This paper examines gender issues in D. H. Lawrence’s short stories «New Eve and Old Adam», «England, My England», «Sun», «The Woman Who Rode Away», «Tickets, Please», «Monkey Nuts», «Samson and Delilah» and «In Love» which represent the different periods of his work. Changes that took place in the first decade of the 20th century led to a change in personal relationships and the relationship between a man and a woman. Switches of the traditional social roles of a man and a woman are artistically represented in Lawrence’s short prose. The paper is focused on how Lawrence destroyed gender stereotypes, certain rules and conventional boundaries regarding acceptable and established relationships between a man and a woman in the Victorian era. His delicate psychologism and writing craft depict a sensuality and eroticism of the man-woman relationship which was unusual for the English literature of the turn of the century. Lawrence showed how the First World war had affected people’s lives and their attitude towards each other, and how consequences of the war caused a conflict between a man and a woman. Analysed stories are about families living in different conditions and going through different situations, but in each story there are confrontation, emotional tension and real battles between men and women, and a violation of traditional gender roles. It shows what a fine line there is between hatred and love which seem to be woven into one whole. Victorian morality was receding but the new social roles of men and women had not yet been worked out. This situation remained as a characteristic one, apparently, for the entire first half of the 20th century. Sometimes, these new, not yet codified relationships between a man and a woman were defined as a ‘war of the sexes’, but it was not a war aimed at the victory by side but a search for that space in which the personality could be realized. This paper looks at the writer’s emphasis on the psychological aspects of man-woman relationships. The themes in the short stories were not new. What was new was the insight, sophistication and psychologism they were illuminated with. The sensual images of protagonists and the means of their depiction, and the technique of reflecting the subconscious of the characters were new and unusual for most of Lawrence’s readers and contemporaries.
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