D.H. Lawrence – Women in Love, May 21, 2021

 

Women in Love (first edition cover)

Women in Love was the sequel to the novel The Rainbow about the Brangwen sisters, Ursula and Gudrun, living in the Midlands (the central belt of England above London) in the 1910s. Ursula is a schoolteacher who meets school inspector Rupert Birkin. Gudrun, a painter recently moved from London, runs across Gerald Crich, rich heir to a coal-mine. The four of them become friends. Ursula and Birkin begin a friendship with romantic overtones, while Gudrun and Gerald eventually have a love affair.

Mechanisation of coal-mines by Gerald Crich

Apart from telling a story, the author is at pains to set forth the philosophy of each character at some length: how the colliery was mechanised to improve productivity, the nature of knowledge, the transcendence of love, what lies beyond death, and so on. It is as though the private diaries of D.H.Lawrence have spilled over into the novel. His vocabulary too is different from that of authors of the early nineteenth century. The nearest he comes to talking of nudity and love-making is ‘suave loins of darkness.’ Take this rapturous passage:

Oh, and the beauty of the subjection of his loins, white and dimly luminous as he climbed over the side of the boat, made her want to die, to die … his back rounded and soft—ah, this was too much for her, too final a vision. She knew it, and it was fatal. The terrible hopelessness of fate, and of beauty, such beauty!

The emotions of a character have large swings in a single conversation, starting with endearments and ending in expressions of hate and revulsion – the word hate is used 64 times. Electric charges often flow between people, and that technical idea is used 34 times to express the impassioned flow of feelings. Clearly DHL is magnifying ordinary feelings manyfold times in order to create drama, but the overuse of such words diminishes their effect.

Here are some word frequency statistics:

love (429), dark (371), death (169), hand (141), kiss (86), breast (38), electric (34), mystic (33), loins (21), hate, hatred (64)

The scenes are painted with a screenplay writer’s eye for detail, and a film director would have little trouble framing the important scenes cinematically. This is one reason the novel bulges; the second reason stems from all those mini-dissertations on subjects by people like Rupert Birkin, and later the Dresden sculptor, Loerke, whom Gudrun meets in the Tyrolean Alps. We not only get to picture them from the descriptions of their body, but we get to know their interior life from these tutorials on various subjects they expatiate upon.

Gerald Crich urges his mare to face the train

Gudrun & Ursula watch in horror as Gerald Crich urges his horse to confront the train

One of the scenes that would dismay any reader is that of Gerald Crich urging his nervous mare to stand still as the goods train thunders past, screeching, at a level crossing. He uses the whip and spurs with overmastering force, to the point the horse’s flanks start bleeding. It’s a piece of animal abuse that should have been far more offensive than the tepid ‘obscenity’ that caused the novel to be banned in the UK for a decade. 

June 25 has been fixed as the date for the next session, Poetry, with no specific theme.

Full Account of the Reading on May 21, 2021

D.H. Lawrence – Photo by Hulton Archive

D.H. Lawrence Brief Bio (by Pamela, taken from sources on the Web)

David Herbert Lawrence was one of the most versatile and influential writers in 20th century literature. He was born on September 11, 1885 at Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, Central England. He died of tuberculosis on March 2, 1930, at the age of 45. He was a writer and poet who belonged to the genre of early modernism and his works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation.

He is best known for his novels Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love and Lady Chatterley's Lover. In these novels, Lawrence explores the possibilities of life within an industrial setting. The Rainbow published in 1915, was banned because it was labelled obscene. Women in Love is a sequel to The Rainbow, which narrated the lives of several generations of the Brangwen family, who lived in the Midlands in England. Women In Love is the story of the two Brangwen sisters, Ursula and Gudrun, their lovers, Rupert Birkin and Gerald Crich, and the homoerotic attraction between the two men. There is an implicit identification between Rupert Birkin and Lawrence himself, in their estimation for art and their intense disdain for modern values and institutions.

Lawrence 's novels are written in a lyrical, sensuous, and often rhapsodic prose style that was sexually suggestive. As an example, here is a scene from the 1969 film of the novel in which Birkin describes the proper way to eat a fig (it is not in the novel, but the screenplay writer of the 1969 film has excerpted it from the  poem FIGS written by DHL):

The group are sitting in the garden having lunch and Birkin watches Ursula eat a fig and Rupert Birkin cannot hold back: 

The proper way to eat a fig in society, is to split it in four, holding it by the stump and open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist, honeyed, heavy petalled, four petalled, flower. Then, you throw away the skin, after you have taken off the blossom with your lips. But, the vulgar way, is just to put your mouth to the crack and take out the flesh in one bite. The fig is a very secretive fruit. The Italians vulgarly say it stands for the female part – the fig fruit. The fissure. The yoni. The wonderful, moist conductivity towards the centre. Involved. Inturned, one small way of access only, and this close-curtained from the light. Sap that smells strange on your fingers, that even goats won't taste it. And when the fig has kept her secret long enough, so it explodes, and you see through the fissure, the scarlet, and the fig is finished. The year is over. That's how the fig dies, showing her crimson through the purple slit. Like a wound, the exposure of her secret, on the open day. Like a prostitute, the bursten fig, making a show of her secret.”

His writings reflected his complex personality, in all of which the same project was adopted, i.e. to work out what life is and how we ought to live it.

His father, Arthur, was a miner, who was drunk quite often. His mother, Lydia, was disappointed in his father and encouraged the children to go beyond the limitations of their background. Bert (his earlier name), was a sickly bookish child, who won a scholarship at Nottingham High School. He had pneumonia and the care  given by his mother led to a close bonding. He joined Nottingham University and graduated in 1908. He spent a lot of time writing and learning about socialism. His mother died of cancer in 1910. His novel Sons and Lovers is in large part about his relationship to his mother.

Lawrence published his fifth novel Women in Love in 1920, after the World War I had ended, though he had started writing it in 1913. He was both influenced by and critical of Freudian psychoanalysis. His novels investigate Freudian concepts of the unconscious, repression, transference and the psychosexual development of the human.

Women in Love also draws much thematic inspiration from the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, and its critical perspective of modern European morality, the values of work over art, and the suppression of passionate and creative individual souls in the interest of collective productivity.

One of his quotes which Pamela liked is this –

Be still when you have nothing to say, when genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say and say it hot.

List of the Important Characters:

Ursula Brangwen

The older Brangwen sister, Ursula, is a schoolteacher. She is somewhat less worldly than her sister, Gudrun. She falls in love with Rupert Birkin after seeing him at the wedding of a sister of Gerald Crich at the beginning of the novel.

Gudrun Brangwen

The younger Brangwen sister has recently returned from art school study and work in London, where she spent time among the social elite. She falls for Gerald Crich upon seeing him at his sister’s wedding at the beginning of the novel.

Gerald Crich

The oldest son of Thomas Crich, he falls in love with Gudrun Brangwen. Gerald’s character is divided between a heroic, mythical soul of the past, and a keen modern brain pushing for technological advances in the  mining company owned by the Crich family.

Rupert Birkin

A country school inspector who falls in love with Ursula Brangwen. Birkin’s character can be loosely associated with D.H. Lawrence himself. He is a spirited character with passionate ideas about developing creative souls, but he also suffers many physical ailments and sickness.

Hermione Roddice

A friend of the Crich family, she is also Rupert Birkin’s sometime lover. She is in love with Birkin, and wants to subjugate herself to him completely.

Thomas Crich

The chief owner of mines in the region around Beldover. His character represents a bygone era of English industry, and a Christian morality based on beneficence toward the poor and workers.

Gopa, one of the two readers who selected the book, has given helpful summary of the book here. 

Pamela mentioned that the book has many interesting discussions. For example, at one point Hermione rhapsodises: “there can be no reason, no excuse for education, except the joy and beauty of knowledge in itself.” Then she says: “Vocational education isn’t education, it is the close of education.” Pamela agreed that vocational education is just skills training for a particular kind of job. These topics are not part of the story but they make the reader think, said, Pamela.

