Issue Details: First known date: 2009... 2009 Male Sexuality on the Frontier in D. H. Lawrence's Kangaroo
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'When D.H. Lawrence arrived in Australia in 1922, he defined himself, as Judith Ruderman remindsus, as 'a man without a country'; he had, by this time in his life, taken many bold steps to become a man no longer 'firmly moored in his class, nation, or gender' (Ruderman 2003, 50). Lawrence frequently used gendered terms to describe the tantalizing appeal of crossing the border between the old world and the new, proclaiming, in Fantasia of the Unconscious, for example: 'You've got to know you're a man, and being a man means you must go on alone, ahead of the woman, to break a way through the old world into the new' (2004a, 218). Kangaroo presents Lawrence's first sustained attempt to respond to this call. He begins by describing Richard Lovatt Somer's realization that the old world was 'done for' and his imperative desire to go to 'the newest country, to young Australia' (1994, 13), a desire impelled by many of the same impulses that induced the Lawrences to make a similar journey. Nonetheless, from nearly the first page of this oddly uneven novel, Lawrence draws attention to Somers's English ideas about maleness, friendship, sexual desire, Marriage, power, class politics, and violence, as he describes his protagonist's increasingly more disorienting confrontations with Australian men who embody alternative ideas about male identity.' (p. 138)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Windows to the Sun : D.H. Lawrence's Thought-Adventures Earl Ingersoll (editor), Virginia Hyde (editor), Madison : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press , 2009 Z1674592 2009 anthology criticism 'Windows to the Sun: D. H. Lawrence's "Thought-Adventures" illustrates some of the ways in which Lawrence's ideas were before their time as he sought to look beyond the "umbrella" of his current age to truths that were still beyond it. From his insights he developed a philosophy of relative and contingent realities, in which diversity was a prime value. This concept was partly related to his understanding of an Einsteinian "pluralistic universe" as well as to principles of Cubist art. But the title attempts to combine his "windows" passage with an idea of computer windows to suggest variety in the essays. Each contributor works with Lawrence's mature art, from Women in Love through The Lost Girl, Aaron's Rod, and Kangaroo, and from Studies in Classic American Literature and Memoir of Maurice Magnus to Pansies and Sketches of Etruscan Places. Contributors are international scholars, including four editors of the Cambridge Lawrence Edition and representing five countries. The Cambridge sources embody the most recent textual scholarship, and critical references include theoreticians like Gilles Deleuze, Theodor Adorno, and Judith Butler.' (Publisher's blurb) Madison : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press , 2009 pg. 138-164
Last amended 10 Mar 2010 10:23:15
138-164 Male Sexuality on the Frontier in D. H. Lawrence's Kangaroosmall AustLit logo
X