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D. H. Lawrence was probably a very angry man. His writings are full of extremely intense feelings of anger and hate which do not seem to belong. This anger is usually connected to love, but can be classified by what other emotions it is also linked to. For example, in “Second Best,” there is no real reason for Anne to feel great fury, yet she does towards the mole. Anne somehow equates the mole with a barrier to her success in love, so she hates it. In “The Shadow in the Rose Garden,” the intense anger is connected to jealousy. The husband is extremely jealous of his wifes prior involvement with Archie. In “The White Stocking,” the anger is also associated with jealousy. Ted does not like the fact that Elsie has been accepting gifts from Sam Adams. The sisters in “The Christening” have intense resentment towards their youngest sister Emma, who ruined the family reputation. This translates into anger directed at her and the world in general. Lastly, the title character and the Orderly in “The Prussian Officer” have a love-hate relationship, except one hates, the other loves. The Orderly, as recipient of unwanted love, feels great resentment and anger towards the Officer, so much so that he kills him.
Lawrence uses anger as an all-purpose front for and manifestation of deeper negative feelings. For this reason, the anger often seems unnecessary and out of place. Its common occurrence, however, allows us to treat it as a motif. In all of the stories above listed, there are characters involved in intensive love relationships. In “Second Best,” “Shadow” and “Stocking,” there are either married couples, or soon to be. “The Christening” has a family, and “The Prussian Officer” involves a gay officer. There is something dysfunctional about all of these relationships, however, and the anger exposes it. There is no reason for anger if there is not something wrong, so we know that there is underlying unrest in, Ted and Elsies marriage, for example. The anger is supposed to hint at trouble, then it is up to the reader to discern from clues in the rest of the text the particular irregularity in the story.
In “Shadow” and “Stocking” the anger is among husbands and wives. The two stories are basically equivalent in message and structure: wife has hidden secret from husband, husband finds out, responds with jealous rage. For contrast, however, Elsie does not really hate Ted back, as opposed to the husband and wife in “Shadow” who both hate each other until the end, when they become merely cold. Teds hate also dissipates, however.
Lawrence uses the anger motif to signal change. In the previous two mentioned stories, while there is anger, change is happening. Anger is an external symptom of not only problem, but also solution. Anger does not happen without friction (in “Stocking” and “Shadow,” there is inherent class difference. Elsie is dumber than Ted, and the wife is not over Archie), but during periods of anger, change occurs. The husband and wife realize that their marriage can be fixed – it just will be different, and Elsie and Ted have a new understanding of one another.
Anger as a sign of change is also accurate