Monotony and the Masses

Lawrence saw boredom as a distinctively modern problem that grew out of a double sense of time as both empty and excessive. Identifying boredom with the masses and industrial society, however, also led him to explore how boredom extends into space. Focusing on Lawrence’s representation of the English Midlands, this article traces the effects of that spatialized boredom in various novels including Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I examine the relationship between monotony and boredom, as well as the prickly question of whether Lawrence represents the masses as subjects who experience such states or, instead, as objects who precipitate them in others. The last section considers how an alternative, and more positive, conception of monotony enters Lawrence’s depiction of the natural world but also folds back into his portrait of modern industrial monotony.