Color Words in D. H. Lawrence’s Fictional Works

D. H. Lawrence was one of the greatest figures in twentieth-century English literature. Many of his works deal with issues of the dualistic balances between men and men, men and women, men and nature, etc. Very few of the critics have noticed the color words in his fictional works, though they are prevailing in nearly every piece of Lawrence’s writings. As a matter of fact, the color words not only reflects Lawrence’s metaphysic assertion and strategies applied in narration, but also shows his growing background and the influences from other modernists of his time. Therefore, it will be worthwhile to deal with the color issues in Lawrence’s fictional works, and the findings about the stylistic, strategic and biographical reasons behind the application of color words will be quite helpful to highlight the aspects which we may have overlooked and add another dimension to understand Lawrence’s fiction.


Introduction
Most of the studies on Lawrence deal with Lawrence's philosophy, his language and even his biographical background.It is quite a shame that few of them touches upon the question as to the reasons behind the frequent appearance of the color words in Lawrence's work, though it is obvious that Lawrence have a predilection for color terms for their overall appearance in Lawrence's writings in all kinds of genres.Some critics have noticed this phenomenon, but their comments are quite limited.Hugh Stevens thinks that Lawrence's attitude towards races is reflected in the colors in the characters.According to him, Lawrence's writing strikingly blends eroticism and racial markings such as the color of every part of body.He draws attention to the contrast of color between the orderly and the Prussian officer by proposing that "the two men are systematically opposed not only in terms of class, age and authority, but also in terms of color: the 'light blue eyes' and 'cold fire' of the officer are opposed to the 'warm flame' of the 'swarthy' orderly" (Stevens, 2003, p. 55).Anais Nin justifies Lawrence's preference for the color terms as "one of the things which give his work an incredible reality" (Nin, 1964, p. 63).
In his review about Sea and Sardinia, Jack F. Steward returns to the rhetorical issue of Lawrence's language and approaches the color usage by referring to Roman Jacobson's theory of metaphor and metonymy as intellectual background.This essay draws attention to a group of color motifs in Lawrence's description of natural scenes.Though these critical studies touch upon the specialty of the chromatic characteristics of the language in Lawrence's writing, still they fail to relate this phenomenon with Lawrence's metaphysic or narrative strategies behind it.This article seeks to highlight Lawrence's application of color terms and tries to give a specific analysis of the reasons behind his predilection for color words.In line with that, it will help the readers be more aware of importance of color words in Lawrence's fictional writing and give a more panoramic understanding of Lawrencian narration and its relation with the spirit of his time.

Discussion
Anais Nin notices that D. H. Lawrence "worked like a painter" (Nin, 1964, p. 63), and in his writing he "does a real painting of nature, animals, clothes, surroundings" (p.62).Color words are quite frequent in Lawrence's depiction of the characters and the settings in his stories.Generally, Lawrence's application of color words can be approached in terms of two categories: metaphor and metonymy.As colors are part of semiotic system, it can be approached with the perspective of Roman Jakobson's semiotic theory which divides signs into two kinds as metaphor and metonymy.According to Jakobson, symbols and repetitions like meters and rhythms can be regarded as metaphor; while logic narration is typically metonymic.In that case, the symbolic use of colors is metaphor and the normal description of appearances and settings is metonymy.The color words in Lawrence's fictional works fall into the same two parts.
