'Give the lie to...'?

[nelson13]

In that same story, there is a line I can't understand and I hope you can help me:

They never forgot that it was death, and the touch of the man's dead body gave them strange emotions, different in each of the women; a great dread possessed them both, the mother felt the lie was given to her womb, she was denied; the wife felt the utter isolation of the human soul, the child within her was a weight apart from her.

Idioms
[h=4]give the lie to something (formal): to show that something is not true

eg These new figures give the lie to the belief that unemployment is going down

[/h]But this time OALD is useless; I find DH Lawrence's meaning unintelligible.

If in the examination, I would say it means the mother doesn't feel there is an unborn child in her womb.

Could anyone help me out?

 

[5jj]

As this question is completely unrelated to the question in the other thread, I have moved it to a new thread.

 

[nelson13]

Thank you for the moving.

Is there anyone who can help me?

 

[5jj]

The mother, seeing her dead son, felt that her womb, in which the son had been carried, had somehow been shown to be untrue, unfaithful.

 

[BobK]

D. H. Lawrence was a pretty creative user of language. At first I thought this was an OCR-generated typo for 'word'.

But I think Lawrence did mean womb. I wouldn't agree with 5jj's interpretation though; I don't think it's a question of fidelity (being disloyal or untrue). In Lawrence's view there was a truth, a unique value, to having a womb (all right, being a woman). The mother felt cheated - children should mourn dead parents, not the other way round..

But I see from the context that there's another issue; the pregnancy. Maybe my 'mother' idea is wrong, and she just felt that her child-to-be's not having a living father was wrong (a contravention of that truth I mentioned).

b

 

[nelson13]

D. H. Lawrence was a pretty creative user of language. At first I thought this was an OCR-generated typo for 'word'.

But I think Lawrence did mean womb. I wouldn't agree with 5jj's interpretation though; I don't think it's a question of fidelity (being disloyal or untrue). In Lawrence's view there was a truth, a unique value, to having a womb (all right, being a woman). The mother felt cheated - children should mourn dead parents, not the other way round..

But I see from the context that there's another issue; the pregnancy. Maybe my 'mother' idea is wrong, and she just felt that her child-to-be's not having a living father was wrong (a contravention of that truth I mentioned).

b

Thank you very much.

For the red words, do you mean Annie and John, the children?

 

[Tdol]

All going well, children will outlive their parents- if parents outlive their children, then we're looking at premature death. It applies to everybody- parents are older than their children.