She fell in love with DHL’s style of writing and the words he used. In the passage she chose the two women who are interested in Birkin are bickering. KumKum sensed the homosexuality in the book, which is implied but not explicit and comes out most strongly in the nude wrestling scene.

Oliver Reed (Gerald Crich) and Alan Bates (Rupert Birkin) wrestle nude in Women in Love (1969)

Alan Bates as Rupert Birkin and Oliver Reed as Gerald Crich after the nude wrestling scene in Women in Love (1969)

Readers’ Passages

Geeta

On a train going to London, Birkin and Gerald Crich are conversing. Birkin asks:

“What do you live for?”

“What do I live for?” Crich repeated. “I suppose I live to work, to produce something, in so far as I am a purposive being. Apart from that, I live because I am living.”

Birkin is eying Crich with disgust for his crass materialism and the ethos of machine productivity Crich puts forward. 

Later Birkin asks, in the manner of a Father Confessor: “What do you think is the aim and object of your life, Gerald?”  When Gerald hesitates Birkin suggests:

“Do you think love is the be-all and the end-all of life?” 

Birkin, not satisfied, keeps quizzing Gerald:

“What has your life been, so far?”

To which Gerald gives a masterly pragmatic answer:

“Oh—finding out things for myself—and getting experiences—and making things go.”

This confounds Birkin who goes off on a theoretical tangent: “One needs some one really pure single activity.” And further on: “there remains only this perfect union with a woman—sort of ultimate marriage—and there isn’t anything else.”

Finally it is evident that Gerald Crich is at least on terra firma while Birkin is weaving theories about a single woman as the centred goal of love for a man. 

Ch 5 from which this passage is taken has two more readers who have selected passages, Thommo, and Geetha – the chapter will be thoroughly explored, KumKum said.

Joe mentioned it’s quite instructive that the word ‘hate’ occurs several times in this passage. Hate is one of his favourite words in this entire book. 

“Sometimes spasms of hatred came over him, against Birkin and Gudrun and that whole set.”

One wasn’t aware that the ordinary conversations between people who are friends, acquaintances, etc. – so often turn into hate. It seems to be a peculiarity of DHL. Joe didn’t think every time people start talking, or chatting in a train, going for a walk, or on a car ride, they all start imagining they are hating the other person. Indeed, when they begin conversing it seems they are at ease with each other. One can’t understand what is this hatred that comes and goes. Joe tallied the count and said the frequency count is over a hundred (he exaggerated, in reality it is 64). Joe wondered if such feelings are magnified 5 times over the normal, so that what is a mere passing irritation, or disagreement with an opinion, is elevated by DHL to the level of extreme hate.

Thommo

Thommo picked a passage in between what the two Geet(h)as were planning to read. Thommo knew about the aspects of bisexual love in the book, but he was not aware a full chapter intervenes on the modernisation of the coal industry in UK. It’s a very well-written chapter and Thommo said he was going to read it once more. KumKum and Joe agreed it was an excellent treatise on improving mining efficiency by mechanisation. Hermione in history is the daughter of Helen of Troy and the king of Sparta, said Thommo.

There was some to and fro about the correct pronunciation of Hermione. It’s here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA5XguQ_XaE

Geeta says the name Birkin is German and should therefore be pronounced bir-kin, not bur-ken. But where is the evidence in the book? If you look at the 1969 film starring Alan Bates (as Rupert Birkin), Oliver Reed (as Gerald Crich, pronounced as Cry-ich, not critch), Glenda Jackson (as Gudrun Brangwen), and Jennie Linden (as Ursula Brangwen), you will hear Alan Bates pronounce his character's name at minute 0.50 below in the ordinary way, bur-ken:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_ad8kaFVow

And you can hear the way they pronounce Hermione at minute 0.25.

“It is artificially held together by the social mechanism.” is Gerald’s answer when Birkin asks him: “wherein does life centre, for you?” We see a quick changing mood in this description by the narrator:

” … Birkin’s eyes were at the moment full of anger. But swiftly they became troubled, doubtful, then full of a warm, rich affectionateness and laughter.”

Look now at the end of Thommo’s passage and see how the vibes of the two men collide and then fall apart:

“… the rich play of words and quick interchange of feelings he [Gerald] enjoyed. The real content of the words he never really considered …

Birkin knew this. He knew that Gerald wanted to be fond of him without taking him seriously. And this made him go hard and cold. As the train ran on, he sat looking at the land, and Gerald fell away, became as nothing to him.”

KumKum noted that the complex relationship between the two men starts here.

Geetha

She took up the passage where Thommo ended because she found in it an intensity of expressed emotions. It is extreme as Joe said, and magnified, quite different. When you  note a character taking off all his clothes and luxuriating in nature, you realise this is DHL himself coming through. Thommo slipped in a comment that women also do it.

“And if mankind passes away, it will only mean that this particular expression is completed and done.” Birkin continues, “Humanity doesn’t embody the utterance of the incomprehensible any more. Humanity is a dead letter. There will be a new embodiment, in a new way. Let humanity disappear as quick as possible.”

And then the kind of intimate description that says there’s something afoot between Birkin and Gerald: “Gerald was attractive, his blood seemed fluid and electric. His blue eyes burned with a keen, yet cold light, there was a certain beauty, a beautiful passivity in all his body, his moulding.” 

Birkin expresses the dehumanising effect of modern life and industrialisation, “I always feel doomed when the train is running into London. I feel such a despair, so hopeless, as if it were the end of the world.” KumKum said today also there are young people trying to get away and hew an independent path. It was present at that time too.

Geetha said normal people experience such emotions too, but they are controlled in expressing it, but DHL allows everything to hang out, he takes liberties; the negatives and positives are all held out to the light for the reader.

Zakia

Zakia read from Ch 8. Hermione has a conversation about knowledge and she pontificates: “Vocational education isn’t education, it is the close of education.” She continues in the mode of a liberal: “Yes, it is the greatest thing in life—to know. It is really to be happy, to be free.”

They go on to talk about gravitation: “Can one have knowledge only of the past?” asked the Baronet, pointedly. “Could we call our knowledge of the laws of gravitation for instance, knowledge of the past?”

“Yes,” said Birkin.

Lots of French is used, which means the educated folk who read novels knew French, said KumKum. Rather the educated may have liked to show off their French, thought Geeta. Thommo said French was the most difficult subject in school. KumKum marvelled at how many different people were gathered in the group for the discussion. Zakia thought the value of education, as opposed to just vocational training, comes out within our reading group.  Italian, German, and Russian come into play in this passage.

Joe asked: is Gravitation only knowledge of the past? He thought all scientifically discovered laws must be operating today and the law of gravitation is as valid today as when it was discovered centuries ago. Being operative knowledge it is not a relic of the past therefore. What Birkin says is hokum. KumKum’s explanation was that Birkin is talking of the history of the discovery of gravitation by Isaac Newton which was in the past. We can’t debate with Birkin as he is interred, as is D.H. Lawrence. Speaking of which DHL’s ashes are thought to be buried in a chapel at the D.H. Lawrence Ranch in New Mexico, USA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._H._Lawrence_Ranch

D.H Lawrence Chapel where his ashes are interred in San Cristobal, Taos County, New Mexico, USA.

Shoba

The sisters are together and sketching by the water. Gudrun who went to art school is back with her sister Ursula, a schoolteacher. They begin a conversation talking of marriage. Gudrun is more confident, Ursula is more sensitive. Though considering marriage they are not thrilled at the idea of men being involved in their lives, and later children. They don’t want children, and would rather not have the men coming home every day. Gudrun, being an artist, observes nature closely and that is what comes out in a painterly description by DHL of the scene by Willey Water.

“What she could see was mud, soft, oozy, watery mud, and from its festering chill, water-plants rose up, thick and cool and fleshy, very straight and turgid, thrusting out their leaves at right angles, and having dark lurid colours, dark green and blotches of black-purple and bronze.”