Take "Thorn in the Flesh" for instance, the color red and blue in the maid Emilie's dress is symbolic.The whole story is aboutthe resurrection achieved by the two protagonists.At the very beginning, both of them are restricted by the authority, the rules, or in a word, the Lord.Bachman "found satisfaction in delivering himself to his duty" (Lawrence, 1995, p. 23), and Emilie's "desire was to serve" the baron and his wife (p.31).However, the balance is broken when Bachmann was humiliated by the sergeant, and he took revolt by knocking the sergeant off the ramparts.After he was thrown out of the protective embrace of the military, Bachmann went to his sweetheart, with whom he became a part of the divine scheme of things by sexual consummation.The whole process of this story seems like Bachmann's personal rebirth, and Emilie is decisive for this to happen.Emilie's role in the resurrection of the couple is foreshown through the decoration in her dress, and the colors are quite essential.When Bachmann arrived at Emilie's working place, he saw Emilie as this: "She had the proud, timid eyes of some wild animal, some proud animal.Her black hair was closely banded, her grey eyes watched steadily.She wore a peasant dress of blue cotton sprigged with little red roses, that buttoned tight over her strong maiden breasts."(p.28) Blue, being the color of the sky, implies the profoundness and the inexplicability of spiritual faith.Red, the color of blood, symbolizes women's capability to give birth.The juxtaposition of red and blue often appears in the religious paintings.The red robe covered by a blue mantle is what Holy Mother wears in most of the religious paintings.Yet the color blue is posed upon the color red symbolizes the absolute superiority of spirit over the flesh.The resemblance of the colors in the clothes of Emilie to Holy Mother makes it easy for the readers to associate Emilie with the religious figure Virgin Mary.Meanwhile, Lawrence's adaption of details in the colors requires more discretion.Actually, "a peasant dress of blue cotton sprigged with little red roses" suggests that color blue is not superior any more.The juxtaposition of red with blue, along with the "roses" suggests competition of the secular over the spiritual.The new design of Emilie's dress, her "strong breasts", and "strong loins" indicates the importance of her maternal features, especially her role in bringing new life, which, as Lawrence explains in his letter, is quintessential in men's resurrection: "only some female influence (not necessarily woman, but most obviously woman) can fertilize the soul of man to vision or being."(Boulton, 1996, p. 80) In his review of this short story, Lawrence's biographer John Worthen also observes: "[i]t is interesting that it is Emilie who breaks the invisible barrier holding the two lovers apart, although Lawrence once again renders their love-making in terms of magnetic fields of force finding an equilibrium than in individual psychological terms " (Lawrence, 1995, p. xxviii).Worthen posed the question without hinting at an answer, yet if we take the color symbolization into consideration, the problem will be solved.Not all of the colors are embedded with symbolic meanings, and most of them are only descriptive, and thus metonymic.The colors that Lawrence uses to depict the looks of the characters also can be classified as two groups that demonstrate the dualistic opposition between light and darkness.The colors that signify the light, the intellect are bright colors such as blue, green, white, etc, while those related with darkness are correspondingly the ones with dark tones like brown, black, dark blue, etc. Reading through Lawrence's fiction, we would find that several colors are the most frequent, and they are blue and brown/black.Taking the Prussian Officer and Other Stories as an example, in this collection, many characters' eyes are blue: the captain in "The Prussian Officer", Syson in "The Shades of Spring", Elizabeth in "Odor of Chrysanthemums", Mrs. Coates in "The Shadow in the Rose Garden".All of these characters are portrayed as the intellectual beings whose minds take too much control in their consciousness.While the antagonists in these short stories such as the orderly in "The Prussian Officer", the trespasser in "The Shades of Spring", Mr. Coates in "Shadow in the Rose Garden" share the brown/dark eyes in common.It is not incidental that Lawrence selects the colors for the eyes of his characters, and he suggests in this article that the blue eyed people are "too keen and abstract" (1977, p.139), they are like the uncreative element, the water, ice, air, or space, etc, and they cannot give birth to the new life, or they are rather the abstract term to describe materials.But unlike the unhuman blue-eyed people, the brown-eyed people are more organic, and they are like earth, full of life and vitality.They are "the human of the living humus" (p.139).People with blue eyes are those who live under the conviction of the power of intellect.They usually are from the higher class, know well of suppression and self-control, and have a good education.The brown-eyed people usually are from working class, receive nearly no education, and follow their instincts.For Lawrence, the actions of the brown-eyed people are based on their "blood-consciousness", hence they are more human than their blue-eyed counterparts.Apart from the colors of eyes, the colors of the cloth also are presented with reference to this dualistic opposition of light and darkness.Many of those with a pair of blue eyes are described as wearing something white.As that we have cited as examples above, Elizabeth, Mrs. Coates have white clothes on them, which makes them like a saint.Other colors like blue, grey and yellow are often related with the "light" personality.In contrast, the colors like red, black imply the "dark" personality of the characters.
