I understand what you're saying D-M, but I think Lawrence's point is that she is a case of arrested development. I don't think Lawrence intends her to be admired.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark Muse
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I understand what you're saying D-M, but I think Lawrence's point is that she is a case of arrested development. I don't think Lawrence intends her to be admired.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark Muse
Yes, that may be quite true, but I cannot help myself. It is my general nature to find myself siding with those who tend to be abnormal. I do not doubt that you are right on the intent, but that does not change my opinion or thoughts of her.
Oh fair enough. I understand.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark Muse
I think we tend to project our own feeling about the woman; then come up with the interpretation of her character, Dark Muse, and that is fine; but I am with Virgil on this one; knowing Lawrence and how he did think in all the novels/stories I have read, I agree that the princess is a "case of arrested development". She wants to connect with a man and with nature, but she also cannot allow herself to do so; she just can't let go. I have to agree that Romano might be far from the right man for her; he seemed quite cruel at times. I am jumping too far ahead of the story; we can discuss that when we get to it; but she was the one who sought him out by putting herself into this vulnerable situation with him all alone on a mountaintop.
I think the story was fashioned after his friend and typist, Dorothy Brett, who we discussed a few stories back. I will try and find something about this fact in my biography books. I know I read something revealing before. I think I know which book it is in.
I do not know if I believe that she genuinely really wants to connect with a man, but rather she just feels that is something she "ought" to do. As when she discuses marriage. It does not seem she truly desires to be married, but as she says. Marriage is just the thing she ought to do. But it was not something she had the genuine desire to do.Quote:
Originally Posted by Janine
Romero just happened to be a man whom was able to illicit some feeling within her, but even so, she said she could not actually see herself married with him.
It seems to me she was more driven by outside pressure to feel as if she should make some sort of connection. But it does not seem to me that it is something she acutally wants for herself.
Dark Muse, From what I read in a commentary about this story, she felt a void where her father had once been and needed to fill it. I think that the ending stating she married a much older man, sort of confirms this idea. I think that she did need something and indeed Romero stirred this need and want within her. She just could not let go and realise any true connection with him; which knowing of her childhood and her past young life one would totally understand about her. I sympathised myself with her, and yet the fact, she gave in to him entering her bed (even invited him to do so), was definitely a poor decision on her part, even if she was cold; considering what happened after. No, I don't see that she wanted or desired to marry Romero at all; this is true. This story is interesting to compare with Lawrence's "The Virgin and the Gypsy" because the woman protagonist in that story also feels a strong physical attraction to a man with a darker countence, complexion - the gyspsy. However, in that story there is eventually a connection, and as Virgil would point out, Lawrence's idea of 'transfiguration' is evident. In 'The Horse-Dealer's Daughter' ; were you here, when we read and discussed that story? If so, you might recall the woman being rescued from the lake and in warming her up, to save her, they do undergo a tranfiguration by their physical contact. This is often a theme in Lawrence's works.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark Muse
I feel the very end of the story was something of a cop out, and I am not convinced that it is what she truly wanted. It seems to me this story is just a way of criticizing those who do not fit normally into society and trying to force her into that acceptable convention. I do not think there is anything wrong with the way she was before, or with the way her father was. The way in which both of them are called to be "mad" And making her marry at the end is just a way of saying that everyone must in the end conform to society.
After her encounter with Romero she more or less returns to the way she always was before, as it says "she was a virgin again" I do not think she ever truly wanted to marry anyone but simply did not know what else to do.
I think with the Scottish elements of the story (The old) conflicted against the American elements of the story (The New) her being married off in the end, was the final conquer of the old over the new, and the fact that the old world could not longer be allowed to survive. As she was "The Last Princess" ultimately she was conquered by this new world. The very last of her kind no able to resist any further for the ancient bloodline.
A cope out for who? The princess or Lawrence's writing, his conclusion? I thought she did not truly want to marry either; this being the exact point at what Lawrence is getting at in those final lines...can't you see the irony in them and the idea of her marrying an older man (to replace her father)? I agree that, in doing so, she conformed to society; it was no longer an issue of free will.
When I first red the story I felt it was a cop out for Lawrences Writing. I felt the story would have been so much powerful if it ended on the note right before the inclusion of the line. I felt that last line defleated the effect the impact.
Dark Muse, I was waiting for Virgil to return to post some more of the text; it does not look too hopeful though - he said he is off on another business trip; I think tomorrow.
If you don't mind I think it best that we discuss that ending at the end of this discussion, because I don't want to jump too far ahead. If it ended with those few taglines, you can be sure Lawrence meant it to. He would write and re-write these stories numerous times, so I feel he had a very good reason for wanting this story to end in just that way. When we get to the end, I will post the commentary and what they author has to point out about that part of the text, and why he felt it ended appropriately.
Until then I guess we should hold up and wait for Virgil. I am in no rush. Not feeling well this week anyway.
