Some time ago, the British drama "Sex Self-Study Room" was launched for the third season, which caused a lot of discussion. This warm, avant-garde, tolerant series is standard "Made in Britain".
It may be hard to imagine that more than a hundred years ago, Britain experienced a period of sullenness about "sex".
Welcome to Lu Dapeng's column , "Travel Between Papers", where we join him in victorian Britain through the story of two "Lawrence".
01
Victorian era
The so-called Victorian era, that is, the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1907), was the era of the British Empire. Both Lawrences spent their teenage years in the Victorian era, and their worldviews were both products of Victorian British society.
Portrait of Queen Victoria. /wiki
In this era, there were two great men in England with the surname Lawrence. One was the novelist and poet David Herbert Lawrence. H. Lawrence, 1885-1930), friends familiar with English literature must know his masterpieces such as "Son and Lover", "Woman in Love", "Rainbow", "Madame Chatterley's Lover" and so on.
D. H. Lawrence is often sexual, and it is a realistic, unabashedly explicit description. "Madame Chatterley's Lover" was once considered an obscene book and went to court; "Rainbow" has a lesbian plot and was banned. To be ashamed, when I read his novels in middle school, I also mainly carried an erotic interest. Now it seems that the reader really needs a certain amount of life experience to appreciate lawrence's profundity and greatness.
Madame Chatelet's Lover
By D.H. Lawrence, translated by Dark Horse
Yilin Press, 2021-1
The other was the archaeologist, soldier and writer Thomas Edward Lawrence. E. Lawrence, 1888-1935), known as "Lawrence of Arabia" because of his exploits in the Arab region, just as Robert Klevo, a famous general in the history of the British Empire's conquest of India, was called "Klevo of India".
T. E. Lawrence was a tragic hero who played an important role in the British Empire's hegemony in the Middle East, and if you are interested, you can check out David Lane's film "Lawrence of Arabia" or his own memoir", "Seven Pillars of Wisdom". I have had the privilege of translating Scott Anderson's biography Lawrence of Arabia: Wars, Lies, Imperial Folly, and the Formation of the Modern Middle East.
T. E. Lawrence. /wiki
The two Lawrences are of similar age, both great men of Britain, and have different paths in life, but the topic I want to talk about today, the morality and mentality of Victorian Britain, has something to do with both Lawrence.
D. H. Lawrence's father was a coal miner, a working class with red roots, while his mother was a middle-class man. T.E. Lawrence's identity is special, as detailed below. It's hard to say whether two Lawrences are typical of the Victorian middle class, but their lives are interesting footnotes to this era, giving us some insight into the "national character" (if there is such a thing) in today's Britons.
The English social historian Harold Perkin once wrote: "Between 1780 and 1850 the English were no longer one of the most aggressive, ferocious, brutal, unobtrusive, noisy, cruel and bloodthirsty peoples in the world, but became one of the most restrained, polite, orderly, gentle, false and hypocritical peoples in the world." This shift occurred precisely during the transition between the Georgian and Victorian eras.
Under the leadership of "unconstitutional" Protestant churches such as the Methodist Church and evangelicals of the Anglican Church of England, powerful religious forces have emerged that demand higher moral standards. People promote sexual moderation, do not tolerate evil, and advocate strict social codes.
I think Chinese impression (or stereotype) of the British today must be closer to Perkin's latter set of adjectives, especially "false decency and hypocrisy.". In a popular way of saying it now, the British are particularly good at "yin and yang weirdness". And the courtesy that the British pride themselves on is often perceived as "hypocrisy" by the larger, more grinning, enthusiastic Americans (or Chinese).
T. E. Lawrence is not necessarily "hypocritical and hypocritical," but certainly not "grinning and passionate." And at a young age, he has already shown the stereotype of the British "stiff upper lip" (meaning strong self-control, not easy to show affection, not smiling, calm and introverted under any circumstances).
Lawrence of Arabia
By Scott Anderson, translated by Dapeng Lu
Oracle | Social Sciences Academic Press, 2014-9
When he was eighteen, he spent his summer vacations cycling around northwestern France. It wasn't long before, thanks to design innovations and mass production, that the European public began to buy and use bicycles in large quantities. For the Middle Class in britain, cycling through the European countryside became fashionable. But Lawrence's trip was no ordinary country hike: he traveled nearly a thousand miles, visiting almost every castle and cathedral in normandy. His later undergraduate thesis at Oxford University, "The Impact of the Pre-Crusades on European Military Architecture in the 12th Century," was also based on his own long -distance "fieldwork," but no longer on a trip to the Middle East.
