INTERTEXTUAL FUNCTIONS OF PORTRAIT DESCRIPTIONS IN D. H. LAWRENCE’S WOMEN IN LOVE

Abstract

This article analyzes the intertextual roles of portrait descriptions in D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love (1920), emphasizing how the novel’s verbal “portraits” engage cultural memory, visual-art traditions, and conflicting ideological narratives within modernity. The study posits that portrait description functions as a form of intermedial writing, wherein the narrative employs painterly, sculptural, and photographic perspectives. It contends that Lawrence utilizes portraiture not primarily to solidify character identity, but to orchestrate conflicts between surface and depth, social visibility and inner existence, as well as ethical presence and objectification. The article demonstrates that Lawrence’s portraits function as intertexts that reference and transform Victorian social portraiture, aestheticist “art for art’s sake” sensibilities, and modernist fragmentation through meticulous analysis of recurring descriptive elements—faces, posture, clothing, and the charged dynamics of observation. The analysis shows that portrait descriptions can be used to tell stories: they can predict relational violence, set up power dynamics in conversation, and show how hard it is to stop someone from becoming an image. The article concludes that Lawrence's portraiture is an essential modernist method for revealing the fluidity of identity and the ethical dangers inherent in perception.