon? You don't have any copy of this book that I'm reading right now. So from hereon, I'm afraid you won't be able to use any entry here for your advertising campaign. I decided to tinker with all your links in Ning's content page. And wallah, I have a post about my own second-hand copy of D.H. Lawrence's book, straight from Booksale here in the Philippines and with all the repairs I've done with the binding.

I think the only other book by Lawrence that I've read was "Sons and Lovers". And it was such a long time ago that I really can't remember now any detail about the book, except that one theme it tackled was daughter-in-law and mother-in-law relationships. According to the introductory materials in this Penguin edition of "The Rainbow" edited by John Worthen, Lawrence began "The Sisters" in 1913. The Sisters was later to be split into "Women in Love" and The Rainbow. The latter work was banned by British authorities a few days after its publication in 1915, supposedly because of some anti-war passsages (e.g., the individual is more important than the nation, soldiers are stiff and wooden). It was not until 1926 that the UK public would be able to see again copies of Lawrence's book. The Rainbow traces the lives of three generations of a rural England family. Along the way, Lawrence was supposed to have outlined some of his insights on the development of individual consciousness, culminating in a spiritual and liberating experience of the "beyond". For those who are afraid of Lawrence's moral reputation after "Lady Chatterley's Lover", they may find it quite surprising that The Rainbow is actually steeped in Christian mythology, with all these references to Bible passages.