True Freedom in Lawrences Aaron’s Rod Essay - 1367 Words

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, Aarons 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†¦show more content†¦And I’m not going to be forced into it.† The consciousness to love as something not arising from within man’s soul but something the world squeezes out of him is the cause of Aaron’s neglect of his family and his apparent waywardness. As Aaron travels away from his family, he experiences the eternally present emptiness of existence. The outer frame of human existence is all a servile mask used to lure the capitalist, the landlord, the affluent to win worldly favors. In the chapter Novara, as rich William Frank’s guest, Aaron notices ‘the deference of all the guests at table: a touch of obsequiousness: before the money! And the host and hostess accepted the deference, nay, expected it, as their due.’ This hollowness of being pinches Aaron. Like every man, like every human being, he feels the necessity to be felt and loved. The question that thwarts him is whether man or only the mask of his material possession is loved. To be loved, one need must be known, and that is a rare phenomenon. It occurs to Aaron: â€Å"We cannot be exposed to the looks of others, for our very being is night-lustrous and unseeable. Like the Invisible Man, we are only exposed through our clothes and our masks.† Un less others know man out of his mask, of his flesh that is seeable, he cannot be loved. Loving him is only a euphemism for eating his flesh. This metaphor is utilized in the last chapter Words. In his quasi-philosophical dream, Aaron sees