Gudrun and Ursula sketching by Willey Water

Meanwhile, Ursula is watching butterflies:

“… little blue ones suddenly snapping out of nothingness into a jewel-life, a large black-and-red one standing upon a flower and breathing with his soft wings, intoxicatingly, breathing pure, ethereal sunshine; two white ones wrestling in the low air; there was a halo round them;”

KumKum said she loved the description of the butterflies; it is vivid, very nicely done. It was precisely for the mesmerising effect of this description that Shoba chose this short passage, shortest of all the passages being read today, at 219 words. Shoba too was smiling and took obvious pleasure in the passage. 

Blessèd is DHL for imparting the holy balm with which writers elevate the minds of readers. KumKum said everyone has chosen standout passages. When we read a book by ourselves we then keep it back on the shelf, but together at such readings we enjoy the words of the novel, given life by the voices of readers whom we trust. We re-live it, said KumKum, and see it in a different way.

KumKum said she waits for Joe to set it all down in his blog; it all comes together then, said Shoba, as he adds another dimension. He digests it and lays it out in a fresh way. Devika said each one’s perspective is appreciably different when you look through the entire reading. You select what you think is interesting, and that puts the stamp of a reader’s personal appreciation upon the novel.

Arundhaty

Ursula and Hermione have just had an exchange of thoughts. Ursula is anxious whether Birkin will come back to her or not. Birkin puts forward a conception of love, rather different to what Ursula had; she can’t accept it altogether. Birkin says:

“there is a beyond, in you, in me, which is further than love, beyond the scope, as stars are beyond the scope of vision, some of them.”

Birkin wants to encounter Ursula on a plane beyond human understanding:

“There is … a final me which is stark and impersonal and beyond responsibility. So there is a final you. And it is there I would want to meet you—not in the emotional, loving plane—but there beyond, where there is no speech and no terms of agreement.”

Birkin is enlarging her idea of love and drawing her toward a more ethereal conception:

“I deliver myself over to the unknown, in coming to you, I am without reserves or defences, stripped entirely, into the unknown. Only there needs the pledge between us, that we will both cast off everything, cast off ourselves even, and cease to be, so that that which is perfectly ourselves can take place in us.”

KumKum called it very vague because Birkin is attempting to ennoble the fleshly attraction between men and women, and refine it. But how many people even sense there is a higher plane of love than the physical? KumKum pointed out that when Gerald Crich dies and his body is returned to England Birkin misses him, his physically being there. When Ursula asks whether she cannot supply what he misses, Birkin says no, love is not fungible. The exact dialogue of the film at this point is given toward the end of this account. KumKum once again used the term ‘vague’ to characterise Birkin’s feelings.

KumKum

She read a conversation between the current lover of Birkin, Ursula, and his ex-lover, Hermione. Ursula wants to marry Birkin, but is not sure it will come off. Birkin wants her to completely submit herself in marriage and Ursula doesn’t want to do that – Hermione would have been more than glad to capitulate to the sort of submission Birkin insisted on. 

Ursula exclaims:

“But it seems to me he doesn’t want to give anything. He doesn’t want real warm intimacy—he won’t have it—he rejects it. He won’t let me think, really, and he won’t let me feel—he hates feelings.”

One is left with the impression that Birkin wants to dominate Ursula and treat her more or less as his slave, while talking high-falutin’ transcendental stuff. KumKum characterised it as a highly unusual kind of conversation.

Joe

During a car-ride Birkin gives Ursula rings for her fingers, but she snaps with jealousy when he says he has to go back to say goodbye to Hermione. That leads to a fracas and they have it out. This reading is about that loud to-do that they have with plenty of histrionics. 

It all starts because Birkin says he’d like to go back to Shortlands for dinner to say goodbye to Hermione. This leads to a spark of jealous rage in Ursula, which she does not admit to, but it’s burning her up. Birkin admonishes her:

“you’d see that one could be decent, even when one has been wrong. I was wrong to go on all those years with Hermione—it was a deathly process. But after all, one can have a little human decency. But no, you would tear my soul out with your jealousy at the very mention of Hermione’s name.”

Ursula replies:

“You go to your women—go to them—they are your sort—you’ve always had a string of them trailing after you—and you always will. Go to your spiritual brides—but don’t come to me as well, because I’m not having any, thank you.”

She ridicules Birkin’s thinking of Hermione as someone ‘spiritual.’ 

“I tell you it’s dirt, dirt, and nothing but dirt. And it’s dirt you want, you crave for it. Spiritual! Is that spiritual, her bullying, her conceit, her sordid materialism? She’s a fishwife, a fishwife, she is such a materialist. … Do you think I don’t know the foulness of your sex life—and her’s?—I do. And it’s that foulness you want, you liar. Then have it, have it. You’re such a liar.”

Zakia thought Joe read it with feeling and hoped the audio was recorded and preserved. The whole Zoom session was being recorded, as Devika noted.

Devika

She continued the reading of Joe where Ursula is so jealous that she flings the rings to the ground and walks off. Birkin identifies the problem between them as a stupid urge to merge two human beings, whereas true happiness lay in leaving the other person free.

“this horrible fusion of two beings, which every woman and most men insisted on, was it not nauseous and horrible anyhow, whether it was a fusion of the spirit or of the emotional body? …Why not leave the other being, free, why try to absorb, or melt, or merge? One might abandon oneself utterly to the moments, but not to any other being.”

Later she returns from her huff meekly, and makes up by offering Birkin a flower – because she is so much in love with him, said Devika: 

“See what a flower I found you,” she said, wistfully holding a piece of purple-red bell-heather under his face. …

“Pretty!” he said, looking up at her with a smile, taking the flower. Everything had become simple again, quite simple, the complexity gone into nowhere. ”

Devika found this exchange between Birkin and Ursula really cute and endearing. She liked the final part where Ursula brings the flower and holds it to Birkin’s face. It’s the sort of thing you can expect between two individuals who are in love, but have yet to wear down the harsher points of contact that cause friction. Note how Birkin picks up the rings and cleans them, for after all he has paid good money for it, said KumKum. It’s all quite normal said Geetha. Joe wondered why Birkin had to tell Ursula, while giving her the rings, that they were second-hand items.

Saras

Saras read from a passage in Ch 24 where Gerald’s father, Thomas Crich, passes away after a long illness. Gudrun is in the house as a tutor to Gerald’s sister, and is present while Thomas is declining. 

[Power was lost in between by Saras and the reading was switched to Pamela below]

“No,” he said, “we’ve never had much illness in the house, either—not till father.” He seemed to meditate a while. Then looking down at her, with strangely communicative blue eyes, that filled her with dread, he continued: “It’s something you don’t reckon with, you know, till it is there. And then you realise that it was there all the time—it was always there—you understand what I mean?—the possibility of this incurable illness, this slow death.”

Alan Webb as Thomas Crich in sick bed in Women in Love (1969)

“I don’t want you to help,” he said, slightly irritated, “because there’s nothing to be done. I only want sympathy, do you see: I want somebody I can talk to sympathetically. That eases the strain. And there is nobody to talk to sympathetically. That’s the curious thing. There is nobody. There’s Rupert Birkin. But then he isn’t sympathetic, he wants to dictate. And that is no use whatsoever.”

Gerald is here talking about the universal experience of losing someone close to you and facing that situation. Sentences that really struck Saras are these:

“The whole of everything, and yourself included, is just on the point of caving in, and you are just holding it up with your hands. Well, it’s a situation that obviously can’t continue. You can’t stand holding the roof up with your hands, for ever. You know that sooner or later you’ll have to let go.”

Saras also noted the cinematic quality of DHL’s description, which is apparent, for instance, in a man flicking a grain of tobacco:

“Then he [Gerald] took the cigarette from his lips, bared his teeth, and putting the tip of his tongue between his teeth spat off a grain of tobacco, turning slightly aside, like a man who is alone, or who is lost in thought.”

