Pastoral and Anti-Pastoral:

Idyllic Vision and Ideology in The White Peacock

GAKUIWAI

D. H. Lawrence once called The White Peacock "a decorated idyll running

to seed in realism"l. This remark accurately captures the essence of his

first novel, since its narrative on the one hand romanticizes the rustic life

of the countryside, and on the other hand reveals the actual situation of

the rural district under the disguise of an embellished vision.

The setting of The White Peacock is the world of Nethermere. The three

main households-Woodside of the Beardsalls, Highclose of the Tempests

and Strelley Mill of the Saxtons-surround the lake. Cyril Beardsall is

the first person narrator who bears an obvious similarity to the author

but is elevated to the well-off middle class. CyriI's sister Lettie marries

Leslie Tempest, son of a wealthy mine owner, after her flirtatious

relationship with George Saxton, who eventually declines into physical

and mental decay.

The overtly idyllic tone is one of the central notes of the text. The landscape

of Nethermere is saturated with tenderness and love for nature, nostal­

gia and sentiment for the past. In the idyllic field is kept a harmonious

relationship between man and nature. The representations of nature and

the man-nature relation in the novel have been admired by several critics. 2

At the same time, however, the text contains in itself a critique and an

irony of the pastoral vision; the narrative discloses the ideological deception

in the aestheticized picture. The White Peacock not only embraces the

romanticized image of the countryside but also reveals the actual situation

of the world of Nethermere that is hidden under the decorated idyll. In

(I9]

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this essay I shall examine the mechanism by which the pastoral image is

created, analyze the pastoral ideology entailed in the idealized vision,

and scrutinize the attitude the text takes towards the pastoralism.

1. The Decorated Idyll

The idyllic visions in the text are represented as if they were landscape

paintings. In the chapter called "The Scent of Blood," for instance, Cyril,

Lettie and Leslie call at Strelley Mill where the Saxtons work. They see

George and his father scything in the field. The Saxtons and their farm­

stead are represented to fit into the framework of a typical landscape

painting in which farmers work in a provincial field:

We were all quite gay as we turned offthe high-road and went along the bridle path, with the woods on our right, the high Strelley hills shutting in our small valley in front, and the fields and the common to the left. About half way down the lane we heard the slurr of the scythestone on the scythe. Lettie went to the hedge to see. It was George mowing the oats on the steep hillside where the machine could not go. His father was tying up the corn into sheaves. (47)3

Not only the narrator, but also other middle-class characters in the novel

see the world with a pictorial imagination, as is indicated by Lettie's

remark: '''Doesn't Strelley Mill look pretty? Like a group of orange and

scarlet fungi in a fairy picture'" (127).4 It is all the more emphasized

when Lettie says to George who mows corn in the field:

"You are picturesque," she said, a trifle awkwardly, "Quite fit for an Idyll." (48; emphasis mine)

There are numerous references to various painters and paintings in the

text, from the eighteenth-century landscape painters to the contempo-

21

rary Pre-Raphaelites. Apart from the fact that Lawrence devoted his

whole life to painting as well as writing, they afford us significant clues

to decipher the text. Here, the word "picturesque" could mean more than

"beautiful or striking, as in a picture". In the context of landscape paint­

ing, the "picturesque" means a particular mode of perceiving and visual­

izing the world.

Lawrence was fairly familiar with the picturesque painters. In The

White Peacock are referred to several picturesque painters such as A. V.

Copley Fielding, George Cattermole and Myles Birket Foster whose

paintings were included in Charles Holme's English Water-Colour. D. H.

Lawrence possessed and treasured six of the eight volumes, given by the

Chambers at his twenty-first birthday. In these volumes are collected

some of the eighteenth- and the nineteenth-century picturesque land­

scape paintings as well as the contemporaries.

