The Prussian officer - the Importance of Subconscious in D.H. Lawrence’s Short Story

Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai, Cluj Napoca

Facultatea de Litere

Practical course

Marian Ágnes, 2nd  year

English-Comparative Literature

        The importance of subconscious in D.H. Lawrence’s short story

                                          The Prussian Officer

This essay analyses D.H. Lawrence’s short story The Prussian Officer. Lawrence presents in his text the story of an officer and his orderly and illustrates their strange relationship by creating a tensioned atmosphere. This short story is considered representative for modernist short fiction by its theme and issues, not by its type of narrative due to the fact that in this case Lawrence chooses a more traditional style of writing with an omniscient narrator and this is not a particularity of modernism.^[1]A main influence in creating the story was Lawrence’s interest in the human subconscious. “The officer’s subconscious homoerotic desire for his orderly manifests through his perverse demonstrations of power. The story gives us an insight into the relationship between the human subconscious and conscious self, and how one's rationale can repress and ultimately destroy this relationship.”^[2]

In the introduction we have the opportunity to meet the main characters: a Prussian Officer and his orderly. Their portrayal is highly contrastive.  The officer “was a tall man of about forty, grey at the temples. He had a handsome, finely knit figure, and was one of the best horsemen in the West [...] The Captain had reddish-brown, stiff hair, that he wore short upon his skull. His moustache was also cut short and bristly over a full, brutal mouth. His face was rather rugged, the cheeks thin. […]He was a Prussian aristocrat, haughty and overbearing. […]He had never married: his position did not allow of it, and no woman had ever moved him to it.” (PO, p.2). The fact that for the first time when the officer is mentioned he is riding a horse stresses the image of power: “And he saw the fine figure of the Captain wheeling on horseback at the farm-house ahead. The orderly felt he was connected with that figure moving so suddenly on horseback: he followed it like a shadow” (PO, p.1). Taking into account these characteristics we can say that the Officer has Apollonian values. The orderly on the other hand has Dionysian values, he is the officer’s polar opposite in all significant respects.^[3] “The orderly was a youth of about twenty-two, of medium height, and well built. He had strong, heavy limbs, was swarthy, with a soft, black, young moustache. There was something altogether warm and young about him. He had firmly marked eyebrows over dark, expressionless eyes that seemed never to have thought, only to have received life direct through his senses, and acted straight from instinct.” (PO, p.2). It is very strange that in his description Lawrence mentions the eyebrows because this is something we usually notice in women, this is a feminized feature. An interesting fact is that the characters names are not mentioned except when the officer calls his orderly Schöner, which in German means more beautiful.

The orderly’s presence effects the officer’s unconscious^[4]: “Gradually the officer had become aware of his servant’s young, vigorous, unconscious presence about him” (PO, p.2). Initially the officer’s eyes were “always flashing with cold fire” but now the presence of his orderly was “like a warm flame upon the older man’s tense, rigid body. […] And this irritated the Prussian. He did not choose to be touched into life by his servant.” (PO, p.2). According to Anna Grmelova’s essay on The Prussian Officer the tension arises and the conflict is fought entirely on the unconscious level- a level which is normally beyond the military province.

A key moment is the spilling of wine, Lawrence says that: “influence of the young soldier’s being had penetrated through the officer’s stiffened discipline, and perturbed the man in him”. From now on the readers are witnessing the accumulation of anger and hatred in the soul of the orderly due to the fact that the Officer shows violent signs of jealousy over his relationship with a woman: “But in spite of himself the hate grew, responsive to the officer’s passion.” (PO, p.4),“The Captain could not regain his neutrality of feeling towards his orderly. Nor could he leave the man alone. In spite of himself, he watched him, gave him sharp orders, tried to take up as much of his time as possible.” (PO, p.3).The tension between them grew slowly, the officer knew exactly that his servant would soon be free and he felt irritated because of this: “He could not rest when the soldier was away and when he was present, he glared at him with tormented eyes.[…]The young soldier only grew more mute and expressionless” (PO, p.4). The Officer after causing pain to his orderly feels perverse pleasure, while the orderly's subconscious consumes his conscious experience^[5]:”Once he flung a heavy military glove into the young soldier’s face. Then he had the satisfaction of seeing the black eyes flare up into his own, like a blaze when straw is thrown on a fire. And he had laughed with a little tremor and a sneer.” After several abuse and insult the orderlys fury was unbearable therefore finally the force of his subconscious leads him to murder, he extinguishes the life of his Officer and by this from a man whose “instinct was to avoid personal contact, even definite hate” (PO, p.4) has become comparable with the aggressive state of the Officer: “a man of passionate temper” (PO, p.3)^[6]. Even before this it is mentioned that with every single confrontation the orderly feels more and more alone and isolated.^[7] After the murder the orderly feels a huge relief for a moment but he goes mad and this causes his death: “In his heart he was satisfied. He had hated the face of the Captain. It was extinguished now. There was a heavy relief in the orderly’s soul. That was as it should be.” (PO, p.12), “He came to with a further ache of exhaustion. There was the pain in his head, and the horrible sickness, and his inability to move […] But now he had got beyond himself.” (PO, p.14), “And the mere delirium of sickness and fever went on inside him — his brain opening and shutting like the night” (PO, p.15).