D. H. Lawrence’s Theatre: Identity and Naturalism in a Collier’s Friday Night

The aim of this paper is to describe the relationship between identity and naturalism in D. H. Lawrence’s play A Colliers Friday Night. Lawrence’s drama usually becomes a fusion of the autobiographical and the fictive, making a strenuous effort to become realistic. The paper also deals with the play’s ideological connotation, traditionally seen as a highly naturalistic private drama, lacking of interest compared to Lawrence’s novels. The creative opportunities of generational, psychological or linguistic conflicts are described by Becket as ‘the inevitable opposition between male and female principles that co-exist within the individual’ (100); they make of the play a microcosm of the wider hegemonic normativity. The play’s educational component and its depiction of economic relationships make of it an odd play. Its constraints reflect the fact that ‘nothing happens, yet the continual play of love and hate, the living process of young lives being moulded by the domestic and social and economic environment and asserting themselves against the pressures, controls the movement’ (Sagar 3). These pressures are often expressed physically, creating a sense of claustrophobia. The lack of dramatic climax make the audience perceive the ideological connotations when characters are forced to return to their daily routine in an environment where women become perpetuators of the hegemonic values and also victims of the, as they failed in their emancipation.