And, although his reputation was somewhat tarnished not long before he died with the publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, it is easy to see why E.M.

As you read there are times when you feel that Lawrence wrote this novel with his blood, from the very depths of his soul. Its themes are as relevant today as they were a hundred years ago - friendship, sisterhood, sexual love both between men and women and men and men, the place of power and freedom in such relationships, the need for privacy, the importance of physical touch in our lives, how intimacy can uplift and disappoint, the disparity between those brought up to money and those in poverty, the beauty and ugliness of a landscape that has succumbed to the Industrial Revolution, critical notions of class in English society and on the Continent, man’s place in the natural world, the meaning of mortality and immortality, and, finally, the ultimate question of what makes life worth living. During this bizarre period of isolation, it seemed the right time to reread it to the end. I had also loved Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow, but I had never read all of Women in Love. I have always loved Lawrence’s short stories and read several of them carefully when I was working with Grace Paley at Sarah Lawrence in the early ’70s for my MFA. Benson, Rescue by Joseph Conrad, and The Story of Dr. Lawrence, The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust, as well as work by Agatha Christie, Queen Lucia by E.F. So I reread the novel and, although I admired it and also admired the newest film iteration with Daniel Day Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer, this was not a book really close to my heart.īut what else had been published in 1920? Thanks to Google I found an impressive list: Cherí by Colette, Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, Miss Brill and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield, This Side of Paradise by F. Although she had already had a best seller - The House of Mirth in 1905 - and had published what I consider her masterpiece, Ethan Frome, in 1911, Wharton’s place in the canon was assured when she won the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence, the first woman to do so. All this by way of saying that’s how I realized it was a hundred years since Wharton’s Age of Innocence was published. It was particularly gratifying that its wonderful director Susan Wissler opened the grounds as soon as the pandemic started and is now hosting some events on the porch café, as well. I hope this centennial will inspire readers to immerse themselves in this enormously important, rich, and vibrant work.Įdith Wharton’s home, The Mount, is a cultural anchor here in the Berkshires, and its gardens are wonderful, like a quick trip to France, I have often told my children and grandchildren.

Dh lawrence in love