Though it is impossible to list all the examples here, we could see that the colors which appear on the characters are not merely out of an inadvertent selection.Indeed, color words are very important in Lawrence's narration.Its importance is not merely a personal preference, and it also shows the impacts from the artistic trends and spirit of Lawrence's time.First, the symbolization of colors demonstrates the stylistic feature of modernist novel's combination of metonymy with metaphor.David Lodge proposes that "at the highest level of generality at which we can apply the metaphor/metonymy distinction, literature itself is metaphoric and nonliterature metonymic" (1977, p. 107).As he proceeds to approach modernist literature, David Lodge finds thatmodernist fiction "is in one way or another in reaction against nineteenth-century realism, and deeply influenced by symbolist poetry and poetics", thus "we should expect to find it tending towards the metaphorical pole of Jackonson's scheme" (p.125).David Lodge's point of view incisively accounts for Lawrence's metaphoric use of chromatic terms.
As we have mentioned above, the fiction is more of the narration of the logic development an event, and thus is typically metonymic.The realistic novels are more like a "slice of reality", so criticism about realistic novels tends to put the text back in the social context and approaches the novels as witnesses to their truthfulness, their contribution to, and consistency with, the sum of human knowledge and wisdom in reality.This means that realistic novels are not likely to be interpreted as works symbolizing human condition as Faire Queeneor Paradise Lost does.Take Emma for instance, this novel is about marriage in actuality instead of in abstract terms, and the only way to approach it is to conceive the subject in its plot, and thus there is no possibility to regard it as a moral fable.Perhaps this is what Jakobson means when he says that realistic literature "defies interpretation".To solve this problem, David Lodge argues that to characterize the realistic text as metonymic need not to pin the critical procedure down on the historical background.The critics should recognize that literature itself is both metaphoric and non-literature metonymic.Therefore, the distinction between the two modes of writing is not based on their mutual exclusiveness, but on dominance.The metaphoric work cannot totally neglect metonymic continuity if it is to be intelligible at all.Correspondingly, the metonymic text cannot eliminate all signs for metaphorical interpretation.And this serves as the starting point for the interpretation of the special meanings that the chromatic terms might have represented in Lawrence's fictional works.
The modernists often claim to be representing "reality" and to be closer to it than the realists.As a matter of fact, the modernists differ from the realists on their understanding of reality.For the modernists, reality is not only the slice of outer world, it is more of the unknown and uncircumscribed inner world of people's mind.As Virginia Woolf suggests: "[f]or the moderns 'that', the point of interest, lies very likely in the dark places of psychology."(as cited in Faulkner, 1986, p. 110) Modernists' interest in the consciousness gives rise to the inclination to the dominance of metaphoric mode.The structure of external objective event essential to traditional narrative is diminished in scope and scale, or presented very selectively and obliquely, or is almost completely dissolved, in order to make room for introspection, analysis, reflection and reverie.To compensate for the diminution of narrative structure and unity, alternative methods of aesthetic ordering such as allusions, mythical archetypes, and the motifs, images and symbols, become more prominent.They often appear in poetry as a technique described as "rhythm", "Leitmotif", and "spatial form" (see E.M Foster, Aspects of the Novel (1927) Chap.8; Stuart Gilbert, James Joyce's Ulysses Part I, chap 2; and Joseph Frank, "Spatial Form in Modern Literature", in McKeon, 2000: 85-100).In short, the modernist fiction become more metaphoric and requires complicated interpretation.