Several critics have attempted to analyze The White Peacock in terms

of the paintings mentioned in the text, but their arguments are mostly

concentrated on the late nineteenth-century painters such as Aubrey

Beardsley, Pre-Raphaelites and impressionists.s As well as these fin-de­

siecle artists, the picturesque painters of the eighteenth and the nine­

teenth century are the key figures to interpret The White Peacock,

because the narrator views and visualizes the world through the frame­

work ofthe picturesque paintings.

n. The Picturesque

The nature of the picturesque was first theorized by an English

picturesque painter William Gilpin who gave the concept particular

currency. In his three essays he defines the essence of the picturesque

landscape in terms of the rough and the rugged:

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A piece of Palladian architecture may be elegant in the last degree . . . . But if we introduce it in a picture, it immediately becomes a for­mal object, and ceases to please. Should we wish to give it pic­turesque beauty, ... from a smooth building we must turn it into a rough ruin. (Gilpin 7) But among all the objects of art, the picturesque eye is perhaps most inquisitive after the elegant relics of ancient architecture; the ruined tower, the Gothic arch, the remains of castles, and abbeys. These are the richest legacies of art. (Gilpin 46)

Gilpin argues that a beautiful scene in painting should be mixed with the

elements of the picturesque: shaggy trees, abandoned architecture and

rough ruins. As a result, what consists of the picturesque is not the

gorgeous castles or rich and respectable people, but the abandoned relics

and the poor farmers working in a field.

Gilpin's emphasis on roughness and decay comes from his view that

the picturesque landscape must be evocative and nostalgic. The historical

context and meaning of the picturesque are fully examined by an art and

literary critic Wylie Sypher. The picturesque of the eighteenth and the

nineteenth century, Sypher argues, consists of two concepts: visual plea­

sure and nostalgia. The ruined relics and the poor farmers, the central

motifs of the picturesque paintings, are not only visually aesthetic, but

they are the source of sentiment and nostalgia:

Even in the narrowest eighteenth-century sense of the word the picturesque is really more than a way of seeing. The picturesque scene is usually saturated with a mood ... where shaggy oak trees, thatched roofs, domestic clutter, and the pastoral tasks of the submerged but honest poor are associated with a sentiment. (Sypher 86)

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Ruins and peasants are two essential components of the picturesque

paintings; they form the pastoral visions which evoke sentimentality and

nostalgia.6

Several paintings in English Water-Colour embody Sypher's theory.

They depict the idyllic scenes from the picturesque perspective: a shepherd

and a flock of sheep in a rural land in J ames Baynes' "Pastoral

Landscape"; farmers harvesting in a field in Peter Dewint's "A Harvest

Scene"; poor working women in J. C. Ibbetson's "An Outdoor Scene of

Women at Work"; ruined cathedrals in T. Girtin's two paintings.

Lawrence avidly copied some of these paintings, as he himself confesses:

As I grew more ambitious, I copied Leader's landscapes, and Frank Brangwyn's cartoon-like pictures, then Peter de Wint and Girtin water-colours. I can never be sufficiently grateful for the series of English water-colour painters, published by the Studio in eight parts [i. e. English Water-Colour], when I was a youth. I had only six ofthe eight parts, but they were invaluable to me. I copied them with the greatest joy .... 7

Lawrence was familiar with the picturesque paintings, not only because

he copied these paintings, but also because, according to Sypher, the

landscape paintings by Oudry or Gainsborough were socially significant

modes of vision, circulated as a form of "cottage art".8

The characteristics of the idyllic prose of The White Peacock are also

visual pleasure and nostalgia. The picturesque images and visions are

abundant in the text. The "sharp," "wild" and "ragged" hills and trees

(57), the deserted "old farm" where Cyrj} and George explore (60), the

"abandoned" church where Annable discloses his philosophy to Cyril

(147), Mrs Annable as a nursing mother surrounded by her children in

their cottage, and the Saxtons who work at StreIley Mill-all of them are

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typical themes of the picturesque. Cyril sees the world from the point of

view of the picturesque, and paints pastoral visions on his tableau.

