Breaking moulds, smashing mirrors: the intertextual dynamics of D.H. Lawrence's "The Lovely Lady"

Abstract

D. H. Lawrence's aversion against Platonic idealism evidences itself in his repeated attempts to debunk in his fictions the way in which women disown their own bodies by unconsciously moulding themselves according to "men's theories of women." One of such fictions would be "The Lovely Lady," a story which characteristically engages in a silent dialogue with traditional discourses about women. In so doing, it cogently exposes the male glance that inhabits the mirror in which the woman protagonist sees herself reflected and, concurrently, subvert the traditional binary paradigm witch/angel in which she has been kept a prisoner all her life.