Among the modernists, James Joyce's novels are the most metaphoric.His novels emphasized similarity rather than chronological contiguity, not only psychologically and thematically, but structurally and stylistically.Different with James Joyce, Lawrence never goes to extreme to let similarity control the development of the discourse.For Lawrence, "flow" is one of his favorite words to express the quality he looked for in authentic living and authentic writing, and in the flow there "lies the vast importance of the novel, properly handled" (Lawrence, 2005, p. 307).The concern for "flow", for contiguity, shows that Lawrence's style has to be essentially metonymic in structure, though the meanings contained in it might be expressed metaphorically.Repetition and symbolization are exploited to shift an ostensibly metonymic style to metaphoric direction.As David Lodge points out, the details in Lawrence's fictional work, especially in the short stories, demonstrate the way how Lawrence works himself up "from shrewd observation of social and environmental realities into a poetic, prophetic mode of utterance" (1977, p.164).The symbolized details give Lawrence's writing the quality of poetry.
Besides, color terms are much easier to be conceived and more impressive among a large number of descriptive details.As a matter of fact, all senses like scent, hearing and taste are acutely developed in Lawrence's description, but it seems that the color terms are the most frequent.Schopenhauer, one of the great philosophers that Lawrence learns much from, gives an ontological justification for the superiority of sights, colors in particular, among other senses: Of all the senses, that of sight is capable of the most delicate and diverse impressions from without; yet in itself it can give only sensation which first becomes intuitive perception through the application of the understanding.If anyone standing before beautiful landscape could for a moment be deprived of all understanding, then for him nothing of the whole view could be left out the sensation of a very manifold affection of his retina, resembling the many blobs of different colors on an artist's palette.(1994, p. 12) Schopenhauer explains sight's quick effects on people's perception, and colors outstands all other visual elements for its impressiveness.To conclude, the metaphoric quality of interpretation naturally draws our attention to the connotation embodied in the color words; the stylistic feature of modernist fiction, as the inclination to the metaphoric pole of language in the metonymic description, makes it possible that certain images or descriptions are metaphoric for the its symbolization or the rhythmic repetition.Lawrence's well awareness of the effects of colors finally lends credit to the metaphoric use of color words in Lawrence's fiction.
Secondly, Lawrence's visualized presentation of literary work consists with his literary purport-writing for morality.In Lawrence's opinion, the function of literature is above all moral: "[t]he essential function of art is moral.Not aesthetic, not decorative, not pastime and recreation.But moral.The essential function of art is moral."(Lawrence, 1971, p. 180) Writing for morality means that art should give form to experience.Lawrence sees the visualized presentation as more concrete and convincing than the abstracted render of inner thoughts in the fiction written by other modernists.His idea about the effects of visual colors is not about narrative choice, and yet it is above all a metaphysical issue.
As we have mentioned above, Lawrence attaches much importance on the moral function of literature, but he differs from the traditional masters on the definition of morality.According to Lawrence, morality does not only means good virtues, but also an intention to reveal "the perfect relation between man and his circumambient universe", and at the moment when they are related, literature, or other forms of art, will have the "quality of eternity and perfection" (Lawrence, 1987, p. 171).To relate morality to circumstances around the world is in fact a derivation of Nietzsche's philosophy, which Lawrence learns much from.Nietzsche first proposes it in his discussion on tragedy, and it is presented as the dialectic relationship between the spirit of Dionysus and that of Apollo.Dionysus symbolizes man's unity with life where his own individuality is absorbed in the life force, whereas Apollo is the one that controls and restrains the dynamic processes of life in order to give form to art.The supreme achievement of Greek culture lies in the fusion of Dionysian and Apollonian elements, through which the personal is impersonalized, and human beings is closely related to Nature, and this artistic status is what Lawrence's "fourth dimension" corresponds with.
