SOURCE: McCollum, Laurie. “Ritual Sacrifice in ‘The Woman Who Rode Away’: A Girardian Reading.” In D. H. Lawrence: New Worlds, edited by Keith Cushman and Earl G. Ingersoll, pp. 230-42. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003.

In the following essay, McCollum applies René Girard's theories of cultural anthropology, particularly the practice of ritual sacrifice, to Lawrence's “The Woman Who Rode Away.”

D. H. Lawrence's obsession with the trope of sacrifice begins in his earliest works but is enacted most directly in “The Woman Who Rode Away.” In this short story, where the crisis of sexuality doubles as the crisis of civilization, Lawrence focuses on related concerns: the figure of the modern woman that is apparent in so much of his work, and sacrifice as an integral part of cultural regeneration. These concepts are particularly important as they impinge on Lawrence's views of women. In “The Woman Who...