Exploring Culture and Disengagement in the Twentieth Century through “Sons and Lovers” and “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit”
By Welisarage Onila Fernando Profound social transformations characterized the twentieth century. The era was shaped by industrial growth, the ruins of war, changing gender and family dynamics, and eventually, heated discussions surrounding faith, sexuality, and identity. Literature did not merely reflect these changes but actively interrogated them, questioning cultural authority and suggesting ways individuals might resist or detach themselves from its pressures. D.H. Lawrence’s “Sons and Lovers” (1913) and Jeanette Winterson’s “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit” (1985) confront these issues with striking intensity. Although written in very different contexts, D.H. Lawrence in the world of early industrial England and Jeanette Winterson within a late twentieth-century Pentecostal community, both works grapple with the intertwined themes of culture and disengagement. In D.H. Lawrence’s novel, culture emerges as the entanglement of class constraints, industrial labor and matern...