The problem of divorce.

• Author: Normey, Robert
• Position: LAW AND literature - John Galsworthy and D.H. Lawrence, ending of marriage

Marriage is more than a simple contract between spouses, or a thing, which they can dissolve by their own acts and choice, even consensually. It is a status, involving other and more important interests. --Viscount Birkenhead L.C. in Rutherford v. Richardson (1923)

The ending of a marriage is one of the great themes of literature. Marriage is indeed more than a simple contract between spouses. It is clearly something that society holds dear. The desire to encourage and support the institution of marriage has meant that, until the current era, there were powerful hurdles to gaining a divorce.

Two novels that explore marriage and divorce are John Galsworthy's In Chancery (1920) and D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). Each novel involves at its centre a relationship that has gone bad or completely disintegrated. In both, a divorce is seen as a way out for at least one of the central characters. Galsworthy and Lawrence reveal in these works the different manner in which they view the institution of marriage and the divorce laws of their time. Let me register a critical point at the outset. Lawrence is a much better writer on the whole than is Galsworthy and at his best has a profundity that Galsworthy lacks. However, Lady Chatterley's Lover is less than vintage Lawrence. In fact, it is a deeply flawed novel. Nonetheless, it is worth reading for a number of reasons. It is Lawrence's final novel and appears to be a last-ditch effort to preach the Lawrencian message of vitality and individual freedom at a time when he himself was becoming deeply pessimistic about the state of English society. It is also important historically as one of the first English novels to deal frankly and openly with sex. it was, of course, censored for many years and featured in celebrated trials in Britain, Canada, and the USA.

Galsworthy serves as a useful foil for Lawrence. He is a much more conservative writer although there are aspects of liberalism in his approach to divorce. Interest in his writings has been renewed by the recent release of the very fine PBS television series The Forsyte Saga that is available on DVD. Galsworthy is a representative of the Edwardian writers whose qualities modernist writers like Virginia Woolf and Lawrence were rebelling against. In In Chancery, there is a carefully elaborated plot which carries much of the message of the novel. Characters are largely described from the outside with an abundant amount of detail about...