As a result, nostalgia and sentimentality are the central notes of the

narrative, from the first scene in which Cyril, looking into a pond, pon­

ders over the ancient happy days of the valley, to the last chapter in

which he calls at Swineshed Farm to see George. The Saxtons' rustic life

in harmony with the rhythm of nature is the object of admiration. The

Annables' messy household is the object of pity-Cyril gives all the pen­

nies he has to the children, and Sam, one of the kids, is adopted into the

Saxtons. George is to Lettie an object of compassion and sympathy rather

than that of love; "He looked up at her with a sudden smile, but did not

reply. He was not handsome; his features were too often in a heavy

repose; but when he looked up and smiled unexpectedly, he flooded her

with an access of tenderness" (26). These are the essential components of

the picturesque landscapes as Sypher argues that in the landscape paint­

ings which he calls the "emotive landscape" appear "the 'honest poor,'

who become eligible for pity or even admiration when they appear in a

pastoral landscape" (Sypher 87). Cyril's narrative shares the ethos with

the picturesque paintings of the eighteenth and the nineteenth century.

Cyril presents the typical pastoral landscape viewed by the picturesque

eye: the sentimentalized idyllic panorama of the Nethermere world.

Ill. Pastoral Ideology

Cyril's idyllic narrative is apparently innocent and merely aesthetic,

but the creation of a pastoral vision necessarily entails an ideological

manipulation. His (sometimes too excessively) rhetorical prose, for

instance, elucidates the fact that the idyllic scenes are not the true repre­

sentation of the landscape but the reflection of Cyril's inner vision.

Personification is the way to represent nature applied to human perspective;

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it is a distortion by the narrator, or what Ruskin called the pathetic fallacy.

This kind of manipulation is inherent in the picturesque paintings.

Gilpin describes in his essay "On Picturesque Travel" the process in

which a painter constructs his picturesque vision from the scenes he has

actually seen:

There is still another amusement arising from the correct knowledge of objects; and that is the power of creating, and representing scenes of fancy; which is still more a work of creation, than copying from nature. The imagination becomes a camera obscura, only with this difference, that the camera represents objects as they really are: while the imagination, impressed with the most beautiful scenes, and chas­tened by rules of art, forms its pictures, not only from the most admirable parts of nature; but in the best taste. (52)

Gilpin recognized picturesque paintings as an artificial construction.

They are the realization and idealization of a painter's vision. In this

sense, to construct a picturesque vision involves distorting and recon­

structing the perception of nature.

The essence of the pastoral ideology lies in the fact that the pastoral

distortion embodies a middle-class sense of values and ways of percep­

tion. The romanticized vision of the rustic life of the peasants does not

represent their actual situation but the image that is evocative and nos­

talgic to the bourgeois taste. An art historian Ann Bermingham, analyz­

ing the politics behind the picturesque paintings, argues that these

paintings conceal the misery and poverty of the farmers suffering from

the enclosures:

Although the picturesque celebrated the old order-by depicting a pastoral, preenclosed landscape-some of its features-the class snobbery, the distancing of the spectator from the picturesque object,

26

and the aestheticization of rural poverty-suggest that at a deeper level the picturesque endorsed the results of agricultural industrial­ization .... In this respect, the picturesque represented an attempt to wipe out the fact of enclosure and to minimize its consequences. (Bermingham 75)

Her argument seems to be inspired by Raymond Williams who, talking

of the period of the first enclosures, perceives that the celebration of

rural England ironically "served to cover and to evade the actual and bit­

ter contradictions of the time" and as a result it idealizes capitalism

(Williams 45).9 The point is that the picturesque embraces the romanticized

vision of the bourgeoisie, disguising the predicaments of the farmers

evicted by the enclosures.

The last few chapters of The White Peacock conceal the sufferings and

misery of the Saxtons who suffer from the modern version of the enclosure.

The Saxtons are virtually evicted by the squire, and exile to Canada. As

are in the picturesque paintings, in these chapters the actual situation of

the confiscated farmers is obscured; just before and after the Saxtons'

eviction they are curiously out of focus. In the last few chapters the narrator

mediates the letters he has got from his friends, but he does not show letters

from the Saxtons, who must have sent some to Cyril who was almost

accepted as a member of the family.

