A Lover of Nature: Lawrence and Ecosexuality

Abstract

This paper reads Lawrence as an early ecosexual anticipating Stephens and Sprinkle’s entreaty to consider the Earth as lover. As David Ellis (2015) affirms, “Lawrence gives to the Wordsworthian expression ‘a lover of nature’ meanings which that poet could have hardly dreamt of” (116). This paper analyses key passages from Women in Love, Kangaroo and Lady Chatterley’s Lover in relation to recent writings on ecosexuality including Stephens and Sprinkle’s “Ecosex Manifesto” and Anderlini-D’Onofrio and Hagamen’s Ecosexuality (2015). Ultimately, an ecosexual reading of Lawrence illuminates his striving for that “perfected relation between man and his circumambient universe” (STH 171).

Keywords

• ecosex
• earth
• tree
• desire
• marriage
• cosmos