Five words which summarize the writing of D.H. Lawrence are
empathic, honest, passionate, pessimistic, and anti-materialistic.
In the story "The Odour of Chrysanthemums," Lawrence shows his empathic side. He describes the world of miners in a way which shows that he feels deeply their suffering. The female protagonist is especially described by Lawrence with great empathy. Even though she has no thought about changing her life, Lawrence, or the narrator, never judges her: "She stood insignificantly trapped between the jolting black wagons and the hedge. . . . The fields were dreary and forsaken. . . . (797).
The story is about the fear and pain and suffering she goes through in worrying about her husband, about depending on him, and finally about burying, mourning and surviving him when he is killed in a cave-in. The narrator is also empathic about the woman when her husband dies and she starts to feel and think as a free person, a free woman, for the first time. Lawrence tells this story with the purest empathy for the woman, her suffering, her anger, her grief, and for what may be the beginning of her liberation.
Lawrence's fearless honesty is shown in the same story, particularly when the men bring the woman's husband's body: "The coat with which they had covered the body fell off . . . and the women saw their man, naked to the waist, lying stripped for work. The old woman began to moan in a low voice of horror (808). Lawrence is often said to be honest about sexuality, but he is just as brutally honest about death and its profundity, especially when compared with the trivialization of death in popular culture today. Lawrence does not flinch from an objective portrait of the anguish of death and grief, and neither does he flinch from honest depiction of passion, especially in terms of the power of love to sweep away people who believe they are too rational for such an overwhelming experience. In his short story "The...