You can almost picture the action – it is beautifully done, like seeng a movie in front of you. That is the power of words to evoke images. If you’re a skipping kind of reader you would miss this. KumKum says DHL writes down the small details and leaves nothing for you to imagine – this can also be a demerit in not allowing each reader to shape their private image, derived not wholly from authorial dictation but partly from the reader’s experience as well. Devika said his description of the fireplace is analogous.

What Saras really wanted to read was the passage where Gerald on a white mare tries to make it face head-on the clamour and racket when a goods train passes the horse at a level crossing. But the passage was a long one and you could not cut it up. It is as if the encounter between the horse, the domineering rider, and the clattering train is taking place on a screen right in front of you. It is so beautifully done. 

Gerald Crich urges his mare to face the train

The dialogue and philosophising during a conversation is not something we are accustomed to. None of us talk to our friends like that, said Saras, or even dwell on such topics. But DHL’s descriptions are out of this world.

KumKum liked the group of Bohemian people who lived in the London apartment: Carlyon with his pupils and his girl, Halliday and Libidnikov and the Pussum.

Pamela

Gudrun is now defending herself from Gerald:

“Every woman he comes across he wants to make her in love with him. He doesn’t even know that he is doing it. But there he is, before every woman he unfurls his male attractiveness, displays his great desirability …”

She’s accusing him of going after mistresses, rather than finding a wife. “His maleness bores me. Nothing is so boring, so inherently stupid and stupidly conceited.”

Then Gudrun contrasts the appeal of the sculptor Loerke whom she has got to know, with that of Gerald: “As for Loerke, there is a thousand times more in him than in a Gerald. Gerald is so limited, there is a dead end to him. He would grind on at the old mills forever.”

Gudrun tells Gerald  – 'I could never love you – you with your domesticity and coal-mines' and leaves him for Loerke 

Pamela laughed at reading Ursula's put-down of Gerald – “him thinking he can be a lover to a woman! One might as well ask it of a self-satisfied lamp-post.”

Gudrun is entranced by the prospect of going to Dresden where Loerke lives:

“the German opera, the German theatre.  … And Loerke is an artist, he is a free individual. One will escape from so much, … hideous boring repetition of vulgar actions, vulgar phrases, vulgar postures. … I shall get away from people who have their own homes and their own children and their own acquaintances and their own this and their own that. I shall be among people who don’t own things and who haven’t got a home and a domestic servant in the background, who haven’t got a standing and a status and a degree and a circle of friends of the same.”

KumKum thought it was a fine passage revealing a fissure between the expectations of the artistically inclined Gudrun, and Gerald, the mechanistic manager of coal-mines whom she has been close to. Pamela also seconded Joe’s earlier remark and underscored the number of times the word ‘hate’ occurs in this one passage.

Gopa

Gopa said Ursula’s being upset was because plans for the holiday in Switzerland were made behind her back. This sours the holiday even before it starts. As we read through we find the novel ends in tragedy. It separates the two men, one of whom dies and the other lives to be Ursula’s husband. The sisters are estranged after the holiday, Gudrun going off to seek Dresden and Loerke, and Ursula returning to England with Birkin and Gerald’s body, to bury him in his native land. It’s a realistic novel, it’s the sort of thing that can happen. If Bollywood made a film of this they would figure out how to make it end satisfactorily with minor victories for each character.

The two sisters have a conversation about a trip to Switzerland and a TYPE

KumKum said the trip also confirmed in Gudrun’s mind that Gerald could never be faithful, he was not going to be domesticated and monogamous. He was addicted to his own manliness, a showoff like a peacock. Several times on this trip his gaze wanders to other women.

The foursome arrive in Zermatt, Switzerland with the Matterhorn mountain looming behind them

(in the book the holiday takes place in Innsbruck, Austria, about 400 km north-west)

Pamela liked Loerke’s words, and asked what do women really fall in love with? He was not handsome or rich like Gerald, but he was a self-made artist and had his sense of values and knew what was worth striving for in the world. His ideals attracted Gudrun for she was a woman of that kind, said KumKum. She had a Bohemian nature and was used to living in colonies of artists. Earlier Gerald said artists bring out the best in each other: “ … every true artist is the salvation of every other.”

What Gerald could give her was security in life, money, and all that – and women enjoy that too, said KumKum. They don’t like to struggle all their life, as many artists are compelled to. 

Some texts have certain words capitalised and it looks like they need to be shouted, said Saras.  And spelling mistakes too. Gutenberg has a good copy of the original text, said Geetha. KumKum said this is the first full length DHL novel she has read; and it was a fine experience. Saras finds she goes back and does a second reading after the discussions that take place at KRG. We look at the novel in a very different way afterwards. KumKum said it gives her a lot of pleasure to reread the selected passages.

The 1969 film ends in a brief conversation between Birkin and Ursula, after having looked in at the frozen body of Gerald Crich lying on the bed:

Birkin: I did not want it to be like this. He should have loved me. I offered him.

Birkin: You are enough for me as far as a woman is concerned. … But I wanted a man friend as eternal, as you and I are eternal.

Ursula: I don’t believe it. There is an obstinacy here; a perversity. You can’t have two kinds of love. Why should you?

Birkin: It seems as if I can’t, yet I wanted it.

Ursula: You can’t have it because it’s impossible.

Birkin: I don’t believe that.

––x––x––x––

The next novel is The Horse’s Mouth by Joyce Cary. KumKum and Devika have started reading it. It is hilarious in its own way said Devika, but KumKum said the style is quite different and you need to get into it: “That artist, Gulley Jimson, is so funny you would love to meet him.” 

The book costs Rs1,700 for the hard copy but Joe found a place on the Web (archive.org) where it can be downloaded for free, said Devika. The Kindle e-book is only Rs 200 or so; on Kindle Unlimited it is free. Early in the history of KRG it was decided to make the affordability of books an additional criterion for choosing them. The Horse’s Mouth is part of a trilogy.

Joe says he has seen the movie too somewhere. KumKum remonstrated: how could Joe have seen the movie without her? Here it is on Youtube with Alec Guinness starring in the role of Gulley Jimson, the artist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiDvwLGy_7k

The Readings

Geeta Ch 5

“Can’t you see,” said Birkin, “that to help my neighbour to eat is no more than eating myself. ‘I eat, thou eatest, he eats, we eat, you eat, they eat’—and what then? Why should every man decline the whole verb. First person singular is enough for me.”

“You’ve got to start with material things,” said Gerald. Which statement Birkin ignored.

“And we’ve got to live for something, we’re not just cattle that can graze and have done with it,” said Gerald.

“Tell me,” said Birkin. “What do you live for?”

Gerald’s face went baffled.

“What do I live for?” he repeated. “I suppose I live to work, to produce something, in so far as I am a purposive being. Apart from that, I live because I am living.”

“And what’s your work? Getting so many more thousands of tons of coal out of the earth every day. And when we’ve got all the coal we want, and all the plush furniture, and pianofortes, and the rabbits are all stewed and eaten, and we’re all warm and our bellies are filled and we’re listening to the young lady performing on the pianoforte—what then? What then, when you’ve made a real fair start with your material things?”

Gerald sat laughing at the words and the mocking humour of the other man. But he was cogitating too.

“We haven’t got there yet,” he replied. “A good many people are still waiting for the rabbit and the fire to cook it.”

“So while you get the coal I must chase the rabbit?” said Birkin, mocking at Gerald.

“Something like that,” said Gerald.

Birkin watched him narrowly. He saw the perfect good-humoured callousness, even strange, glistening malice, in Gerald, glistening through the plausible ethics of productivity.

“Gerald,” he said, “I rather hate you.”

“I know you do,” said Gerald. “Why do you?”

Birkin mused inscrutably for some minutes.

“I should like to know if you are conscious of hating me,” he said at last. “Do you ever consciously detest me—hate me with mystic hate? There are odd moments when I hate you starrily.”

Gerald was rather taken aback, even a little disconcerted. He did not quite know what to say.

“I may, of course, hate you sometimes,” he said. “But I’m not aware of it—never acutely aware of it, that is.”

