SOURCE: Granofsky, Ronald. “Illness and Wellness in D. H. Lawrence's The Ladybird.” Orbis Litterarum 51, no. 2 (1996): 99-117.

In the following essay, Granofsky asserts that the metaphor of illness and wellness and the focus on parent-child relationships in “The Ladybird” tend to overpower Lawrence's interest in the themes of dependency and power.

“… a wound stimulates the recuperative powers.”

—Nietzsche, Preface to The Twilight of the Idols

D. H. Lawrence's Ladybird novellas, “The Fox,” “The Captain's Doll,” and “The Ladybird” (1923), form part of a well-documented effort by Lawrence to shift the focus of his fictional world from marriage to leadership, from love to power. In fact, one may construe a particular passage in “The Fox” as Lawrence's farewell to the world of the Brangwensaga, particularly its optimistic expression in The Rainbow. After a long meditation upon the subject of happiness from the perspective of a peculiarly Lawrentian narrative voice—in this...