At the end of the novel, instead of showing the plight of the evicted

inhabitants, the narrator again presents a pastoral image. Emily, one of

the Saxtons, remains to be a teacher in Papplewick, where she finds a

sweetheart and marries him. Emily and her husband Tom Renshaw live

in a farm. Cyril calls on them to see George who degenerates both physically

and mentally. The landscape of the farmstead that the narrator depicts is

again picturesque, peaceful and evocative:

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Swine shed Farm, where the Renshaws lived, stood quite alone among its fields, hidden from the highway and from everything. The lane leading up to it was deep and unsunned. On my right I caught glimpses through the hedge of the cornfields, where the shocks of wheat stood like small yellow-sailed ships in a wide-spread flotilla. The upper part of the field was cleared. I heard the clank of a wagon and the voices of men, and I saw the high load of sheaves go lurch­ing, rocking up the incline to the stackyard.

The lane debouched into a close-bitten field, and out of this empty land the farm rose up with its buildings like a huddle of old, painted vessels floating in still water. White fowls went stepping discreetly through the mild sunshine and the shadow. (318)

A celebration of rustic life is again presented, and George who declines

into ruin becomes the object of pity and is installed within the

picturesque landscape. Thus, the picturesque representations in The

White Peacock embody the ideology of the picturesque paintings; they

represent the way in which the middle-class people in the novel see the

world of Nethermere; they are romanticized visions, embellished and

fabricated to fit into the picturesque composition. lo Cyril's idyllic

narrative is a pastiche of the picturesque and pastoral art that is, as

Sypher argues, "an opium of the middle class, filled as it is with a desire

for good works and sympathy for the unfortunate, yet able to deflect

these genial feelings into an appreciation of poetry, painting, and novels

in which the poor looked comfortably and reassuringly picturesque"

(Sypher 88).

IV. Anti-Pastoral

Despite this overt pastoralism, what is significant in The White Peacock

is that the text itself unmasks the pastoral ideology. The chapter called

"Pastorals and Peonies" indicates how and in what way the pastoral

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visions are constructed and fabricated.

In the chapter that concludes the second part, Leslie and his guests,

including Lettie, go on a picnic to the Saxtons' hayfields. At the beginning

ofthe chapter, the pastoral vision is again represented:

The closes were so beautiful, with the brook under all its sheltering trees, running into the pond that was set with two green islets. Moreover the squire's lady had written a book filling these meadows and the Mill precincts with pot-pourri romance. (225)

This passage indicates that the representations and images of the land

are created and circulated by the middle- and upper-class people. (It is in

this sense suggestive that in the following paragraph of the passage

above, the text implies a discrepancy between the romanticized image

and reality: "Mrs Saxton hoped they wouldn't want her to provide them

pots, for she hadn't two cups that matched, nor had any of her spoons the

least pretence to silver" [225].)

To the picnickers, scything the crop or milking cows is not a work but

"a nice exercise" as Leslie says (47). Farmers working in the field are a

part of picturesque landscape: "'Yes, let us go and fetch him [George],'

said Miss D'Arcy 'I'm sure he doesn't know what a happy pastoral state

he's in-let us go and fetch him'" (228). She romanticizes flowers as well

as George, creating a pastoral vision:

"Save us those foxgloves, will you [George]-they are splendid-like savage soldiers drawn up against the hedge-don't cut them down­and those campanulas-bell-flowers, ah yes! They are spinning idylls up there .... Oh you don't know what a classical pastoral person you are .... " (228)

29

This romanticized picture is the object of irony in this chapter. The text

indicates that the agricultural land is actually far from the idyllic place,

and that it can be "pastoral" by a certain kind of detachment:

"Oh, let us go-let us go-May we come and see the cows milked?" said Hilda ....

"No," drawled Freddy, "the stink 0' live beef ain't salubrious. You be warned, and stop here."

"I never could bear cows, except those lovely little highland cattle, all woolly, in pictures," said Louie Denys, smiling archly, with a little irony.