“So much the worse,” said Birkin.

Gerald watched him with curious eyes. He could not quite make him out.

“So much the worse, is it?” he repeated.

There was a silence between the two men for some time, as the train ran on. In Birkin’s face was a little irritable tension, a sharp knitting of the brows, keen and difficult. Gerald watched him warily, carefully, rather calculatingly, for he could not decide what he was after.

Suddenly Birkin’s eyes looked straight and overpowering into those of the other man.

“What do you think is the aim and object of your life, Gerald?” he asked.

Again Gerald was taken aback. He could not think what his friend was getting at. Was he poking fun, or not?

“At this moment, I couldn’t say off-hand,” he replied, with faintly ironic humour.

“Do you think love is the be-all and the end-all of life?” Birkin asked, with direct, attentive seriousness.

“Of my own life?” said Gerald.

“Yes.”

There was a really puzzled pause.

“I can’t say,” said Gerald. “It hasn’t been, so far.”

“What has your life been, so far?”

“Oh—finding out things for myself—and getting experiences—and making things go.”

Thommo Ch 5

Birkin knitted his brows like sharply moulded steel.

“I find,” he said, “that one needs some one really pure single activity—I should call love a single pure activity. But I don’t really love anybody—not now.”

“Have you ever really loved anybody?” asked Gerald.

“Yes and no,” replied Birkin.

“Not finally?” said Gerald.

“Finally—finally—no,” said Birkin.

“Nor I,” said Gerald.

“And do you want to?” said Birkin.

Gerald looked with a long, twinkling, almost sardonic look into the eyes of the other man.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“I do—I want to love,” said Birkin.

“You do?”

“Yes. I want the finality of love.”

“The finality of love,” repeated Gerald. And he waited for a moment.

“Just one woman?” he added. The evening light, flooding yellow along the fields, lit up Birkin’s face with a tense, abstract steadfastness. Gerald still could not make it out.

“Yes, one woman,” said Birkin.

But to Gerald it sounded as if he were insistent rather than confident.

“I don’t believe a woman, and nothing but a woman, will ever make my life,” said Gerald.

“Not the centre and core of it—the love between you and a woman?” asked Birkin.

Gerald’s eyes narrowed with a queer dangerous smile as he watched the other man.

“I never quite feel it that way,” he said.

“You don’t? Then wherein does life centre, for you?”

“I don’t know—that’s what I want somebody to tell me. As far as I can make out, it doesn’t centre at all. It is artificially held together by the social mechanism.”

Birkin pondered as if he would crack something.

“I know,” he said, “it just doesn’t centre. The old ideals are dead as nails—nothing there. It seems to me there remains only this perfect union with a woman—sort of ultimate marriage—and there isn’t anything else.”

“And you mean if there isn’t the woman, there’s nothing?” said Gerald.

“Pretty well that—seeing there’s no God.”

“Then we’re hard put to it,” said Gerald. And he turned to look out of the window at the flying, golden landscape.

Birkin could not help seeing how beautiful and soldierly his face was, with a certain courage to be indifferent.

“You think its heavy odds against us?” said Birkin.

“If we’ve got to make our life up out of a woman, one woman, woman only, yes, I do,” said Gerald. “I don’t believe I shall ever make up my life, at that rate.”

Birkin watched him almost angrily.

“You are a born unbeliever,” he said.

“I only feel what I feel,” said Gerald. And he looked again at Birkin almost sardonically, with his blue, manly, sharp-lighted eyes. Birkin’s eyes were at the moment full of anger. But swiftly they became troubled, doubtful, then full of a warm, rich affectionateness and laughter.

“It troubles me very much, Gerald,” he said, wrinkling his brows.

“I can see it does,” said Gerald, uncovering his mouth in a manly, quick, soldierly laugh.

Gerald was held unconsciously by the other man. He wanted to be near him, he wanted to be within his sphere of influence. There was something very congenial to him in Birkin. But yet, beyond this, he did not take much notice. He felt that he, himself, Gerald, had harder and more durable truths than any the other man knew. He felt himself older, more knowing. It was the quick-changing warmth and venality and brilliant warm utterance he loved in his friend. It was the rich play of words and quick interchange of feelings he enjoyed. The real content of the words he never really considered: he himself knew better.

Birkin knew this. He knew that Gerald wanted to be fond of him without taking him seriously. And this made him go hard and cold. As the train ran on, he sat looking at the land, and Gerald fell away, became as nothing to him.

Geetha Ch 5

Birkin looked at the land, at the evening, and was thinking: “Well, if mankind is destroyed, if our race is destroyed like Sodom, and there is this beautiful evening with the luminous land and trees, I am satisfied. That which informs it all is there, and can never be lost. After all, what is mankind but just one expression of the incomprehensible. And if mankind passes away, it will only mean that this particular expression is completed and done. That which is expressed, and that which is to be expressed, cannot be diminished. There it is, in the shining evening. Let mankind pass away—time it did. The creative utterances will not cease, they will only be there. Humanity doesn’t embody the utterance of the incomprehensible any more. Humanity is a dead letter. There will be a new embodiment, in a new way. Let humanity disappear as quick as possible.”

Gerald interrupted him by asking,

“Where are you staying in London?”

Birkin looked up.

“With a man in Soho. I pay part of the rent of a flat, and stop there when I like.”

“Good idea—have a place more or less your own,” said Gerald.

“Yes. But I don’t care for it much. I’m tired of the people I am bound to find there.”

“What kind of people?”

“Art—music—London Bohemia—the most pettifogging calculating Bohemia that ever reckoned its pennies. But there are a few decent people, decent in some respects. They are really very thorough rejecters of the world—perhaps they live only in the gesture of rejection and negation—but negatively something, at any rate.”

“What are they?—painters, musicians?”

“Painters, musicians, writers—hangers-on, models, advanced young people, anybody who is openly at outs with the conventions, and belongs to nowhere particularly. They are often young fellows down from the University, and girls who are living their own lives, as they say.”

“All loose?” said Gerald.

Birkin could see his curiosity roused.

“In one way. Most bound, in another. For all their shockingness, all on one note.”

He looked at Gerald, and saw how his blue eyes were lit up with a little flame of curious desire. He saw too how good-looking he was. Gerald was attractive, his blood seemed fluid and electric. His blue eyes burned with a keen, yet cold light, there was a certain beauty, a beautiful passivity in all his body, his moulding.

“We might see something of each other—I am in London for two or three days,” said Gerald.

“Yes,” said Birkin, “I don’t want to go to the theatre, or the music hall—you’d better come round to the flat, and see what you can make of Halliday and his crowd.”

“Thanks—I should like to,” laughed Gerald. “What are you doing tonight?”

“I promised to meet Halliday at the Pompadour. It’s a bad place, but there is nowhere else.”

“Where is it?” asked Gerald.

“Piccadilly Circus.”

“Oh yes—well, shall I come round there?”

“By all means, it might amuse you.”

The evening was falling. They had passed Bedford. Birkin watched the country, and was filled with a sort of hopelessness. He always felt this, on approaching London.

His dislike of mankind, of the mass of mankind, amounted almost to an illness.

Zakia Ch 8 – On Knowledge

“Of course,” said Hermione, lifting her face like a rhapsodist, “there can be no reason, no excuse for education, except the joy and beauty of knowledge in itself.” She seemed to rumble and ruminate with subterranean thoughts for a minute, then she proceeded: “Vocational education isn’t education, it is the close of education.”

Gerald, on the brink of discussion, sniffed the air with delight and prepared for action.

“Not necessarily,” he said. “But isn’t education really like gymnastics, isn’t the end of education the production of a well-trained, vigorous, energetic mind?”

“Just as athletics produce a healthy body, ready for anything,” cried Miss Bradley, in hearty accord.

Gudrun looked at her in silent loathing.

“Well—” rumbled Hermione, “I don’t know. To me the pleasure of knowing is so great, so wonderful—nothing has meant so much to me in all life, as certain knowledge—no, I am sure—nothing.”

