Aaron's Rod by D.H. Lawrence [PDF]

Information: Aaron's Rod

• Author: D.H. Lawrence
• Publication Date: 1922
• Main Characters:
  • Aaron Sisson: A coal mine checkweighman and talented flautist who abandons his family to pursue an undefined freedom across England and Italy
  • Rawdon Lilly: A writer and intellectual who befriends Aaron in London, nurses him through illness, and becomes his philosophical guide on questions of power and submission
  • Lottie Sisson: Aaron's wife, left behind with their two daughters, representing the domestic world Aaron feels compelled to escape
  • Marchesa del Torre: An aristocratic woman in Florence with whom Aaron has an affair, embodying the allure and emptiness of European high society
• Brief Summary: Aaron Sisson is a checkweighman at a coal mine in the English Midlands and a gifted amateur flautist. On Christmas Eve, he walks out on his wife Lottie and their two daughters without explanation. He makes his way to London, where he falls ill and is nursed back to health by Rawdon Lilly, a writer and thinker with strong opinions about power and individuality. Once recovered, Aaron travels to Italy, moving through Florence's intellectual circles, debating politics and philosophy, and beginning an affair with an aristocratic woman. The novel ends abruptly when an explosion in a public square destroys his flute, leaving Aaron stripped of the one thing that defined him.
• Thematic Analysis: The novel digs into male restlessness and the tension between personal freedom and domestic responsibility. Lawrence explores ideas about power, leadership, and submission between men, touching on themes that feel surprisingly modern. The destruction of Aaron's flute at the end symbolizes the collapse of individual identity under the pressure of a chaotic, post-war world.
• Historical Context: Lawrence began writing "Aaron's Rod" in 1918 during the final months of World War I and completed it in 1921. The novel reflects the deep disillusionment of the post-war period, when old social structures were crumbling across Europe. Published in 1922, it appeared the same year as Joyce's "Ulysses" and Eliot's "The Waste Land," making it part of a watershed moment in modernist literature.