During his cycling expedition to Normandy, T. E. Lawrence wrote many letters to his parents. But these letters may seem a little strange to us today. For example, in a letter to his father of 20 August 1906, he wrote: "I think it is time to write you a letter, although the style of this letter (unlike the previous letter) is no different, because all the letters I write equally do not deal with personal circumstances. The buildings I have tried to depict will live on longer than we do, so they deserve to occupy a larger space in my letter. ”
Lawrence did what he said, and in the remainder of the letter he said nothing about himself, not even how he had celebrated his eighteenth birthday two days earlier. He merely describes in detail the structural uniqueness of a 14th-century castle he has just visited.
The main content of Lawrence's letters to his family in England was a description of ancient architecture. He often expressed brief concern for his mother's health at the beginning of his letters, but the main feature of most of his letters was a thorough calm detachment, as in the tone of this letter to his father, as if he were giving an academic lecture.
T. E. Lawrence named his beloved motorcycle "George V." /wiki
According to the biographer Anderson, this emotional restraint was not uncommon for middle-class British family members at the end of the Victorian era:
Lawrence's family is mostly male, with five boys and no girls, so their family may be particularly cold and self-controlled. But the British middle class is particularly fond of self-restraint and low-key conservatism, children are required to be diligent and respectful of their elders, and the best gift for parents to their children is not pampering, but serious and prudent religious teachings and good education. The middle-class worldview is simple and simple and comfortable.
The working class has begun to develop radical political ideas, while the British middle class still clings to a social hierarchy that values blood and accents more than the wealth earned, a "caste" system that strictly regulates all aspects of social life, and in some ways even more stringent than it was fifty years ago. This class divide, while lifeless, means that everyone knows their status and what kind of advancement they can reasonably expect. As far as possible, people attained social and economic advancement through "pious virtues"—humility, self-reliance, diligence, and frugality. Perhaps the most convinced tenet of the time was that the British Empire stood at the pinnacle of modern civilization, and that it was the empire's special duty to enlighten and educate the world's more unfortunate civilizations and races through trade, scriptures, guns, or a combination of the three.
Victorian middle class. /George William Joy
This idea permeated all strata of British society, but flourished particularly in the middle class, because the main administrators of the Empire— the middle-ranking officers and colonial administrators—were mainly from the middle class. This has undoubtedly contributed to an emotional alienation in this class of families; from the birth of a child, parents have to warn themselves to be strong, because their children, especially boys, may in the future cross the ocean to a distant outpost of the empire, perhaps not to see each other for decades, and some even for a lifetime.
So it's no surprise that the generation of middle-class members of The British class who grew up in the early 20th century had a cold and detached character.
But behind the Lawrence family's "serious" middle-class life, there is a shocking secret:
They were not surnamed Lawrence at all; the hero of the British Empire, "Lawrence of Arabia", was actually an illegitimate son.
T. E. Lawrence's father, whose real name was Thomas Chapman, came from a small Anglo-Irish aristocratic family and enjoyed the title of Baron. After graduating from Eton College in England, Chapman returned to Ireland and in the early 1870s lived a leisurely and pleasant life as a gentlemanly landowner on a family estate in Westmeathshire. He married another wealthy Anglo-Irish family and soon had four daughters.
Brothers of the Chapman family. /wiki
Soon after, however, Chapman's elegant and dignified life as "Downton Abbey" began to crumbling as he had an affair with his young daughter's governess, a twenty-four-year-old Scottish woman named Sarah Jonner. In early 1888, when Chapman's wife discovered that her husband had been unfaithful, Sarah had already given birth to a son with Chapman, hid him in a rented apartment in Dublin, and became pregnant with a second child. Chapman's wife refused to divorce, so the nobleman had to choose between the two families.
Constrained by the harsh and conservative laws and moral shackles of the Victorian era, this decision will have far-reaching implications. If Thomas Chapman chooses to stay with Sarah, not only will he be stripped of most of his inheritance, but his four daughters will also have a hard time marrying in the future because of the shame of the family scandal. He and Sarah's children will be even more doomed. As illegitimate children, they will be shut out of many high schools and high careers.
Chapman chose to be with Sarah, ceded the family property to his brother, and then, along with Sarah, left Ireland in mid-1888 and went to a small village in northern Wales to live in anonymity. The pair used Sarah's mother's maiden name, Lawrence. In August of that year, Sarah gave birth to their second child, whom they named Thomas Edward, later known as T. E. Lawrence.
Therefore, the Lawrence family ostensibly follows the strict morality of the Middle Class of Victorian Britain, and also pursues the educational philosophy and lifestyle of the middle class, but in fact, the existence of the family itself is derived from extramarital affairs and elopement that violate victorian morality.
So, is the superficial "canonical book" a kind of "false canon and hypocrisy"? Or rather, Victorian morality, at least in this case, is fraught with inherent contradictions. Some historians see the Victorian era as a contradictory one, with decency on the outside and darkness on the inside. With the rapid development of the economy, the gap between the rich and the poor is huge, the working class lives hard, the social bottom is turbulent, and the crime rate has also increased. Contradictions have become a feature of this era.
