Janet Byrne. A GENIUS FOR LIVING: THE LIFE OF FRIEDA
LAWRENCE. New York: Harper Collins, 1995.
Reviewed by John Woodrow Presley, University of Michigan -
Dearborn, for H-Pcaaca.
_A Genius for Living_ and Brenda Maddox's _D. H. Lawrence: The
Story of a Marriage_ (1994) are part of a "third wave" of
Lawrence biographies; after "memoirs" by friends came the
first scholarly biographies such as Harry T. Moore's _The
Intelligent Heart_. Both Byrne and Maddox exploit new
sources, such as collections of Frieda's letters to her
lovers, and though both biographies share at least the aim to
reclaim the character of Frieda Lawrence by revealing her
complexity, as Maddox had done previously with the character
of Nora Joyce in _Nora_ (1988), the aims of the two
biographies are entirely different, as their subtitles
indicate.
It is ironic--though predictable, given prior assumptions of
male scholars and Lawrence's friends--that the first two waves
of Lawrence biographies presented Frieda as a plodding
earth-mother to Lawrence's genius. In fact she was a
headstrong, well-educated daughter of the aristocratic von
Richtofens. By the time Frieda chose Lawrence as her escape
from her dull first husband, she was a sophisticated veteran
of many affairs, both on the continent and in Nottingham.
New information about one of these affairs, with Otto Gross,
places Frieda's relationship to Lawrence's work in new light.
In 1907, still married to Ernest Weekley, Frieda took her
sister's place as Gross's lover. Gross, Freud's most
brilliant student, advocated overthrow of all sexual
inhibition, in return to the worship of Magna Mater and
pre-patriarchal pagan life. Frieda was a passionate follower
of Nietzsche, and Gross linked Nietzsche to the then barely
known ideas of Freud, particularly at Gross's retreat for his
followers at Ascona. Frieda was the link, passing these ideas
to D. H. Lawrence.
Byrne, unlike the more self-consciously scholarly Maddox, does
not attempt to explain the Lawrences' constant wandering and
fighting (unlike every other Lawrence biographer, none of whom
could resist theorizing). In describing details of the
marriage, Byrne reveals that Frieda was not only an
inspiration for characters and ideas in Lawrence's works; she
was frequently his first reader and critic, sometimes even an
editor. In fact, in both these biographies we learn that, in
addition to her own memoirs and correspondence, Frieda was a
translator and editor in her own right. Her
anti-intellectualism frequently mistaken for stupidity, Frieda
Lawrence as presented by Byrne is no passive lumpenfrau.
Byrne's Frieda introduced Lawrence to free-thinking eroticism,
and later managed both his literary reputation and estate very
successfully.
Weaknesses of _A Genius for Living_ are few: it offers less
interpretation than does the Maddox biography, and like all
Lawrence biographies unfortunately, it treats Frieda's life
after Lawrence's death too briefly (twenty-five years rush by
in three perfunctory chapters).
Byrne's biography will appeal to casual and scholarly readers
interested in the "new woman,"in the transference of the ideas
of Freud and the erotic philosophy of Gross to the banned but
popular works of D. H. Lawrence, and of course to those
interested in the compelling story of Frieda Lawrence herself,
who challenged virtually every notion then current concerning
the roles of women.
University of Michigan-Dearborn John Woodrow Presley
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