The novel is set in Nethermere (fictional name for real-life Eastwood) and is narrated by Cyril Beardsall, whose sister Laetitia (Lettie) is involved in a love triangle with two young men, George and Leslie Temple.

[1] According to the biographer Brenda Maddox, The White Peacock received generally positive reviews in The Observer, The Morning Post, and The Daily News.

[3] Maddox writes in that The White Peacock reflects the influence of the German philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, and that its theme is "that Christianity has alienated humankind from nature and destroyed pagan wisdom".

Maddox describes it as "an uneven early work obscured by Lawrence's later books", but praises it for its "beauty and power" and for being "rich in images of a nature red in tooth and claw."

She argues that while Lawrence's works have been seen as Freudian, the "primitive rage against mothers" in The White Peacock better fits the ideas of the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein.