Psychoanalytical Analysis of Gerald’s Three Coverts to Perpetrate Violence in D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love Mohammad Hosein Gharib Takestan Islamic Azad University, Iran Ahmad Gholi English Department, Faculty of Humanities, Gonbad Kavous University, Iran Abstract—D. H. Lawrence is well known for creating psychologically deep characters. Since contemporaneous with Sigmund Freud, he has been familiar with his groundbreaking theories about unconscious mind. Moreover, he utilizes them for creating his characters in his novels. For instance in his Women in Love, Freud’s impact on him is striking. Freud holds that human beings are primitive by nature and their primitive attitudes can emerge anytime. In this regard, this paper aims to draw on Freud’s idea of unconsciousness to analyze Gerald, one of main characters in the novel in question. To do so, it will primarily focus on his violence. According to Freud, human beings aspire for the violence in their unconsciousness; nonetheless, they cannot answer their psychological need easily because of social norms. However, from the view point of Freud, there are some coverts through which people can meet/justify their urge for violence. Thus, the present study endeavors to bring into light these coverts by focusing on the life of Gerald in D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love. Index Terms—covert, unconscious, Freud, war, Gerald, violence, Women in Love I. INTRODUCTION D. H Lawrence was born in 1885 in Nottinghamshire. His father was a miner but his mother was a literate school teacher. As a child, Lawrence suffered from tuberculosis. He was closer to his mother in his family. She did her best to keep him away from mines; instead she directed his life toward school and books. His relationship with his mother is represented directly in his autobiographical novel, Sons and Lovers. At the age of 15, he left school and started working in a factory. Later on he became acquainted with Jessie Chamber who appeared as Miriam in Sons and Lovers. His first publication was his poetry published in 1909. Much to his disappointment, his works were banned in England until 1960s. Not only was he persecuted for his words but also he was under the pressure and suspicion during WWI due to marrying Frieda, a German. As a result, he left England and traveled to Italy, Germany, USA, Mexico, New Zealand and Australia. His major literary works include Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love, John Thomas and Lady Jane, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The White Peacock, The Trespasser, The Lost Girl, Aaron’s Rod, Kangroo, The plumped Serpent and the Virgin and the Gipsy. Summary of Women in Love Women in Love is a sequel to The Rainbow. It is the story of two sisters who came to know two other characters, Gerard Crich and Rupert Birkin. Gudrun is just back from London where she was studying at an art school. Ursula, the older sister develops affair with Birkin, the only male character who has unconventional ideas about life, human being, love and death. While loving Ursula, Birkin also believes in a different greater love which might be gratified through his relationship with another male human being. Throughout the novel he comes up with his unconventional ideas. While Ursula and Birkin have primitive attitudes through the novel, Gerald, the son of the local mineowner, is an industrial magnate. He believes in leading people and managing the business which he inherited from his father. Later on, he desires to strangle Gudrun when he witnesses that Gudrun flirts with Herr Loerke, a decadent German sculptor. At the end of the novel, he dies of cold weather alone on a snow covered mountain. Review of Literature In his book, Freudianism and Literary Mind, Fredrick Hoffman (1967) compares Freud's perspectives with that of Lawrence in terms of sexuality, and highlights their similarity in this regard. To do so, he chooses Lawrence’s autobiographical novel, Sons and Lovers and applies Freud’s psychoanalytical theories to it. Daniel Wack in his book entitled, The Great War and its Effects in D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley’s Lover examines the effects of war in Sons and Lover and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, but not in his other novels like Women in Love and The Rainbow. In his study, initially he presents a short background of European society right after the Great War, and its impacts on writers such as T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf and Aldus Huxley. Then he focuses on Lawrence's Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which as published after the war. ISSN 1798-4769 Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 7, No. 6, pp. 1117-1122, November 2016 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0706.08 © 2016 ACADEMY PUBLICATION