Nietzsche's philosophy is, above all, a life-affirming philosophy where the sensual aspects of body should regain its position over the spirit.Lawrence shares Nietzsche's opinion on modern civilization, thinking that modern people have overstressed sense and intellect and let their instinctive capabilities restrained under the control of spiritual doctrines.Therefore, nearly all of his works can be read as preaching about the emancipation of sensual feelings.To put his philosophy into practice, Lawrence displays in his writing a high degree of relatedness and sensuousness.And in order to demonstrate the relatedness, Lawrence develop a new language writing about the "spirit of place", through which the clusters of colors in the scenery setting changes along with characters' moods.And to arouse the full senses in the reader, Lawrence strenuously depicts the sight, touch, scent, and voice sensed by the characters, among which the visual colors are the most frequent.This characteristic of Lawrence's narration could be generalized as "writing for the feelings", which, as Allan Ingram observes, "means that both the writer and reader will be impelled to relive those feelings through the medium of English language that has been reinvented for the purpose " (1990, p. 72).It is obvious that Lawrence's depiction of colors and sights fulfills this purpose.In consequence, the visualized presentation with a particular preference for color terms in Lawrence's fiction produces a tangible experience in the process of reading.The colors bring the scene to life and the reader will experience in person what Lawrence depicts in his stories.Writing for experience is for Lawrence a most effective method to achieve the moral function in the reader: "[f]irst, it provides an emotional experience.And then, if we have the courage of our own feelings, it becomes a mine of practical truth" (Lawrence, 1971, p. 8).
Again, Lawrence does not invent the narrative strategy on his own, and the impacts could be traced down to other literary masters of his time.The most direct influence should be from the flourishing of literary Impressionism.Ford Madox Ford is one of the pioneers who launch literary Impressionism.In his memoir of Conrad, Ford writes that he and Conrad agreed on Impressionism in literature, because "life did not narrate, but made impressions on our brains" (as cited in MacShane, 1964, p. 73).Impressionistic literature requires that speeches should be short, because it would be impossible for a narrator to recall long speeches, and the supreme literary goal should be the rendering of material facts of life.It is worth recalling some lines from the poem "On Heaven," in which "the material facts of life" are obviously all about colors and forms: There's a paper shop Painted all blue, a shipping agency, Three or four cafés; dank, dark colonnades Of an eighteen-forty Maîrie Conrad proceeds further to attach more importance on the sensuous description through which novels are endowed with the magical suggestiveness of music and the plastic arts.The suggestiveness, in term, would make the morality embedded in it more easily to be discerned by the reader.He even thinks that the most important task of a writer is to lead the reader to see: "[m]y task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you feel-it is, before all, to make you see" (as cited in Bradbury, 2004, p. 92).The "material facts" in "impression" means to make the reader experience, and this is quite essential to help the reader achieve purification in morality.Conrad particularly mentions "to make you see", which means that in his terms, the rendering of sights is the most effective in this procedure.
The resemblance of Lawrence's literary provocation with Ford and Conrad's Impressionism is never a coincidence.Lawrence is, as a matter of fact, closely related to Ford, since he is the founder of the English Review, on which most of Lawrence's short stories were published.As a matter of fact, Lawrence does think much of the visualized presentation, and he takes as way to help the reader achieve moral purification.For Lawrence, novelists should not preach the truth of life in a rigid way like the philosophers, instead, literature should affect men through the experience in literature: But in the novel you can see, plainly, when the man goes dead, the woman goes inert.You can develop an instinct for life, if you will, instead of a theory of right and wrong, good and bad.(Lawrence, 1987, p.198) From his words we could see that all the sighted images contribute to the creation of emotional experience which is so vivid that the readers are moved to the highest degree.Being moved is the first and the most essential of the impacts authors want to exert upon the reader.But the morality is the one that changes the blood instead of the mind, by which Lawrence means that acts should be the final end of literature.
