Studies in Classic American Literature — Reading Companion

A Voice That Refuses to Be Academic

Lawrence’s prose in this book is deliberately anti-academic. He uses rhetorical questions, exclamations, and colloquial asides: "All right, Americans, let's see you set about it. Go on then, let the precious cat out of the bag." He invents a mock-Latin catechism—"Ubi est ille Toad-in-the-Hole?"—to parody the search for an authentic American identity. The writing is performative, as if Lawrence is speaking directly to the reader, sometimes hectoring, sometimes cajoling. He does not build arguments step by step; instead, he makes abrupt, aphoristic claims: "The furthest frenzies of French modernism or futurism have not yet reached the pitch of extreme consciousness that Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, Whitman reached." This style can feel exhilarating or exhausting, but it never sounds like a lecture.

The American Writer as a Creature on the Verge

Lawrence repeatedly describes American literature as having "come to a real verge" or "reached a limit." He contrasts the "old people"—Hawthorne, Poe, Dana, Melville, Whitman—with European modernists, arguing that the Americans were already at an extreme of consciousness without trying. This framing is not historical or biographical; it is a claim about the psychological intensity of the work. Lawrence treats each author as a case study in a kind of spiritual crisis. In his discussion of The Scarlet Letter, he calls Hester Prynne "a devil" and writes of her "revenge" against man, using the language of demonology and sexual conflict. He does not argue for this interpretation so much as assert it, building his case through repetition and rhetorical force.

Recurring Preoccupations: Women, Belief, and the Body

Throughout the excerpts, Lawrence returns to a set of linked ideas: the failure of male belief, the consequent devilishness of women, and the need for a renewed "submissiveness to the dark, phallic principle." He writes that "if a woman doesn't believe in a man, she believes, essentially, in nothing. She becomes, willy-nilly, a devil." This is not a detached critical observation; it is a provocation. Lawrence reads Hester Prynne as a type of the modern woman, and he predicts a future of polygamy and "half-oriental womanhood." These passages reveal Lawrence’s own system of thought—his investment in a kind of primal, pre-conscious vitality—as much as they illuminate Hawthorne’s novel. The reader must decide how much of this is insight and how much is projection.

Lawrence’s Studies rewards readers who enjoy a critic who is willing to be wrong, outrageous, and unforgettable. The book is best approached not as a source of settled judgments but as a performance—a series of encounters in which Lawrence’s own obsessions are laid bare. Readers may find themselves arguing with him on every page, but that is precisely the point. The book demands a response, not passive acceptance.

Rereading Studies in Classic American Literature, I keep returning to Lawrence’s fury at how Americans invent themselves—the self as a performance, a survival trick. It made me think of that old serial, The movie boys in peril — Context and Discussion, where boys act their way through dangers. Strange, how the same anxious posing shows up in penny dreadfuls and high-minded essays alike.