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“The old way of love seemed a dreadful bondage”: Homoromanticism and Identity in D.H Lawrence’s Women in Love
“‘You can’t have two kinds of love. Why should you!’ ‘It seems as if I can’t,’ he said. ‘Yet I wanted it.’” (Lawrence 481) D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love tells the story of love and tragedy between two women struggling with their own circumstantial love affairs. However, separate from the changing values of modernist heterosexual romance, Lawrence’s classic novel, lauded for its portrayal of modernist attitudes as one of the best works of literature in the 20th century, explores a complicated homosexual love affair between Birkin and Gerald. The two male leads are contrasted against one another and in intimate duality with each other, breaching an ascension beyond the…
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What’s in a Name? The Importance of Being Earnestly Yourself
The Importance of Being Earnest is Oscar Wilde’s witty play centering around Jack Worthing and the consequences of having a false identity (named Ernest) to escape social obligations and limitations. As Jack explains to his friend Algernon Montieff, his name is “Ernest in town and Jack in the country” (5). Algernon learns of this deception by an inscription on Jack’s cigarette case, addressed to him by his real name, and is shocked by his confession, responding that Jack looks “as if [his] name was Ernest” and that “[he is] the most earnest looking person he ever saw in [his] life” (5). Jack’s situation turns into a complicated affair when his…