Thirdly, Lawrence's predilection for color words also manifests the influences from visual art.The painting has long be regarded as the sister art of literature.Ever since Aristotle, the critics would like to compare painting with literature.According to Aristotle, painting and literature share the same method by imitating.Indeed, as a "mirror" to reflect the actual world, the paintings present the colors and forms of the objects; while literature often write down the action of people, with the colors and forms serving as the background of the actions.The neoclassicists even make it a rule that a poem should be judged on the ground of its resemblance with the paintings.The renowned English critic and poet Sir Philip Sidney even proposes that poetry should be like a "speaking picture".Lawrence's another talent as a painter and the influence from this talent on his writing can also account for the writing of color terms in his fictional works.
If the stylistic feature of modernistic fiction with its inclination to the metaphoric pole of language only provides the possibility for the metaphoric usage of color words, Lawrence's talent in painting may adds reliability to this argument.Lawrence began to paint when he was a little boy, and he learned it from copying other pictures.His paintings were exhibited at the Warren Gallery, from 14 June 1929.Not only he himself paints, his commentary on the evolution of visual art is also quite valuable.In his essay "Of Being and Not-Being" (Lawrence, 1987, pp. 56-76), Lawrence makes an elaborate scrutiny into the sense of Being implied in Western paintings.There are plenty of painters under his observation, which includes Botticelli, Correggio, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Rembrandt, etc.In another essay "The Light of the world" (Lawrence, 1987, pp. 77-88), we could find that Lawrence seeing this world as the dualistic opposition of light and dark, and the interpretation is given by referring to Western paintings.Lawrence gives Rembrandt's art an metaphysical interpretation: "Rembrandt craved to marry the flesh and the Spirit, to achieve consummation in the flesh through marriage with the spirit" (1987, p. 85).Indeed, Lawrence's commentary on Rembrandt is quite insightful, notwithstanding his argumentation may appear incoherent and discursive.To put it in another word, Lawrence thinks that the significance of these paintings lies in the ontological conceptions converted by the artists.Rembrandt may have made the duality embodied in light and body, while other artists, Düer, Michael Angelo, and Raphael, for instance, also endeavor to present the same theme on the duality of the world, though through different styles or techniques.From the two articles we could see that it cannot be possible to give comments on the western artists and their works with such an insight, if Lawrence himself was not an expert on the visual art.His knowing about the painting verifies the knowledge he might have on the application of colors.His interpretation of Rembrandt gives reason to the omnipresent of the dualistic opposition of light and darkness, and its derivation as white and black, as well as bright dark hues, which are there in nearly all of his fictional works.
Besides, one of the features of Modernism is the cross-fertilization of different fields of arts.The artists, the musicians, and the writers, all are willing to adopt some specific techniques from each other's field.Lawrence, being a painter, or at least showing some talent in painting, lives under this spirit of time, and he cannot be immune from the impacts from modern arts such as Abstraction and Futurism.The years after 1914 witness diverse avant-garde movements, and each of them produces a lot of reading materials to proclaim their advocates.Wilhelm Worringer'sAbstraction and Empathy informed Lawrence plenty about abstraction, and his claims for new forms of consciousness expressed in primitive art appeals to him greatly.Meanwhile, Filippo Marinetti's manifestos for Futurism did arouse Lawrence's attention to a great extent.As for the use of colors, abstractionism may worth our while to explain the uniqueness of Lawrence's style.
