Lawrence and Proto-Veganism

Catherine, Brown (2024) Lawrence and Proto-Veganism. In: Reading D. H. Lawrence in the Anthropocene. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. (In Press)

Abstract

In the context of a volume ('Reading D. H. Lawrence in the Anthropocene', ed. Terry Gifford, Edinburgh University Press, 2025) that presents D. H. Lawrence as proleptic of, and a guide for, modern ecocritical thinking, the topic of the human treatment of animals requires him to be presented as an illuminating case study of contradiction. On the one hand Lawrence was stolidly omnivore, and mocked contemporary vegetarianism; on the other his work frequently manifests revulsion from meat-eating, a reluctance to kill and regret at others’ killing of animals, ridicule of the supposed connection between masculinity and this activity, disgust at cruelty to animals, and a flat ontology which de-objectivises animals and places them on a level with humans. He several times denies most people the right to use any animal products whatsoever. This chapter is the first to consider Lawrence's attitudes towards animal exploitation across his entire oeuvre, and to identify the precise nature of his contradictions on this topic (as distinct from his more discussed contradictions on many others). It is concluded that Lawrence experienced cognitive dissonance on this topic; that he repeatedly felt the need to justify human consumption of animals; and that his justificatory arguments fail on their own terms as well as in relation to his countervailing insights. Finally the chapter considers what light this contradiction sheds on the present, now that the stakes of human exploitation of nonhuman animals have been raised to the point that animal agriculture is implicated in climate change, and anthropogenic zoonotic viruses threaten the very human dominion that engenders them. It is concluded that Lawrence's contradictions are widely echoed today, yet that, for all their contrary motions, his works offer powerful examples of respect for the animal other, and of inter-species utopianism, without which veganism – a movement which offers its own, powerful means of averting the worst possible outcomes of the Anthropocene – has no hope and no direction.

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