“What knowledge, for example, Hermione?” asked Alexander.

Hermione lifted her face and rumbled—

“M—m—m—I don’t know . . . But one thing was the stars, when I really understood something about the stars. One feels so uplifted, so unbounded . . .”

Birkin looked at her in a white fury.

“What do you want to feel unbounded for?” he said sarcastically. “You don’t want to be unbounded.”

Hermione recoiled in offence.

“Yes, but one does have that limitless feeling,” said Gerald. “It’s like getting on top of the mountain and seeing the Pacific.”

“Silent upon a peak in Dariayn,” murmured the Italian, lifting her face for a moment from her book.

“Not necessarily in Dariayn,” said Gerald, while Ursula began to laugh.

Hermione waited for the dust to settle, and then she said, untouched:

“Yes, it is the greatest thing in life—to know. It is really to be happy, to be free.”

“Knowledge is, of course, liberty,” said Mattheson.

“In compressed tabloids,” said Birkin, looking at the dry, stiff little body of the Baronet. Immediately Gudrun saw the famous sociologist as a flat bottle, containing tabloids of compressed liberty. That pleased her. Sir Joshua was labelled and placed forever in her mind.

“What does that mean, Rupert?” sang Hermione, in a calm snub.

“You can only have knowledge, strictly,” he replied, “of things concluded, in the past. It’s like bottling the liberty of last summer in the bottled gooseberries.”

“Can one have knowledge only of the past?” asked the Baronet, pointedly. “Could we call our knowledge of the laws of gravitation for instance, knowledge of the past?”

“Yes,” said Birkin.

“There is a most beautiful thing in my book,” suddenly piped the little Italian woman. “It says the man came to the door and threw his eyes down the street.”

There was a general laugh in the company. Miss Bradley went and looked over the shoulder of the Contessa.

“See!” said the Contessa.

“Bazarov came to the door and threw his eyes hurriedly down the street,” she read.

Again there was a loud laugh, the most startling of which was the Baronet’s, which rattled out like a clatter of falling stones.

“What is the book?” asked Alexander, promptly.

“Fathers and Sons, by Turgenev,” said the little foreigner, pronouncing every syllable distinctly. She looked at the cover, to verify herself.

“An old American edition,” said Birkin.

“Ha!—of course—translated from the French,” said Alexander, with a fine declamatory voice. “Bazarov ouvra la porte et jeta les yeux dans la rue.”

Shoba Ch 10

One morning the sisters were sketching by the side of Willey Water, at the remote end of the lake. Gudrun had waded out to a gravelly shoal, and was seated like a Buddhist, staring fixedly at the water-plants that rose succulent from the mud of the low shores. What she could see was mud, soft, oozy, watery mud, and from its festering chill, water-plants rose up, thick and cool and fleshy, very straight and turgid, thrusting out their leaves at right angles, and having dark lurid colours, dark green and blotches of black-purple and bronze. But she could feel their turgid fleshy structure as in a sensuous vision, she knew how they rose out of the mud, she knew how they thrust out from themselves, how they stood stiff and succulent against the air.

Ursula was watching the butterflies, of which there were dozens near the water, little blue ones suddenly snapping out of nothingness into a jewel-life, a large black-and-red one standing upon a flower and breathing with his soft wings, intoxicatingly, breathing pure, ethereal sunshine; two white ones wrestling in the low air; there was a halo round them; ah, when they came tumbling nearer they were orangetips, and it was the orange that had made the halo. Ursula rose and drifted away, unconscious like the butterflies.

Arundhaty Ch 13 

She watched him with wide, troubled eyes. His face was incandescent in its abstract earnestness.

“And you mean you can’t love?” she asked, in trepidation.

“Yes, if you like. I have loved. But there is a beyond, where there is not love.”

She could not submit to this. She felt it swooning over her. But she could not submit.

“But how do you know—if you have never really loved?” she asked.

“It is true, what I say; there is a beyond, in you, in me, which is further than love, beyond the scope, as stars are beyond the scope of vision, some of them.”

“Then there is no love,” cried Ursula.

“Ultimately, no, there is something else. But, ultimately, there is no love.”

Ursula was given over to this statement for some moments. Then she half rose from her chair, saying, in a final, repellent voice:

“Then let me go home—what am I doing here?”

“There is the door,” he said. “You are a free agent.”

He was suspended finely and perfectly in this extremity. She hung motionless for some seconds, then she sat down again.

“If there is no love, what is there?” she cried, almost jeering.

“Something,” he said, looking at her, battling with his soul, with all his might.

“What?”

He was silent for a long time, unable to be in communication with her while she was in this state of opposition.

“There is,” he said, in a voice of pure abstraction; “a final me which is stark and impersonal and beyond responsibility. So there is a final you. And it is there I would want to meet you—not in the emotional, loving plane—but there beyond, where there is no speech and no terms of agreement. There we are two stark, unknown beings, two utterly strange creatures, I would want to approach you, and you me. And there could be no obligation, because there is no standard for action there, because no understanding has been reaped from that plane. It is quite inhuman,—so there can be no calling to book, in any form whatsoever—because one is outside the pale of all that is accepted, and nothing known applies. One can only follow the impulse, taking that which lies in front, and responsible for nothing, asked for nothing, giving nothing, only each taking according to the primal desire.”

Ursula listened to this speech, her mind dumb and almost senseless, what he said was so unexpected and so untoward.

“It is just purely selfish,” she said.

“If it is pure, yes. But it isn’t selfish at all. Because I don’t know what I want of you. I deliver myself over to the unknown, in coming to you, I am without reserves or defences, stripped entirely, into the unknown. Only there needs the pledge between us, that we will both cast off everything, cast off ourselves even, and cease to be, so that that which is perfectly ourselves can take place in us.”

KumKum Ch 22

“I am so glad to see you,” she said to Ursula, in her slow voice, that was like an incantation. “You and Rupert have become quite friends?”

“Oh yes,” said Ursula. “He is always somewhere in the background.”

Hermione paused before she answered. She saw perfectly well the other woman’s vaunt: it seemed truly vulgar.

“Is he?” she said slowly, and with perfect equanimity. “And do you think you will marry?”

The question was so calm and mild, so simple and bare and dispassionate that Ursula was somewhat taken aback, rather attracted. It pleased her almost like a wickedness. There was some delightful naked irony in Hermione.

“Well,” replied Ursula, “He wants to, awfully, but I’m not so sure.”

Hermione watched her with slow calm eyes. She noted this new expression of vaunting. How she envied Ursula a certain unconscious positivity! even her vulgarity!

“Why aren’t you sure?” she asked, in her easy sing song. She was perfectly at her ease, perhaps even rather happy in this conversation. “You don’t really love him?”

Ursula flushed a little at the mild impertinence of this question. And yet she could not definitely take offence. Hermione seemed so calmly and sanely candid. After all, it was rather great to be able to be so sane.

“He says it isn’t love he wants,” she replied.

“What is it then?” Hermione was slow and level.

“He wants me really to accept him in marriage.”

Hermione was silent for some time, watching Ursula with slow, pensive eyes.

“Does he?” she said at length, without expression. Then, rousing, “And what is it you don’t want? You don’t want marriage?”

“No—I don’t—not really. I don’t want to give the sort of submission he insists on. He wants me to give myself up—and I simply don’t feel that I can do it.”

Again there was a long pause, before Hermione replied:

“Not if you don’t want to.” Then again there was silence. Hermione shuddered with a strange desire. Ah, if only he had asked her to subserve him, to be his slave! She shuddered with desire.

“You see I can’t—”

“But exactly in what does—”

They had both begun at once, they both stopped. Then, Hermione, assuming priority of speech, resumed as if wearily:

“To what does he want you to submit?”

“He says he wants me to accept him non-emotionally, and finally—I really don’t know what he means. He says he wants the demon part of himself to be mated—physically—not the human being. You see he says one thing one day, and another the next—and he always contradicts himself—”

“And always thinks about himself, and his own dissatisfaction,” said Hermione slowly.