The book Abstraction and Empathy was an immediate success, and even "influenced many personal lives and the spiritual life of a whole era" (Worringer, 1953, p. vii).And it drew much attention from Lawrence as well.According to Worringer, there exists two kinds of aesthetic enjoyment in arts: one is the empathy, which is mostly applied in the Graeco-Roman and modern Occidental art and aims at mirroring human impulses; the other is the abstraction, which is often found in the Byzantine and Egyptian art and "finds its beauty in the life-denying inorganic, in the crystalline or, in general terms, in all abstract law and necessity" (p.15).Apparently, the later form of art is more vital in Worringer's terms and his bias serves as a way to justify radical contemporary experiments, in which the school of abstractionism is one of the most influential.Generally, the traditional realistic portray of human or natural images is discarded in the abstract artists.And they tend to use the form, line, and color to create a piece of work which is independent from the actual references in the world.Among the numerous art movements, fauvism and cubism can be regarded as the representatives.In fauvism, color is conspicuously and deliberately altered in spite of the natural reality.In cubism, the forms stand in the centre of revolution and the artists begin to paint under the premise that all depiction of nature can be presented through cube, sphere and cone.And according to Jakobson's semiotic theory, cubism is primarily synecdochic.
Speaking of the relation between this movement to abstraction in visual art and literature, Wassily Kandinsky, who is credited with painting the first modern abstract art, should not be neglected.In Kandinsky's opinion, color is the most important element to convey the artists' thought: "[c]olor is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings.The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul" (as cited in Grohmann, 1958, p. 68).By this statement Kandinsky means that it is color that touches the inner soul of an audience, so color can act alone to speak for the artists.The colors can speak through not only the warmth or coldness of its tone, but also the clarity or obscurity of the tone.Therefore, colors acquire the basic quality of notes in music.Kandinsky's particular interest in colors receives a large extent of endorsement from the literary circle, among which Ezra Pound is the most influential.
Learning from the abstract art, Pound also thinks that colors have the power of speaking as words.Indeed, we could find a variety of color terms in the Imagist poems, and this, for instance, include Pound's "In a Station of Metro", William Carlos Williams' "Red Wheelbarrow", and the like.And Lawrence, as is known to all, who once belonged to Pound's group, cannot be immune from the impacts exerted by Pound and his school of Imagism.In his short story "The Princess", the color terms are endowed with a speaking power that can even replace narration of the story.The colors in this short story enable a world in which no separation stands between the external world and the inner being of man, thus the motion of narration.In that sense, narration evolves into eternity and tranquility of an abstract idea, and this is realized through colors.In short, the narrative power enabled in the colors term demonstrates the relatedness between Lawrence and Pound's school, thus indirectly connects Lawrence to the abstract arts.

Conclusion
The use of color terms has long been a tradition in Western literary tradition.However, large quantity and discursiveness of these color terms makes the systematic analysis impossible.The dualistic poles of language as metaphor and metonymy provide theoretic foundation for the categorization.Lawrence's use of colors falls into two groups correspondingly: one with plain metaphoric characteristics; and the other is written under metonymic mode.There is still one more question left: how do color words become Lawrence's preference?In general, there are three possible factors that may lead to this result.Firstly, the convergence of the metaphoric and metonymic modes of writing in modernist fiction make it possible to approach certain color details by referring to the metaphoric symbols.Secondly, Nietzsche's philosophy exerts a great influence on D. H. Lawrence.Nietzsche proposes that the sensual feelings should regain its importance after being suppressed for so long.The visual sights and the in-person experience created by the color terms not only make people see, but also know, and this, in term, renders morality in the reader.Last but not the least, Lawrence, being a painter himself, knows very well about the visual art, and he himself cannot be more familiar with the techniques and the difference styles throughout the whole western history.If the stylistic and philosophical reasons only prove there is inclination to use the color terms for Lawrence, the biographical background proceeds to convince that Lawrence is quite professional in the use of colors.
In short, the color words in Lawrence's fictional work are not inadvertently used, and instead, they are loaded with symbolic connotations and narrative strategies.Therefore, the use of them is not merely a rhetoric device to make the description more vivid.A specific study of reasons that lie behind his predilection for color words would help us better understand his fiction and ideas, know more about his narrative techniques, and even the relation with his precedents and his time.