D.H. Lawrence's The Woman Who Rode Away

D.H. Lawrence was long a controversial literary figure largely because of his attention to sexual issues in his works. One of his more neglected works is a short story entitled "The Woman Who Rode Away," a story in which the author contrasts a view of the primitive with the modern world and evokes a sense of deeper meaning through ancient sexual rituals. The story has power because of the mysterious nature of both the main character and her motivations and the ancient world to which she aspires, the world of an Indian tribe hidden behind the mountains. In this story, Lawrence deliberately leaves his characters somewhat sketchy and vague in order to emphasize their larger role as types, as representatives of different cultures and different times.

Kingsley Widmer identifies the aesthetic of Lawrence as primitivistic, which he differentiates from primitivism:

The primitivistic is the aesthetic employment in the twentieth-century arts of primitive materials and forms in ways which are significantly antithetical to the values of primitivism. Instead, the widespread primitive materials and methods in the modern arts must be understood as a sophisticated artifice for presenting amoral explorations of experience (Widmer 342).

Widmer defines primitivism as having certain elements:

1) a preference for the natural, seen in a positive light;

2) a preference for the life and products of a primitive people, with primitive here being either cultural or chronological;

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landscape for this story is a landscape of death. The woman becomes more alienated as the story progresses--she is in a hostile and different environment; the Indians do not see her as a woman and remain inaccessible to her; and she and her husband are not close even before they arrive, as he stands back and views her from a distance. This latter issue is important in the structure of the story: He was a man of principles, and a good husband. In a way, he doted on her. He never quite got over his dazzled admiration of her. But essentially, he was still a bachelor (Lawrence 209). From the moment they arrive, the woman has her fate mapped out for her: She was overcome by a foolish romanticism more unreal than a girl's. She felt it was her destiny to wander into the secret haunts of these timeless, mysterious, marvelous Indians of the mountains (Lawrence 209-210). The third leg of this peculiar triangle consists of the Indian tribe itself, and they as well are described in terms of how they differ from the world around them. The Chilchuis are said to be the sacred tribe of all the Indians: The descendants of Montezuma and of the old Aztec or Totonac kings still live among them, and the old priests still kept up the anci

Category: Literature - D