True Freedom in Lawrences Aaron’s Rod Essay -- essays research papers

â€Å"They had got outside the castle of so-called human life. Outside the horrible, stinking castle of human life. A bit of true, limpid freedom.† ~ Florence, Aaron's Rod) 'Aaron’s Rod' concludes the central theme that D. H. Lawrence took up in 'The White Peacock', 'The Trespasser', 'The Lost Girl', and 'Mr. Noon': the idea of true human freedom. What makes Aaron’s Rod exceptional is the way it transforms the notion of love, regarded as the savior of human soul from the tyranny of social obligations. In his previous novels, Lawrence depicted characters that are fed up with their forced ways of social life. They are helplessly seeking a relationship that offers spontaneity, in harmony with their inner self, the depth of their soul. There is always only one answer to the question ‘How?’ and that is love. They break the existing social bonds and make new love relationships with varying results from a satisfied marriage (The Lost Girl) to suicide (The Trespasser). Contrarily, Aaron’s Rod takes a line that is overtly slanted against love as the true path of human freedom. It challenges the very notion of love as something c onsistent with the needs of the human soul. It even poses the question ‘what is true love?’ The first three chapters clearly poise 'Aaron’s Rod' against the mechanical mode of life in an increasingly industrialized society. Aaron Sisson is the Secretary at a colliery. He has to work till late in the evening and has an unsatisfactory marriage. His reaction to his suffocating emotional life is seen on Christmas Eve when he goes to bring his daughters some candles. Instead of returning home, Aaron spends the night at the Bricknells. He tells Josephine, â€Å"My wife has made up her mind she loves me, and she’s not going ... ...he way one of them becomes an eagle and the other its prey. Secondly, does the inner, deeper self of the man, one that enables him to become himself, survive the chains of social bondage? Lawrence is optimistic here just as he has been in The Lost Girl and The Rainbow. The reader sees Aaron shocked at the splitting of his flute in a bomb blast made by the anarchists. On Lilly’s asking, he throws the broken rod into a stream. Lawrence speaks through Lilly the most precious words: â€Å"It’ll grow again. It’s a reed, a water-plant. You can’t kill it.† Man’s soul is always living, breathing, and waiting for the vital ecdysis that gives it the power to come out and rule itself. In Lilly’s words, â€Å"We must either love or rule. And once the love-mode changes, as change it must, for we are worn out and becoming evil in its persistence, then the other mode will take place in us.†