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Previous Shows....The Daughter in Law |
The
Daughter in Law
by DH Lawrence
28th to 31st October 1998 at the
Sheffield University Drama Studio
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Reviews......
Notes
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From the programme:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was born on 11 September 1885 in
Eastwood, Nottinghamshire; a sickly child, poor health keeping
him from school until he was seven years old. Never robust
Lawrence suffered lung infections, pneumonia and finally
tuberculosis of which he died on 2 March 1930 in France.
The fourth child of a coal miner father Arthur John Lawrence, and a schoolteacher mother Lydia Beardsall, Lawrence proved to be a gifted child winning a scholarship to Nottingham High School (1898). He worked for a short time as a pupil-teacher before going to University College, Nottingham in 1905. He left University and in 1908 moved to Croydon to teach at the Davison Road School.
However, he had already begun to write. His early work
appeared in the 'Nottinghamshire Guardian', but his first novel,
'The White Peacock", was published in the 'English Review'
in 1911. A new life began for Lawrence when he was invited to
meet Professor Ernest Weekley; within two months Lawrence was in
Germany as the lover of Frieda Richthofen Weekley the 32 year old
mother of Weekley's three children..
| During March 1916 the Lawrences moved to Cornwall,
ostensibly to find peace and solitude, but more
prosaically to find somewhere cheap to live. They rented
their cottage for £5 per annum. But this was wartime and
Frieda was German. Some of the Cornish neighbours
reported the Lawrences for signalling to submarine crews.
They were investigated by the police and received, on 11
October 1917, an order to leave the county. Lawrence was
later to describe the episode as a nightmare. So began
their wandering life. They made several trips to
Australia, Italy, Ceylon, and New Mexico, constantly
searching for the right place to live. At the end of his
wandering life Lawrence stayed for a time at a sanatorium
at Vence, France but did not like the clinic and left on
1 March for the Villa Robermond, where he died the next
day. |
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A towering genius, Lawrence time and again explored the relationship between men and women in marriage. Many of his works deal with people in tortured relationships; couples torn between the need for love and the need for independence.
In 'The Daughter-in-Law' Lawrence explores the intense relationships between the mother, Mrs Gascoigne and her sons Luther and Joe, and between Luther and his wife Minnie. However, the greatest battle rages between the two women, and only one of them can win.
Susan Oxley
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