POST-COLONIAL ECO-CRITICAL CONCERNS IN D.H. LAWRENCE’S POST-WAR NOVELS

Abstract

Post-colonial eco-criticism examines the impact of colonization on indigenous life, culture, and environment in pre-colonial societies. It analyses how the natural environment, in the colonized regions, is exploited, degraded, contaminated, and destroyed in the process of colonization. D.H. Lawrence, disillusioned by the accesses of modern industrial civilization, is fascinated by the vital and potent cultures of the primitive societies which offered a better alternative to degenerate European existence. He, especially in his later works, idealizes the primitive modes of life and presents a critique of barren European culture. Such dissatisfaction with collapsing European civilization and glorification of foreign primitive cultures led him to a decolonizing vision reflected in his post-war fiction where he offers a serious commentary on imperialism. Colonialism, for him is means of exploitation, an unnecessary intrusion, and a threat to the vitality of primitive cultures, a source of disintegration in traditional modes of life and an important cause of eco-environmental disruption in the colonized world. This article attempts to analyse Lawrence's post-war fiction from a post-colonial eco-critical perspective by employing a qualitative research approach and the theoretical frameworks of post-colonial and eco-critical theories.

Keywords: Colonialism, Imperialism, Postcolonialism, Eco-criticism, Postcolonial eco-criticism.