The White Peacock

The White Peacock is D. H. Lawrence's first novel, published in January 1911 in both Britain and the United States. Set in the woods and lakes around Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, the author's native region, it is narrated in the first person by Cyril Beardsall: his sister Lettie (Lettitia) is courted both by George Saxton, the son of a tenant farmer, and by Leslie, the heir of a colliery owner. Attracted to George's natural, vigorous vitality, Lettie nonetheless chooses Leslie, who is wealthy and well bred yet spiritually hollow; the disappointed George marries Meg, the daughter of a publican. Neither marriage proves happy. George can find no place for himself in family or society, sinks ever deeper into drink, and is a hollow shell before middle age. Through symbols such as the peacock, the novel repeatedly sets pastoral natural scenery against the encroachment of the mining district and industrial expansion, presenting multiple oppositions—nature and civilization, feeling and reason, body and spirit—and laying the groundwork for the core themes of all Lawrence's later work: relations between the sexes, marriage and family, a mother's influence on her children, and industrialism's repression of human nature. Though a young man's work, at times immature and overwrought in style, it already reveals the distinctive personal manner that would later mature: dense metaphor, psychological description verging on stream of consciousness, and an intense sense of life.