D. H. Lawrence And Frieda: A Portrait Of Love And Loyalty

Synopsis

In 1912, D. H. Lawrence met Frieda von Richthofen, the wife of his former professor, and fell in love with her. The pair eloped to Bavaria—leaving her three children behind—and two years later they were married. Challenging the reader to see the Lawrences in a new light, this book follows the fates of these two strong people as they overcame one obstacle after another to their commitment. As their love matured, their loyalty to each other was tested time and again from both inside and outside their marriage. The author has had privileged access to Frieda’s unpublished letters, and draws on them to portray a powerful but atypical marriage, in which disappointment and infidelity damaged but also strengthened the Lawrences’ marital bond. Out of these new sources emerges a fresh clarity about the successive stages of their love—from infatuation and intimacy to love and deepened respect and finally to a loss of emotional coherence. In elegant chapters remarkable for their brevity and insight, the author rediscovers the essence of the Lawrences’ marriage, an essence that continued to inspire Frieda long after Lawrence died. Her forceful character, and Lawrence’s understanding of it, triumph here as never before.