“Yes,” cried Ursula. “As if there were no one but himself concerned. That makes it so impossible.”

But immediately she began to retract.

“He insists on my accepting God knows what in him,” she resumed. “He wants me to accept him as—as an absolute—But it seems to me he doesn’t want to give anything. He doesn’t want real warm intimacy—he won’t have it—he rejects it. He won’t let me think, really, and he won’t let me feel—he hates feelings.”

There was a long pause, bitter for Hermione. Ah, if only he would have made this demand of her? Her he drove into thought, drove inexorably into knowledge—and then execrated her for it.

“He wants me to sink myself,” Ursula resumed, “not to have any being of my own—”

“Then why doesn’t he marry an odalisk?” said Hermione in her mild sing-song, “if it is that he wants.” Her long face looked sardonic and amused.

Joe Ch 23

“Ah you fool!” he cried, “with your ‘go where you belong.’ It’s finished between Hermione and me. She means much more to you, if it comes to that, than she does to me. For you can only revolt in pure reaction from her—and to be her opposite is to be her counterpart.”

“Ah, opposite!” cried Ursula. “I know your dodges. I am not taken in by your word-twisting. You belong to Hermione and her dead show. Well, if you do, you do. I don’t blame you. But then you’ve nothing to do with me.

In his inflamed, overwrought exasperation, he stopped the car, and they sat there, in the middle of the country lane, to have it out. It was a crisis of war between them, so they did not see the ridiculousness of their situation.

“If you weren’t a fool, if only you weren’t a fool,” he cried in bitter despair, “you’d see that one could be decent, even when one has been wrong. I was wrong to go on all those years with Hermione—it was a deathly process. But after all, one can have a little human decency. But no, you would tear my soul out with your jealousy at the very mention of Hermione’s name.”

“I jealous! I—jealous! You are mistaken if you think that. I’m not jealous in the least of Hermione, she is nothing to me, not that!” And Ursula snapped her fingers. “No, it’s you who are a liar. It’s you who must return, like a dog to his vomit. It is what Hermione stands for that I hate. I hate it. It is lies, it is false, it is death. But you want it, you can’t help it, you can’t help yourself. You belong to that old, deathly way of living—then go back to it. But don’t come to me, for I’ve nothing to do with it.”

And in the stress of her violent emotion, she got down from the car and went to the hedgerow, picking unconsciously some flesh-pink spindleberries, some of which were burst, showing their orange seeds.

“Ah, you are a fool,” he cried, bitterly, with some contempt.

“Yes, I am. I am a fool. And thank God for it. I’m too big a fool to swallow your cleverness. God be praised. You go to your women—go to them—they are your sort—you’ve always had a string of them trailing after you—and you always will. Go to your spiritual brides—but don’t come to me as well, because I’m not having any, thank you. You’re not satisfied, are you? Your spiritual brides can’t give you what you want, they aren’t common and fleshy enough for you, aren’t they? So you come to me, and keep them in the background! You will marry me for daily use. But you’ll keep yourself well provided with spiritual brides in the background. I know your dirty little game.” Suddenly a flame ran over her, and she stamped her foot madly on the road, and he winced, afraid that she would strike him. “And I, I’m not spiritual enough, I’m not as spiritual as that Hermione—!” Her brows knitted, her eyes blazed like a tiger’s. “Then go to her, that’s all I say, go to her, go. Ha, she spiritual—spiritual, she! A dirty materialist as she is. She spiritual? What does she care for, what is her spirituality? What is it?” Her fury seemed to blaze out and burn his face. He shrank a little. “I tell you it’s dirt, dirt, and nothing but dirt. And it’s dirt you want, you crave for it. Spiritual! Is that spiritual, her bullying, her conceit, her sordid materialism? She’s a fishwife, a fishwife, she is such a materialist. And all so sordid. What does she work out to, in the end, with all her social passion, as you call it. Social passion—what social passion has she?—show it me!—where is it? She wants petty, immediate power, she wants the illusion that she is a great woman, that is all. In her soul she’s a devilish unbeliever, common as dirt. That’s what she is at the bottom. And all the rest is pretence—but you love it. You love the sham spirituality, it’s your food. And why? Because of the dirt underneath. Do you think I don’t know the foulness of your sex life—and her’s?—I do. And it’s that foulness you want, you liar. Then have it, have it. You’re such a liar.”

Devika Ch 23 

With which she walked away, desultorily, up the road. He stood motionless, watching her sullen, rather ugly walk. She was sullenly picking and pulling at the twigs of the hedge as she passed. She grew smaller, she seemed to pass out of his sight. A darkness came over his mind. Only a small, mechanical speck of consciousness hovered near him.

He felt tired and weak. Yet also he was relieved. He gave up his old position. He went and sat on the bank. No doubt Ursula was right. It was true, really, what she said. He knew that his spirituality was concomitant of a process of depravity, a sort of pleasure in self-destruction. There really WAS a certain stimulant in self-destruction, for him—especially when it was translated spiritually. But then he knew it—he knew it, and had done. And was not Ursula’s way of emotional intimacy, emotional and physical, was it not just as dangerous as Hermione’s abstract spiritual intimacy? Fusion, fusion, this horrible fusion of two beings, which every woman and most men insisted on, was it not nauseous and horrible anyhow, whether it was a fusion of the spirit or of the emotional body? Hermione saw herself as the perfect Idea, to which all men must come: And Ursula was the perfect Womb, the bath of birth, to which all men must come! And both were horrible. Why could they not remain individuals, limited by their own limits? Why this dreadful all-comprehensiveness, this hateful tyranny? Why not leave the other being, free, why try to absorb, or melt, or merge? One might abandon oneself utterly to the MOMENTS, but not to any other being.

He could not bear to see the rings lying in the pale mud of the road. He picked them up, and wiped them unconsciously on his hands. They were the little tokens of the reality of beauty, the reality of happiness in warm creation. But he had made his hands all dirty and gritty.

There was a darkness over his mind. The terrible knot of consciousness that had persisted there like an obsession was broken, gone, his life was dissolved in darkness over his limbs and his body. But there was a point of anxiety in his heart now. He wanted her to come back. He breathed lightly and regularly like an infant, that breathes innocently, beyond the touch of responsibility.

She was coming back. He saw her drifting desultorily under the high hedge, advancing towards him slowly. He did not move, he did not look again. He was as if asleep, at peace, slumbering and utterly relaxed.

She came up and stood before him, hanging her head.

‘See what a flower I found you,’ she said, wistfully holding a piece of purple-red bell-heather under his face. He saw the clump of coloured bells, and the tree-like, tiny branch: also her hands, with their over-fine, over-sensitive skin.

Saras Ch 25

“No,” she murmured at length. “I don’t understand anything about these things.”

“Just as well not,” he said. “I say, won’t you have a cigarette?—do!” He quickly fetched the box, and held her a light. Then he stood before her on the hearth again.

“No,” he said, “we’ve never had much illness in the house, either—not till father.” He seemed to meditate a while. Then looking down at her, with strangely communicative blue eyes, that filled her with dread, he continued: “It’s something you don’t reckon with, you know, till it is there. And then you realise that it was there all the time—it was always there—you understand what I mean?—the possibility of this incurable illness, this slow death.”

He moved his feet uneasily on the marble hearth, and put his cigarette to his mouth, looking up at the ceiling.

“I know,” murmured Gudrun: “it is dreadful.”

He smoked without knowing. Then he took the cigarette from his lips, bared his teeth, and putting the tip of his tongue between his teeth spat off a grain of tobacco, turning slightly aside, like a man who is alone, or who is lost in thought.

“I don’t know what the effect actually is, on one,” he said, and again he looked down at her. Her eyes were dark and stricken with knowledge, looking into his. He saw her submerged, and he turned aside his face. “But I absolutely am not the same. There’s nothing left, if you understand what I mean. You seem to be clutching at the void—and at the same time you are void yourself. And so you don’t know what to do.”

