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D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
LAWRENCE
Peter Faulkner, Modernism (London and New York, Routledge, 1993) 3-4.
work and absolve him from any moral guilt. I translate him clumsily, and his
Italian is obfuscated and I dont care about physiology of matter but
somehow that which is physic non-human, in humanity, is more interesting
to me than the old-fashioned human element which causes one to conceive a
character in a certain moral scheme and make him consistent. The certain moral
scheme is what I object to.3 Lawrence saw his job as a novelist as above all
to make his contemporaries aware of themselves, of the real nature of their
emotional lives, of their needs and desires.4
Rather than subordinating his characters to the old-fashioned convention
of plot, although he was one of the few modernists who never rejected plot
completely, Lawrence preferred to write about people discovering themselves,
and each other, and about the sense of opposition they experienced, particularly
in love and marriage.5 Dwelling upon a traditional institution, that of marriage,
and a generally human feeling, love, Lawrence explicitly states his interest in
the self and the definition of the self against the other. The investigation of
self and otherness in a state of permanent, but also illuminating, conflict is the
reason for Lawrences opting for the theme of sexuality. Superficially
considered, this theme has constantly generated negative evaluations of his
work, especially among his contemporaries, in terms of morality. No other
modernist writer inflicted so much anger upon his contemporary audience and
critics as Lawrence did. The formal shock of the use of the stream of
consciousness technique by modernist writers could never parallel the moral
shock that Lawrence consciously exposed his readers to. Yet, just as most
modernists would not sacrifice the exactingness of their art to a wider
popularity, Lawrence obstinately stuck to the theme of sexuality as the
greatest of these arenas of conflict; the area of our lives in which our most
anxious and demanding feelings are directed towards another human being, to
be answered or rejected.6 He is not, however, attracted to the idea of sexuality
in itself. He simply considers it the proper medium for expressing the integrity
of the self.
3
quoted in Malcolm Bradbury, The Modern British Novel (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1993)
120.
8
quoted in Christopher Gillie, op. cit, 49-50.
Lawrence analysing the environment of the characters and their roles in society.
However, this image is nothing but a pretext for Lawrences investigating the
essence of the human self, be it modern or not.
If we consider Women in Love, which is, as a matter of fact,
acknowledged as Lawrences most modernist novel, we discover that the social
roles assigned to the characters are only masks behind which the individuals
innermost, even primitive, drives and impulses are hidden. Rupert Birkin is
presented as a too little verisimilar Inspector of Schools, although his
connection with the education system generates interesting discussions in the
novel as to the modern perspective on education. Gerald Crich fails to represent
the industrialist at the beginning of the twentieth century, in spite of all the
discussions about mines, mining and technological progress that his social
position encourages. The same keeps valid both for the central feminine
characters, Ursula and Gudrun, and for the secondary one, whose association
with ideas representative of the age decadence, aestheticism, education,
religion is obviously attracting, but certainly little relevant to Lawrences
attempt to investigate the self.
D.H. Lawrence insisted that he was going a stratum deeper than anyone
else had ever gone and going deeper meant abandoning the old stable ego,
the traditional concept of character.9 Against the background of the sterile
modern life, Lawrence looks for the hidden energies in each and every
individual, which makes us see his characters not as exponents of various social
categories, but all as one and similar receptacle of emotions and repressed
impulses that, by confrontation with the other, can spring to the surface. There
is no essential difference between Gudrun and Ursula in their ability and
wilfulness to submit to the vitalistic energies buried in them, although there
could be little, if any, similarity between them when socially defined and
censured.
Nevertheless, Gudrun, with her arms outspread and her face uplifted, went
in a strange and palpitating dance towards the cattle, lifting her body
towards them as if in a spell, her feet pulsing as if in some little frenzy of
9
David Trotter, The Modernist Novel, The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, ed. Michael
Levenson (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999) 76.
reassuring for those readers for whom the title meant more than they were
ready or prepared to accept.
The illusion of realism is reinforced when the characters are introduced,
initially through the direct characterisation offered from the perspective of the
same omniscient narrator we identify behind the presentation of the setting.
[Mrs. Morel] was thirty-one years old, and had been married eight years. A
rather small woman, of delicate mould but resolute bearing, she shrank from
the first contact with the Bottoms women. She came down in the July, and in
the September expected her third baby. (9)
say that the formal conventionality of Lawrences novels is only the mask he
needed in order to have his new philosophy of life accepted.
Paul did not realise William was dead, it was impossible with such a bustle
going on. The puller-off swung the small truck on to the turn-table, another
man ran with it along the bank down the curving lines.
And William is dead, and my mothers in London, and what will she be
doing? the boy asked himself, as if it were a conundrum. (170)
Part One, Paul is defined within the environment in which he was born and
through the external relationships he establishes with the others. Part One is
just the beginning of the process of Pauls growing aware, of himself and of the
other. Paul is not capable yet of appropriately analysing himself. His feelings,
thoughts and emotions are far from being crystallised and so the character
cannot be granted the narrative responsibility of expressing them in his own
idiom. This explains why Lawrence decides to stick to the more conventional
mode of presenting consciousness, psycho-narration, only seldom combined
with the quoted interior monologue.