"No," laughed Agnes D'Arcy "they-they're smelly,"-and she pursed up her mouth, and ended in a little trill of deprecatory laugh­ter, as she often did. (230)

These responses by the bourgeois lad and maidens reveal that any imme­

diate physical engagement would shatter the romanticized vision that is

formed by a certain kind of ignorance and hypocrisy. The landscape must

be seen as an object within a frame, and the duality between the specta­

tor and the object must be strictly maintained. The picnic scene reveals

the ideological deception inherent in the pastoral vision-the image is

constructed to conform to the viewers' picturesque perspective. This

episode is a critique of the pastoral mode of perception, and a self-parody

since it discloses that the idyllic prose in The White Peacock itself retains

this pastoral ideology.

The Saxtons' rabbit-hunting is another intriguing scene because the

episode shows a slight deviation from the picturesque norm. Rabbit-hunting

by farmers is one of the typical pastoral scenes, as Gilpin explains: "A

hare started before dogs is enough to set a whole country in an uproar.

The plough, and the spade are deserted. Care is left behind; and every

human faculty is dilated with joy." (Gilpin 48). This kind of idyllic scene

30

is, Gilpin argues, the source of amusement "to the man of taste to pursue

the beauties of nature" CGilpin 48).

The rabbit-hunting at the StrelleyMill Farm is, however, not the kind

that satisfies the pastoral taste. The rabbits are to the farmers harmful

animals and when they find one, they chase it desperately with rakes,

but the rabbits appear one after another, which infuriates the family.

The squire forbids his tenants to catch them, but Saxton, being afraid of

the estate bitten off by the rabbits, kills nearly twenty of them with his

gun. This episode is a parody of pastoralism, and symbolically discloses

the actual situation of the world of Nether mere.

V. The Realist Narrative

As is seen in the episodes above, Cyril's narrative occasionally adopts

an ironic stance on the pastoral ideology. It reveals the actual situation of

the land, men and women in the Nethermere world under the garnished

idyllic vision.

The abnormal multiplication of the rabbits implies the destruction of

the natural ecosystem. The world of Nethermere is in reality not the land

of pastoral Golden Age where innocent and fertile ground yields crops;

but it ironically breeds harmful animals. The Saxtons cultivate the land,

domesticating cows and dogs, and thus taming the wild. The mastery of

nature induced its resistance: the rapid growth of rabbits. Agriculture is

here represented as a kind of culture, that is, manipulation of nature. 11

The rabbits are defended by the squire who has realized that he can

sell them for good money. The squire forbids catching the rabbits that are

the source of his family's wealth, which causes the local discord. A moral

economy no longer remains but a money economy penetrates the district;

the countryside is involved with the monetary system.

Economy is the first principle that governs the behaviour of the charac-

31

ters: not only of the squire, but of the figures who are normally regarded

as outsiders of social activity-Cyril's father, George and Annable. Frank

Beardsall has been regarded as a fictional image of Lawrence's own

father and a prototype of WaIter Morel in Sons and Lovers. 12 It is, howev­

er, suggested that his life is devoted to business; after his death, Cyril

and his mother go to see his corpse and fetch his private property:

"Meanwhile we examined the papers. There were very few letters-one

or two addressed to Paris. There were many bills, and receipts, and

notes-business, all business" (40). The father financially repays his wife,

and leave a good sum of fortune to his children.

George is apparently a pastoral figure, a source of lyricism in the

picturesque vision, plowing the peaceful field and gathering the

harvest. 13 The narrative disturbs this image; George tells Cyril of his

labour: "'As it is, we depend on the milk-round, and on the carting which

I do for the Council. You can't call it farming. We're a miserable mixture

of farmer, milkman, greengrocer, and carting contractor. It's a shabby

business'''(61). George is not a farmer working in a rich field with the

rhythm of nature; he is an alienated labourer, whose life is not sustained

by farming but depends on "business".

Annable renounces cultured society and rejects economic activity, so he

has also been regarded as a "natural" man and an embodiment of Pan. 14

Such critics are, however, confused with his philosophy such as "Be a good

animal, true to your animal instinct" (147) and the ironic simile in the

text: "like some malicious Pan" (130). The gamekeeper is actually a

quasi-Rousseauist version of a romantic decadent with his self-conceited

philosophy. He is excessively submissive to the authority but shamefully

arrogant to the ordinary people, with no regard for his family.

He is not an isolated hermit, but has a part in the social system,

employed by the squire and working for him: "He spent his days sleeping,

32

making intricate traps for weasels and men, putting together a gun, or

doing some amateur forestry, cutting down timber, splitting it in logs for

use in the Hall, and planting young trees" (146-47; emphasis mine). He is

not essentially a primitive man-the word "amateur" as well as his back­

ground suggests it (his Cambridge education made him a parson). He

hunts not only for wild animals, but for men who attempt to catch rabbits.

To the inhabitants he does not represent the wisdom of life and nature,

but the wealth and prosperity of the squire. Annable is involved with the

miners' antagonism against the squire; he was trapped in the vengeful

conspiracy by the infuriated labourers.

Annable's male chauvinist view is not his own idea; it permeates the

local society. Women are, under the strict patriarchal system, trapped in

their houses. They are forced to accept the role of self-negating house­

wives. Emily, who has been a schoolmistress, willingly sacrifices her

career to her expected role after her marriage with Tom Renshaw: "She

was rich as always with her large beauty, and stately now with the state­

liness of a strong woman six months gone with child .... Emily had at

last found her place, and had escaped from the torture of strange,

complex modern life." (318-19). Even Lettie, who is represented as a

modern woman and joins The Woman's League, abandons her selfhood

for her motherhood, devoting herself to the household chores: "Lettie was

much absorbed in motherhood .... Lettie's heart would quicken in

answer to only one pulse, the easy, light ticking of the baby's blood" (314-

15). Thus, the relationship between man and woman is governed and dis­

ciplined by the Victorian patriarchal discourse. 15 In this economically ori­

ented district, the women are also exploited for the economy in the origi­

nal sense of the word (otICOV0f.Ua, that is, "household management").

Raymond Williams analyzed the ideology hidden in the idealization of

the rustic lifestyle. The works of art which celebrate the rural lifestyle

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tend to conceal the fact that the district is in fact dominated by the

"capitalist agriculture" and sustained by the exploitation of land and men

(Williams 35). Cyril's realist narrative discloses what the pastoral art

normally conceals. The world of Nethermere is a massive field of

exploitation, under the discipline of economy. Farming is a form of

exploitation of nature that brought about the morbid growth of rabbits.

Furthermore, the countryside is moving forward towards a more gigantic

exploitation of nature, under the control of Leslie Tempest: coal mining.

But the miners themselves are also exploited, as are the young miners

whom Cyril and Lettie see; she realizes '''those boys are working for me!'"

(100). The women are trapped and exploited in their houses to support

the men's activities.

VI. Conclusion

The White Peacock on the one hand celebrates and beautifies the rural

life in terms of visual metaphors and terminology of the picturesque; the

idyllic vision is an ideological construction which conceals social conflicts,

translating misery and ruin into a romanticised vision. The embellished

idyll is .an apparatus that functions to embody a bourgeois sense of val­

ues and perspectives to disguise the actual situation.

On the other hand, however, the narrative occasionally adopts critical

and ironic stances on the pastoralism, disturbing and threatening the

pastoral vision, and uncovers the actual situation of the district: exploita­

tion of men, women and land, agrarian capitalism that spoils nature, and

the total reduction of all social relationships to a utilitarian norm. D. H.

Lawrence adored picturesque paintings and converted them into prose,

but it was not a simple translation. The White Peacock is surely "a decorat­

ed idyll," but the buds of realism occasionally appear to transcend the pas­

toral ideology of the picturesque.

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Notes

1 Lawrence, Letters I 184. Michael Bell suspects that the phrase refers to the

next novel The Trespasser. See Bell 13.

2 Michael Squires, who reads the work as a modern version of the pastoral

novel, admires idyllic passages in the novel, regarding them as the quintes­

sence of Lawrence's artistic achievement. See Squires 174-95. See also Alldritt

3-15; Cavaliero 206-07. From the point of view of ecocriticism, see Ehlert 47-

76. She celebrates these representations because they "convey social criticism

whose characteristics foreshadow today's ecological thinking" (49).

3 D. H. Lawrence, The White Peacock, ed. Andrew Robertson (Cambridge:

Cambridge UP, 1983). All subsequent quotations from The White Peacock are

from this edition and the page number appears in parentheses in the text.

4 Kushigian analyzes how Cyri!, Lettie and their friends see the world

through a visual filter. See Kushigian 22-25.

5 See Alldritt 8-10; Meyers 46-52; Sproles 299-300; Stewart, "Landscape

Painting and Pre-Raphaelitism" 10-19; The Vital Art 9-24. On the other hand,

Alldritt briefly mentions the English water-colourists' influence upon

Lawrence's prose. See Alldritt 14. Stew art also briefly examines the influence

of the landscape paintings in terms of light and colour. See Stewart,

"Landscape Painting and Pre-Raphaelitism" 4-6. My intention is not to refute

these views, but to show another dimension of the text.

6 See Sypher 82-90.

7 Lawrence, Phoenix II 605.

8 See Sypher 86. Lawrence presumably received a postcard reproduction of

Gainsborough's painting. See Letters 1277.

9 See Williams 35-45.

10 Some critics are unable to recognize these ideological aspects of the ideal­

ized idyll in The White Peacock. Squires asserts that "Nature, and man amid

nature, are the 'true' and the 'real' in the novel. They are what live in the

novel with greatest independent life and with greatest impact on the imagina­

tion" (194-95). Alldritt argues that in this novel "the most striking visual cate­

gory is landscape description .... It is directed by a keen determination to

record fully and accurately a specific moment of perception" (11-13). Ehlert

35

celebrates the "ecological harmony of the Renshaw household", which is to her

"the only comfort offered in The White Peacock" (59).

11 Tony Pinkney argues that the farming activity in the novel is not a harmful

but a creative one, and a part of workings of nature: the Saxtons' "working is

not so much a case of a dominative human will imposing a structure upon

Nature as of human creativity more benignly eliciting that which was already

latent in Nature; labour is maieutic not manipulative .... Binary oppositions

like leisure and labour ... have not yet come to be" (15).

12 See Hough 30.

13 Ehlert argues that he is "a keeper of nature" who carries "an

ecological significance" (56). Kushigian argues that "'natural' values are repre­

sented ... by Annable the gamekeeper and the young George Saxton" (9).

14 See Hough 30-31; Kushigian 9; Ehlert 51-52 and 63-70.

15 The situations of the women in the text embody the Victorian patriarchal

discourse. S. K. Kent analyzes the created notion of the perfect wife and mother

in the nineteenth century, and argues that "The romantic stereotypes of

Victorian men and women and the underlying assumptions about human

nature logically delineated and justified for each sex their ordained sphere in

life: to men, the public realm; to women, the private one" (34). For more

detailed view, see Ishihara, 109-11.

Works Cited

Alldritt, Keith. The Visual Imagination of D. H. Lawrence. London:

Edward Arnold, 1971.

Bell, Michael. D. H. Lawrence: Language and Being. Cambridge:

Cambridge UP, 1992.

Bermingham, Ann. Landscape and Ideology: The English Rustic

Tradition 1740-1860. Berkeley: U of California P, 1986.

Cavaliero, Glen. The Rural Tradition in the English Novel 1900-1939.

London: Macmillan, 1977.

36

Ehlert, Anne Odenbring. "There's a bad time coming": Ecological Vision

in the Fiction of D. H. Lawrence. Uppsala: Uppsala University,

2001.

Gilpin, William. Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; On Picturesque

Travel; and On Sketching Landscape; with a Poem, on Landscape

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