Friday, 13 December 2024

The Married Man: A Life of D.H. Lawrence


Brenda Maddox
The Married Man: A Life of D.H. Lawrence (1994)
This was a library book I read twice and enjoyed so much that I ended up buying it when they had a clear out of old stock. More recently I've also read Jeffrey Meyers' biography of D.H. Lawrence - to which I felt well-disposed with all the critics having claimed this one to be the superior account, and having noticed that Brenda Maddox had also written biographies of Elizabeth Taylor and Margaret Thatcher - suggesting a bit of a production line. Having now read this one a third time, I conclude the comparison to Meyers' version isn't fair on either author; and The Married Man remains a nevertheless tremendous piece of work. It differs from Jeffrey Meyers' book in slightly shifting the focus from Lawrence's semi-autobiographical writings to his problematic marriage to Frieda Weekley, which Maddox views as essential to understanding his body of work. However, rather than being some cliched brilliant woman behind the mediocre but more successful man job, Maddox examines Lawrence through his relationships, which makes a lot of sense given their constituting the principal influence on what he wrote.

As a significant part of the equation, Frieda gets at least equal billing here, and thankfully with unflinching honesty. Whilst she was doubtless a force of nature, an inspiration, and ultimately essential to Lawrence's creative process, she was often extremely difficult to live with and, by her own admission, a general pain in the arse - not least in her refusal to be shackled by the convention of not shagging strangers whenever the opportunity arose, much to her husband's annoyance. Of course, he was himself an awkward, argumentative man who routinely alienated friends and acquaintances with bluntly unflattering portraits in his novels. Together, they seemed like a terrible combination, but at the same time it's difficult to imagine a couple better suited to one another, even with all the ranting, raving and dinner plates flying back and forth.

Of the two biographies, Jeffrey Meyers does a better job of communicating that there was more to both Dave and Frieda than just mayhem, and that there were often good reasons why they inspired such loyalty and such warm feelings among their friends - or at least among those they hadn't terminally pissed off. This one is probably marginally more thorough, and hence more depressing.

 

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