Despite his reputation as the " greatest imaginative novelist " of our times, D.H. Lawrence's politics and ideology continue to remain, even today, an object of enigma. In this critical work, Sachidananda Mohanty examines the charge - recurrently made - that Lawrence was a fascist who glorified the State and advocated, especially in his " leadership fiction, " a domineering male leadership ideal.
There is a great deal of evidence that might suggest that Lawrence had an attraction towards fascism and a patriarchal leadership ideal. But such an attraction, Mohanty argues, is always resisted in Lawrence's narratives. Employing insights from psychological literature, the author looks closely at the " leadership fiction " of Lawrence, generally regarded as " artistic failures. "Mohanty contends that the dialectics in Lawrence's narratives are often at odds with his non-fictional statements. The presence of subversive irony and ambiguity in the tales often undermine the surface statements espousing fascism and disclaim the view that Lawrence's " leadership fiction " were meanly didactic exercises devoid of artistic merits.
Dr. Mohanty sees Lawrence's deep interest in power — evidence in some of his finest essays - as an essential corollary to his metaphysic of love and his theory of self-transcendence and concludes that Lawrence belonged to the non-fascist " heroic-vitalist " tradition of Blake and Nietzsche.