SHORT STORY REVIEW D H LAWRENCE THE BLIND MAN 1922

The story of a couple living on a farm in the aftermath years to WW1, and the struggle they undergo in maintaining their marriage.

Maurice is happy despite being blind, due to wartime wounds received in Flanders. He is perfectly able to work the farm, milk cows, feed pigs, etc, despite his condition. His relationship with Isabel keeps him happy and she seems contented too, but as the years pass, he sinks into depressive states and despair that begin to affect her joy too.

Their first child died soon after being born, while Maurice had still been away fighting, and Isabel is pregnant again, hoping her second infant will be OK, pinning all hope of the child rekindling the magic that is wearing thin between herself and Maurice.

Matters reach boiling point, weeks before Isabel is due to go into labour, when Isabel receives letters from a former admirer, Bertie, actually a distant relative.

Maurice has met Bertie and dislikes him intensely, and Isabel had found it prudent to stop Bertie from visiting her while her husband was on duty overseas.  Now with Bertie writing to her again, she shares the letters with her husband who surprises her by inviting Bertie to come and visit them.

Maurice is depicted as seeing more clearly than Isabel in all but eyesight. She struggles to find him in a dark barn in a particularly eyrie and atmospheric encounter, but he is able to guide her from the light-less barn when it might be expected for her to lead him. It is a stormy night and they are worried that Bertie’s journey from Scotland will be rough and dangerous.

He arrives safely and initially the meeting with the married couple is polite, cordial but intense. Eventually, Maurice goes out to the barn, hoping to meet a fellow farmer, and to leave Bertie & Isabel alone to talk privately. Isabel quickly starts to worry about her husband and Bertie goes out into the cold windy night to find him. The men meet in the barn, where Maurice obliges on Bertie to touch his dead eyes and the scar tissue that disfigures his face. He bonds Bertie in friendship and the men go back to see Isabel, with Bertie fully aware of who is the boss. He has been totally dominated by Maurice.

We get little insight into Isabel’s sense of the shift in the relationship between the men, and with her pregnancy and Maurice’s melancholia still affecting matters; the story feels like a chapter from an unfinished work. It leaves the reader wanting more of the story but no more is offered.

Arthur Chappell

 The full text of The Blind Man – http://www.online-literature.com/dh_lawrence/england-my-england/3/