ABSTRACT
While Lawrence's work courted favor with critics like F. R. Leavis and Raymond Williams, feminist critics like Kate Millet argued for Lawrence's position as exemplar of modernist misogyny. Lawrence's exploration of the intersection of aesthetics and gender allowed him to construct a literary persona in opposition to a patriarchal discourse that valued reason over emotion. This chapter argues that Lawrence's rejection of patriarchy shows in his rewriting of the traditional, Kantian sublime as an intersubjective experience provoked through birth and generation in The Rainbow. The discourses of gender, psychoanalysis, and aesthetics greatly influenced Lawrence as a writer and thinker whose own approach often involved a complex and often contradictory process. The novel shows the unsurpassable gulf between men and women created through idealized social roles that make connection difficult if not impossible. The final image of the novel is one of human connection where ideological structures like patriarchy are under erasure due to the realization of their transcendent function.
