In order to understand Lawrence's writing, first of all we must talk about the changes that were taking place in Literature at the time he lived in and in the previous years.

     At the end of the XIX century, the basis that allowed the Romanticism and the Victorian Novel in Great Britain had come to an end. The last years of the century are quite difficult years for Literature. The Empire had come to its end and this causes a change in the English life. The traditional agricultura life, which served as backgroung for the victorian novel, being the ultimate perspective and an example of moral solidness contrasting with the urban and industrial immoralities, is changing now. In the last thirty years of the century agriculture decreases in importance in favour of industry. Farmers are no longer autosufficient but enter the general wheel of monwy and then, the image of the gentleman with his own means, living in a country mansion concludes as the model of the life of the spirit. The country is going to be seen as a week-end or as a holiday, the intelect remaining in the hands of the mercantile and wage-earning world.

     The relationship between writer and society becomes more problematic. In narrative, the pact in which the novel was based, accorcing to which the writer had to accept without any discussion the limits imposed by the hypocrisy of the dominant classed, is finished. Then, the writer, and artists in general, begin a new period in which there's a tendency to the representation of the objective reality.

     But Realism will change at the turn of the century into Modernism and this is the context where we find D.H. Lawrence. Due to the change in the understanding of the world in the modern age in which the established values are lost, reality is no longer an objective thing but depends strongly on subjectivity. At this time the novel is the most important literary form because it is the easiest way to show the social, politic and economic situation entertainin the people at the same time.

     Experimentation in narrative will be the main characteristic of this period, the aim of creating something new will be in the mind of the most of the writers. However, D. H. Lawrence, as some other few writers, such as E. M. Forster, is not interestied in formal experimentation, in the stream of consciousness technique that dominates the modernist narrative. Lawrence, from the formal point of vie, is a traditional writer. He tries to explore the psychology of his characters but in a traditional way. He wants to present the character almost from his subconscious, showing his instincts and trying to reach the deepest and more intimate of the character. We have to bear in mind that this is the time of Freud, psycoanalysis, etc, what will have a strong influence on Lawrence.

     His writing stands out as a vitalist reaction against the decadent Realism developed at the end of the XIX century and beginning of the XX century.

     In spite of the fact that there is not technical innovation in his work he is included in the Modernist movement due to his use of the Freudian psychology, due to his attemp to get inside this characters.
 

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