Frieda in the Flesh

FRIEDA LAWRENCE by Rosie Jackson (HarperSanFrancisco: $22; 238 pp.) Rosie Jackson sets herself a difficult task in publishing a short appreciation of Frieda Lawrence in the same year as Janet Byrne’s full-length study of Frieda and Brenda Maddox’s comprehensive biography of D.H. Lawrence. Luckily, the strength of Jackson’s book is not her treatment of Frieda’s life or character, but her convincing argument that Frieda has been grievously misrepresented by Lawrence scholars. When Lawrence met Frieda in 1912, he was struggling with drafts of Paul Morel, the novel of mother-son love that became “Sons and Lovers” (1931). He had not yet read Freud. Frieda was not only steeped in Freudian theory but also accustomed to a free and guiltless sexual life the like of which Lawrence could scarcely have imagined. Despite Frieda’s rich contributions to Lawrence’s writings and the development of his ideas, Jackson asserts that “biographers and literary historians have tended to dismiss her as a stubborn harridan, a woman whose obstinacy and selfishness eventually blocked the full and free flowering of Lawrence’s genius.” Add bad mother and whore to the milder harridan , along with choice adjectives such as stupid and fat , and a clear picture of the mythical Frieda emerges. Aldous Huxley’s novel, “The Genius and the Goddess” (1955), contains the fictional version of a Frieda familiar to Lawrence studies.

Although Jackson makes several points in Frieda’s favor, the book is crippled by bad editing; her prose can be redundant, and there are numerous small errors of fact (Jackson does not seem to distinguish between Mexico and New Mexico, for instance). She may depend too much on Jungian terms, as well--those pesky masculine and feminine principles--a language that does little to dispel myths about male genius.

The inclusion of Frieda’s remarkable memoir of Lawrence, “Not I, But the Wind That Blows Through Me!” (1935), is a nice touch, however, easily conveying Frieda’s good humor and humanity.