Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

D. H. Lawrence began to read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche while a student at Nottingham University College. The influence of the two philosophers on his early short stories and his novels from The White Peacock (1911) through to The Rainbow (1915) has been considered at length in books and essays on Lawrence. There has been little discussion to date, though, of the presence of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in Women in Love (1920). The unmistakably Nietzschean term Wille zur Macht (will to power) appears in the novel and has attracted some critical comment, but there is no equally obvious reference to Schopenhauer, and discussion of Schopenhauer’s influence has been accordingly slight. Lawrence believed, however, that every novel should have a ‘background metaphysic’, and careful examination of Women in Love reveals that its metaphysic, or ‘theory of being’, derives from a combination of Schopenhauer’s and Nietzsche’s philosophical theories.

Keywords

D. H. Lawrence Friedrich Nietzsche Arthur Schopenhauer will to live will to power

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Cartwright

(2010) Schopenhauer: A Biography. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Chambers

(1965 [1935]) D. H. Lawrence: A Personal Record. London: Frank Cass.

Delavenay

(1957) Notes sur une exemplaire de Schopenhauer. In: Nehls

(ed.) D. H. Lawrence: A Composite Biography, vol. I. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Lawrence

(1936a) The novel and the feelings. In: Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence, ed. McDonald

. London: Heinemann, pp. 755–60.

Lawrence

(1936b) Study of Thomas Hardy. In: Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence, ed. McDonald

. London: Heinemann, pp. 398–516.

Lawrence

(1979) The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, vol. I, ed. Boulton

. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lawrence

(1981) The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, vol. II, ed. Zytaruk

Boulton

. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lawrence

(1995 [1920]) Women in Love, ed. Farmer

Vasey

Worthen

. London: Penguin.

Milton

(1987) Lawrence and Nietzsche: A Study in Influence. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.

10.

Montgomery

(1994) The Visionary D. H. Lawrence: Beyond Philosophy and Art Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

11.

Nietzsche

(1967 [1901]) The Will to Power, trans. Hollingdale

Kaufmann

. London: Weidenfield and Nicholson.

12.

Nietzsche

(1989 [1886]) Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Kaufmann

. New York: Vintage.

13.

Schopenhauer

(1903) Essays of Schopenhauer, trans. Dircks

Mrs R

. London: Walter Scott Publishing.

14.

Schopenhauer

(1909 [1883]) The World as Will and Idea, trans. Haldane

Kemp

, 3 vols. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.

15.

Schopenhauer

(1942 [1891]) On some forms of literature. In: Complete Essays of Schopenhauer, trans. Bailey Saunders

, book 4. New York: Willey Book Company, pp. 56–63.

16.

Schopenhauer

(1987) Gesammelte Briefe, ed. Hübscher

. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann.

17.

Worthen

(1992) D. H. Lawrence: The Early Years, 1885–1912. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

18.

Worthen

(2005) D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider. New York: Counterpoint.

Schopenhauer,Nietzsche and D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References