Part Two focuses on the making of Pauls identity, both as an individual
and as an artist. Paul is in search of his true self. He is in a constant process of
definition of the self, vacillating between sensuality and rationality. Paul learns
to know himself and tries to come to terms with himself through the very
special relation with his mother and through the love affairs he had with two
women of totally opposite disposition. The more aware of himself he becomes
in Part Two, the more freedom he is given as a narrative voice. He starts
thinking of himself and of the others, these mental processes being presented to
the reader under the more frequently used form of the narrated monologue. The
method adopted to present Pauls mind, in particular, in the guise of the
narrators words still point to the existence of two voices, but this time the
outer world is incorporated into the inner. The reader has a less obviously
mediated access to the figural consciousness. Besides, by giving up plot almost
completely in Part Two, Lawrence smoothly transfers interest from the world
of outer events to the characters inner motions. Pauls increasing awareness of
himself and his increasing ability to express himself in words brings about,
from a narrative point of view, the silencing of the audible omniscient narrator
of Part One. The narrator no longer assumes a position of superiority, his
voice becomes equal in intensity with the characters, whose consciousness
comes into prominence and becomes transparent for the reader.
He was walking to the station another mile! The train was near
Nottingham. Would it stop before the tunnels? But it did not matter; it would
get there before dinner-time. He was at Jordans. She would come in half an
hour. At any rate, she would be near. He had done the letters. She would be
there. Perhaps she had not come. He ran downstairs. Ah! He saw her
through the glass door. Her shoulders stooping a little to her work made him
feel he could not go forward, could not stand. He went in. He was pale,
nervous, awkward, and quite cold. Would she misunderstand him? He could
not write his real self with this shell. (371)
Ursula, said Gudrun, dont you really want to get married? Ursula laid
her embroidery in her lap and looked up. Her face was calm and
considerate.
I dont know, she replied. It depends how you mean.(19)
The opening paragraph and the initial verbal exchange between the two
women encapsulate the sense of a value system whose stability the novel will
place under question. In their fathers house, which suggests the patriarchal
Victorian society with all the attention it accorded to family, the two women are
performing activities that indicate their middle-class origin and are discussing
about an institution, that of marriage, incontestably central to the Victorian
moral landscape. The sense of stability and peacefulness conveyed by the
opening lines largely depends on the point of view from which the story is
narrated. Omniscience is seen as the best narrative solution for the expression
of ideas such as those Lawrence proposed in the beginning of Women in Love.
The only sentence that the experienced reader might take as a warning as to
what narrative mode Lawrence is to adopt comes almost unnoticed in the end
of the first paragraph. They were mostly silent, talking as their thoughts
strayed through their minds. Besides, Ursulas ambiguously formulated
answer It depends how you mean casts doubt on the very truths the text
seems to assert. It is as if, after creating a certain horizon of expectations in his
reader, Lawrence decided to play upon it, with a view to making his reader
assume the responsibility of refreshing his perception of world and fiction.
Set in the apparently settled environment of provincial England, Women
in Love touches on issues that are reminiscent of the stable Victorian value
system and institutions: marriage, religion, education, family. Up to this point
Lawrences relation to modernism remains problematical. The reader seems to
be invited to continue his reading comfortably relying on his already acquired
knowledge of the conventions of realism. The characters dialogise in a by now
established Jamesian manner, the omniscient narrator controlling and
withdrawing from the narrative at various times.
Yet, shortly after having created the illusion of solid realism, Lawrence
starts formulating his standpoint as a modernist writer. He begins to subtly
investigate his characters consciousness, adopting the technique of the narrated
monologue. This being a form of rendering the characters thoughts under the
guise of the narrators words, the plunge into the characters mind is far from
being abrupt. The combination of narrated monologue and psycho-narration
increases even more the effect of continuity between the outer world and the
inner world due to the coincidence of person and tense between the two
methods. It is not surprising therefore that, for most readers, the loosening of
the omniscient narrators control and the passage from the outer world to the
characters consciousness may even remain unnoticed.
Gudrun went on her way half dazed. If this were human life, if these were
human beings, living in a complete world, then what was her own world,
outside? She was aware of her grass-green stockings, her large grass-green
velour hat, her full soft coat, of a strong blue colour. And she felt as if she
were treading in the air, quite unstable, her heart was contracted, as if at any
minute she might be precipitated to the ground. She was afraid.(24)
maleness, like a young, good-humoured, smiling wolf, did not blind her to
the significant, sinister stillness in his bearing, the lurking danger of his
unsubdued temper.[] And then she [Gudrun] experienced a keen
paroxysm, a transport, as if she had made some incredible discovery, known
to nobody else on earth. A strange transport took possession of her, all her
veins were in a paroxysm of violent sensation. (27)
see Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, op. cit., vol. 1, 107-117.
invited to derive profit from seeing both main and central characters as partial
definitions of the modern spirit and to integrate these fragments into a holistic
view of the individual as body and soul, as individuality and social being.
Constructed in a modernist manner, which technically involves a subtle
combination of conventional and innovative elements, Women in Love
constitutes itself into a novel focusing on the modern spirit. All the anxieties
and certainties of the modern individual at the beginning of the twentieth
century are embodied in the mosaic of main and secondary characters of the
novel. It may be asserted that the only central character of Women in Love is the
modern individual, socially and individually perceived, whose identity is built
up out of the fragmentary, sometimes unilateral identities of the various
characters of the novel.