“No,” she murmured. A heavy thrill ran down her nerves, heavy, almost pleasure, almost pain. “What can be done?” she added.

He turned, and flipped the ash from his cigarette on to the great marble hearth-stones, that lay bare in the room, without fender or bar.

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” he replied. “But I do think you’ve got to find some way of resolving the situation—not because you want to, but because you’ve got to, otherwise you’re done. The whole of everything, and yourself included, is just on the point of caving in, and you are just holding it up with your hands. Well, it’s a situation that obviously can’t continue. You can’t stand holding the roof up with your hands, for ever. You know that sooner or later you’ll have to let go. Do you understand what I mean? And so something’s got to be done, or there’s a universal collapse—as far as you yourself are concerned.”

He shifted slightly on the hearth, crunching a cinder under his heel. He looked down at it. Gudrun was aware of the beautiful old marble panels of the fireplace, swelling softly carved, round him and above him. She felt as if she were caught at last by fate, imprisoned in some horrible and fatal trap.

“But what can be done?” she murmured humbly. “You must use me if I can be of any help at all—but how can I? I don’t see how I can help you.”

He looked down at her critically.

“I don’t want you to help,” he said, slightly irritated, “because there’s nothing to be done. I only want sympathy, do you see: I want somebody I can talk to sympathetically. That eases the strain. And there is nobody to talk to sympathetically. That’s the curious thing. There is nobody. There’s Rupert Birkin. But then he isn’t sympathetic, he wants to dictate. And that is no use whatsoever.”

She was caught in a strange snare.

Gopa Ch 27

Gerald sat talking to her one afternoon in the warm study down at the Mill. Rupert had not yet come home.

‘You are happy?’ Gerald asked her, with a smile.

‘Very happy!’ she cried, shrinking a little in her brightness.

‘Yes, one can see it.’

He was very quiet, as if it were something not to be talked about by him. He seemed sad.

She was very sensitive to suggestion. She asked the question he wanted her to ask.

‘Why don’t you be happy as well?’ she said. You could be just the same.

He paused for a moment.

‘With Gudrun?’ he asked.

‘Yes!’ She cried, her eyes glowing. But there was a strange tension, an emphasis, as if they were asserting their wishes, against the truth.

‘You think Gudrun would have me and we should be happy?’ he said.

‘Yes, I’m SURE!’ she cried. 

‘I’M sure you’d – you’re the right man for her’.

‘You are?’ he said. And do you think she would agree with you?’

‘Oh yes!’ she exclaimed hastily. Then upon reconsideration, very uneasy:

Though Gudrun isn’t so very simple. Is she? One doesn’t know her in five minutes, does one? She’s not like me in that’. 

‘You think she’s not much like you? Gerald asked.

‘Oh in many ways she is. But I never know what she will do if anything new comes’. 

Gerald was silent for a few moments. Then he moved tentatively. ‘I was going to ask her, in any case, to go away with me at Christmas’. He said, in a small cautious voice.

‘Go away with you? For a time you mean?’

‘As long as she likes’ he said, with a deprecating movement.

They were both silent for some minutes.

‘Of course,’ said Ursula at last, ‘she MIGHT just be willing to rush into marriage. You can see.

‘Yes,’ smiled Gerald. I can see. But in case she won’t – do you think she would go abroad with me for a few days – or for a fortnight?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Ursula. ‘I’d ask her.’

‘Do you think we might all go together?’

‘All of us?’ Again Ursula’s face lighted up. ‘It would be rather fun, don’t you think?’

‘Great fun,’ he said.

‘And then you could see,’ said Ursula. How things went, I think it is best to take the honeymoon before the wedding – don’t you?

She was pleased with this MOT. He laughed.

‘In certain cases,’ he said. ‘I’d rather it were so in my own case.

pg 457…

‘Ursula,’ Gudrun said at length, in a voice of question and detachment, ‘did you know that Gerald Crich had suggested our going away all together at Christmas?’

‘Yes, he’s spoken to Rupert’.

A deep flush dyed Gudrun’s cheek. She was silent a moment, as if taken aback, and not knowing what to say. It was evident that, whilst she was almost mortified by Gerald’s taking the liberty of making such a suggestion to Birkin, yet the idea itself attracted her strongly.

‘There’s rather lovely simplicity about Gerald, I think,’ said Ursula, ‘so defiant somehow! Oh, I think he is very lovable.’

Gudrun did not reply for some moments. She had still to get over the feeling of insult at the liberty taken with her freedom.

‘What did Rupert say- do you know?’ she asked.

‘He said it would be most awfully jolly,’ said Ursula.

Again Gudrun looked down and was silent.

‘Don’t you think it would?’ said Ursula tentatively. She was never sure how many defences  Gudrun was having round herself.

Gudrun raised her face with difficulty and held it averted. 

‘I think it MIGHT be awfully jolly, as you say,’ she replied. ‘But don’t you think it was an unpardonable liberty to take – to take of such things to Rupert- who after all- you see what I mean, Ursula- thy might have been two men arranging an outing with some little type they’d picked up. Oh, I think it’s unforgivable, quite!’ She used the French word ‘TYPE’. 

Her eyes flashed, her soft face was flushed and sullen. Ursula looked on, rather frightened, frightened most of all because she thought Gudrun seemed rather common, really like a little TYPE. But she had not the courage quite to think this- not right out. 

Pamela Ch 30

“It isn’t as if he really loved me,” she said to herself. “He doesn’t. Every woman he comes across he wants to make her in love with him. He doesn’t even know that he is doing it. But there he is, before every woman he unfurls his male attractiveness, displays his great desirability, he tries to make every woman think how wonderful it would be to have him for a lover. His very ignoring of the women is part of the game. He is never unconscious of them. He should have been a cockerel, so he could strut before fifty females, all his subjects. But really, his Don Juan does not interest me. I could play Dona Juanita a million times better than he plays Juan. He bores me, you know. His maleness bores me. Nothing is so boring, so inherently stupid and stupidly conceited. Really, the fathomless conceit of these men, it is ridiculous—the little strutters.

“They are all alike. Look at Birkin. Built out of the limitation of conceit they are, and nothing else. Really, nothing but their ridiculous limitation and intrinsic insignificance could make them so conceited.

“As for Loerke, there is a thousand times more in him than in a Gerald. Gerald is so limited, there is a dead end to him. He would grind on at the old mills forever. And really, there is no corn between the millstones any more. They grind on and on, when there is nothing to grind—saying the same things, believing the same things, acting the same things. Oh, my God, it would wear out the patience of a stone.

“I don’t worship Loerke, but at any rate, he is a free individual. He is not stiff with conceit of his own maleness. He is not grinding dutifully at the old mills. Oh God, when I think of Gerald, and his work—those offices at Beldover, and the mines—it makes my heart sick. What have I to do with it—and him thinking he can be a lover to a woman! One might as well ask it of a self-satisfied lamp-post. These men, with their eternal jobs—and their eternal mills of God that keep on grinding at nothing! It is too boring, just boring. However did I come to take him seriously at all!

“At least in Dresden, one will have one’s back to it all. And there will be amusing things to do. It will be amusing to go to these eurythmic displays, and the German opera, the German theatre. It will be amusing to take part in German Bohemian life. And Loerke is an artist, he is a free individual. One will escape from so much, that is the chief thing, escape so much hideous boring repetition of vulgar actions, vulgar phrases, vulgar postures. I don’t delude myself that I shall find an elixir of life in Dresden. I know I shan’t. But I shall get away from people who have their own homes and their own children and their own acquaintances and their own this and their own that. I shall be among people who don’t own things and who haven’t got a home and a domestic servant in the background, who haven’t got a standing and a status and a degree and a circle of friends of the same. Oh God, the wheels within wheels of people, it makes one’s head tick like a clock, with a very madness of dead mechanical monotony and meaninglessness. How I hate life, how I hate it. How I hate the Geralds, that they can offer one nothing else.