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The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd
A Drama in Three Acts
D. H. Lawrence
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eBook - ePub
The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd
A Drama in Three Acts
D. H. Lawrence
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About This Book
The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd, written immediately after Sons and Lovers, is one of D. H. Lawrence's most significant early works. The play, Lawrence's first, is the alter ego of the story "Odour of Chrysanthemums" and, like the short story, deals with a catastrophe in the lives of a coal mining family. Drawing upon the intensity of events that unfold in the miner's kitchen, the play explores a marriage bowed under the weight of a husband's drinking and infidelity and peers into the strange, burgeoning relationship between the neglected wife, Mrs. Holroyd, and the young electrician in whom she seeks emotional refuge. First published in 1914, The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd is a bare tracing of the ways in which a marriage has gone wrong.
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Topic
LiteraturSubtopic
Britisches DramaTHE WIDOWING OF MRS. HOLROYD
THE FIRST ACT
SCENE I
The kitchen of a miner’s small cottage. On the left is the fireplace, with a deep, full red fire. At the back is a white-curtained window, and beside it the outer door of the room. On the right, two white wooden stairs intrude into the kitchen below the closed stair-foot door. On the left, another door.
The room is furnished with a chintz-backed sofa under the window, a glass-knobbed painted dresser on the right, and in the centre, toward the fire, a table with a red and blue check tablecloth. On one side of the hearth is a wooden rocking-chair, on the other an armchair of round staves. An unlighted copper-shaded lamp hangs from the raftered ceiling. It is dark twilight, with the room full of warm fireglow. A woman enters from the outer door. As she leaves the door open behind her, the colliery rail can be seen not far from the threshold, and, away back, the headstocks of a pit.
The woman is tall and voluptuously built. She carries a basket heaped full of washing, which she has just taken from the clotheslines outside. Setting down the basket heavily, she feels among the clothes. She lifts out a white heap of sheets and other linen, setting it on the table; then she takes a woollen shirt in her hand.
MRS. HOLROYD (aloud, to herself)
You know they ’re not dry even now, though it ’s been as fine as it has. (She spreads the shirt on the back of her rocking-chair, which she turns to the fire)
VOICE (calling from outside)
Well, have you got them dry?
[Mrs. Holroyd starts up, turns and flings her hand in the direction of the open door, where appears a man in blue overalls, swarfed and greased. He carries a dinner-basket.
MRS. HOLROYD
You — you — I don’t know what to call you! The idea of shouting at me like that — like the Evil One out of the darkness!
BLACKMORE
I ought to have remembered your tender nerves. Shall I come in?
MRS. HOLROYD
No — not for your impudence. But you ’re late, are n’t you?
BLACKMORE
It ’s only just gone six. We electricians, you know, we ’re the gentlemen on a mine: ours is gentlemen’s work. But I ’ll bet Charles Holroyd was home before four.
MRS. HOLROYD (bitterly)
Ay, and gone again before five.
BLACKMORE
But mine ’s a lad’s job, and I do nothing! — Where ’s he gone?
MRS. HOLROYD (contemptuously)
Dunno! He ’d got a game on somewhere — toffed himself up to the nines, and skedaddled off as brisk as a turkey-cock. (She smirks in front of the mirror hanging on the chimney-piece, in imitation of a man brushing his hair and moustache and admiring himself)
BLACKMORE
Though turkey-cocks are n’t brisk as a rule. Children playing?
MRS. HOLROYD (recovering herself, coldly)
Yes. And they ought to be in. (She continues placing the flannel garments before the fire, on the fender and on chair-backs, till the stove is hedged in with a steaming fence; then she takes a sheet in a bundle from the table, and going up to Blackmore, who stands watching her, says) Here, take hold, and help me fold it.
BLACKMORE
I shall swarf it up.
MRS. HOLROYD (snatching back the sheet)
Oh, you ’re as tiresome as everybody else.
BLACKMORE (putting down his basket and moving to door on right)
Well, I can soon wash my hands.
MRS. HOLROYD (ceasing to flap and fold pillowcases)
That roller-towel ’s ever so dirty. I ’ll get you another. (She goes to a drawer in the dresser, and then back toward the scullery, where is a sound of wa...