Woman's Maternal, Invincible Medusa Gaze in D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love and The Rainbow.

This article aims to re-vision the traditional feminist perspective presenting D.H. Lawrence as chauvinistically asserting phallic force in his writings. While this view may represent aspects of his later writings, this could even indicate Lawrence's strident efforts to insist on male creativity against the real life force of women, as himself a man subject to womb envy. The battle of the sexes in his earlier and greatest novels, The Rainbow and Women in Love, shows men attempting to usurp the authoritative, even violent force of matriarchal women. These two novels highlight lunar scenes symbolizing women's rampant power over men. The Rainbow articulates womb envy in the context of victorious matriarchs, while the frequently sadomasochistic relationships of Women in Love show men, despite their physical strength, ferociously yet helplessly struggling to survive against the self-assertive Medusa gaze of impassioned women, leading on occasion to their death, while women remain supreme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]