02
Missing sex education
According to victorian middle-class morality, the Lawrence family's extramarital affairs and elopement were unbearable and needed to be tightly covered up. Sex (like other physiological functions), then, must be an extremely awkward topic. Literary works, including Shakespeare's plays and Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, were ruthlessly "bowdlerization" and the "yellow storm" was deleted to make them suitable for "pure" children and girls.
Therefore, sex education is seriously lacking. Middle-class brides, who remain virgin before marriage, often still lack sufficient sexual knowledge on their wedding night, so wedding nights are often painful memories. In general, men's premarital sex is often tolerated, even condoned, after all, "men will always be boys" (boys willbe boys). Of course, male (premarital) indulgence is also at odds with Victorian morality.
But there are also men who experience psychological trauma on their wedding nights, such as the great Victorian writer and art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) who married his wife Effie Gray after six years of marriage and still did not have a round house, and then divorced. In a letter to her parents, Effie said Ruskin was disgusted by her "body":
"He had given various reasons [for refusing to sleep with his wife], saying that he hated children, or for religious reasons, or that he wanted my beauty to last forever. This year he finally told me the real reason... His (before marriage) vision of a woman was very different from the way he saw me. The reason he didn't want me to be his real wife was that he hated my body on his wedding night. ”
In a letter to his divorce lawyer, Ruskin wrote: "Most people will be attracted to such a woman, and I am reluctant to contact her, which may seem strange to everyone." But, despite her beautiful countenance, her body could not arouse my passion. There are certain characteristics of her body that make me feel nothing at all. ”
Since Ruskin also admitted that his wife was a beauty, what was wrong with her that he was afraid to avoid? The British female writer Mary Lutyens speculated that Ruskin's understanding of the female body before marriage was entirely through ancient Greek sculpture and nude painting, and he was surprised and frightened to see his wife on his wedding night, because there was no such thing in art sculpture and painting. The British art critic Peter Fuller speculated that his wife's menstrual blood had terrified Roskin.
79-year-old Venus drawing of the park. /wiki
In any case, Ruskin is amazing when it comes to sex. This is certainly an extreme example, but it is quite a reflection of Victorian rigid sexual morality and the grotesque fantasies of some men about the "holiness" and "perfection" of women.
03
Lawrence who wrote the forbidden book
And the literary scholar D. H. Lawrence is obviously not as ridiculous as Ruskin in terms of sex, but he and T. E. Lawrence's father have one thing in common, that is, they have eloped with people whose status is very different from their own for love. D. H. Lawrence met Frieda Weekley, the wife of his professor at Nottingham College, in 1912.
Frida's identity is not ordinary, she is a Baron Lady from a German aristocratic family, whose original surname is von Richterhofen, and the famous ace pilot "Red Baron" Manfred von Richterhofen and the geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen who invented the term "Silk Road" are relatives. Frida is six years older than Lawrence and already has three children. The pair fell in love at first sight and resolutely eloped to Germany, and later had many adventures, such as Lawrence was accused of being a British spy by the German government, and later the couple was accused of being a German spy by the British government.
D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence's passionate pursuit of love, completely disregarding the world's vision, his life is a challenge to Victorian morality. And his bold talk about sex in his works was even more considered to be offensive and was not tolerated by the public at that time.
Madame Chatelet's Lover is Lawrence's last novel, perhaps not his best work, but arguably his most famous. The story is very simple, telling the young woman Chatterley Mrs. Constance's aristocratic husband Clifford was injured in the First World War and caused impotence, the "widowed" Constance felt depressed and depressed, when she met Oliver, a well-built hunting ground guard, and could not help but attract the opposite sex. In the end, Constance and Oliver each filed divorce proceedings with their original partners in order to legally look at each other.
Originally published in Italy in 1928, the book was banned in the United States, Canada and other countries, and in 1960, when the United Kingdom tried to publish the full book, it also caused a lawsuit, and Penguin Publishing Company was sued in court. However, Penguin proved that the book was of high literary value and not obscene under the newly amended Obscene Publications Act of 1959, and Penguin was eventually acquitted. Publishing freedom in the UK has also increased dramatically.
There are many reasons why Madame Chatterley's Lover has been banned for a long time, one of which is explicit sexual depiction (in fact, I think it is quite beautifully written), but there are also class factors, that is, the noblewoman Constance fell in love with Oliver from working class and "committed" him, while Clifford, who represented the upper class of society, was sexually incompetent, which seriously offended the still harsh concept of Hierarchy in British society at that time. The real Victorian era was long over, but that old-fashioned morality still prevailed.
When D. H. Lawrence died, the general public perception of him was that he was a pornographer who had wasted his talents. Another great Victorian writer, E..M Foster (a few years older than Lawrence, a paragon), gave it high praise in the obituary, praising Lawrence as "the most imaginative novelist of our generation". This was a minority view at the time, but today few people should oppose it.