Let's move on. Next section:
Lots here, but this paragraph really drives home the character:Quote:
Her father let her see the world--from the outside. And he let her read. When she was in her teens she read Zola and Maupassant, and with the eyes of Zola and Maupassant she looked on Paris. A little later she read Tolstoi and Dostoevsky. The latter confused her. The others, she seemed to understand with a very shrewd, canny understanding, just as she understood the Decameron stories as she read them in their old Italian, or the Nibelung poems. Strange and uncanny, she seemed to understand things in a cold light perfectly, with all the flush of fire absent. She was something like a changeling, not quite human.
This earned her, also, strange antipathies. Cabmen and railway porters, especially in Paris and Rome, would suddenly treat her with brutal rudeness, when she was alone. They seemed to look on her with sudden violent antipathy. They sensed in her curious impertinence, an easy, sterile impertinence towards the things they felt most. She was so assured, and her flower of maidenhood was so scentless. She could look at a lusty, sensual Roman cabman as if he were a sort of grotesque, to make her smile. She knew all about him, in Zola. And the peculiar condescension with which she would give him her order, as if she, frail, beautiful thing, were the only reality, and he, coarse monster, was a sort of Caliban floundering in the mud on the margin of the pool of the perfect lotus, would suddenly enrage the fellow, the real Mediterranean who prided himself on his beauté male, and to whom the phallic mystery was still the only mystery. And he would turn a terrible face on her, bully her in a brutal, coarse fashion--hideous. For to him she had only the blasphemous impertinence of her own sterility.
Encounters like these made her tremble, and made her know she must have support from the outside. The power of her spirit did not extend to these low people, and they had all the physical power. She realised an implacability of hatred in their turning on her. But she did not lose her head. She quietly paid out money and turned away.
Those were dangerous moments, though, and she learned to be prepared for them. The Princess she was, and the fairy from the North, and could never understand the volcanic phallic rage with which coarse people could turn on her in a paroxysm of hatred. They never turned on her father like that. And quite early she decided it was the New England mother in her whom they hated. Never for one minute could she see with the old Roman eyes, see herself as sterility, the barren flower taking on airs and an intolerable impertinence. This was what the Roman cabman saw in her. And he longed to crush the barren blossom. Its sexless beauty and its authority put him in a passion of brutal revolt.
When she was nineteen her grandfather died, leaving her a considerable fortune in the safe hands of responsible trustees. They would deliver her her income, but only on condition that she resided for six months in the year in the United States.
"Why should they make me conditions?" she said to her father. "I refuse to be imprisoned six months in the year in the United States. We will tell them to keep their money."
"Let us be wise, my little Princess, let us be wise. No, we are almost poor, and we are never safe from rudeness. I cannot allow anybody to be rude to me. I hate it, I hate it!" His eyes flamed as he said it. "I could kill any man or woman who is rude to me. But we are in exile in the world. We are powerless. If we were really poor, we should be quite powerless, and then I should die. No, my Princess. Let us take their money, then they will not dare to be rude to us. Let us take it, as we put on clothes, to cover ourselves from their aggressions."
There began a new phase, when the father and daughter spent their summers on the Great Lakes or in California, or in the South-West. The father was something of a poet, the daughter something of a painter. He wrote poems about the lakes or the redwood trees, and she made dainty drawings. He was physically a strong man, and he loved the out-of-doors. He would go off with her for days, paddling in a canoe and sleeping by a camp-fire. Frail little Princess, she was always undaunted, always undaunted. She would ride with him on horseback over the mountain trails till she was so tired she was nothing but a bodiless consciousness sitting astride her pony. But she never gave in. And at night he folded her in her blanket on a bed of balsam pine twigs, and she lay and looked at the stars unmurmuring. She was fulfilling her rôle.
People said to her as the years passed, and she was a woman of twenty-five, then a woman of thirty, and always the same virgin dainty Princess, 'knowing' in a dispassionate way, like an old woman, and utterly intact:
"Don't you ever think what you will do when your father is no longer with you?"
She looked at her interlocutor with that cold, elfin detachment of hers:
"No, I never think of it," she said.
She had a tiny, but exquisite little house in London, and another small, perfect house in Connecticut, each with a faithful housekeeper. Two homes, if she chose. And she knew many interesting literary and artistic people. What more?
So the years passed imperceptibly. And she had that quality of the sexless fairies, she did not change. At thirty-three she looked twenty-three.
Her father, however, was ageing, and becoming more and more queer. It was now her task to be his guardian in his private madness. He spent the last three years of life in the house in Connecticut. He was very much estranged, sometimes had fits of violence which almost killed the little Princess. Physical violence was horrible to her; it seemed to shatter her heart. But she found a woman a few years younger than herself, well-educated and sensitive, to be a sort of nurse-companion to the mad old man. So the fact of madness was never openly admitted. Miss Cummins, the companion, had a passionate loyalty to the Princess, and a curious affection, tinged with love, for the handsome, white-haired, courteous old man, who was never at all aware of his fits of violence once they had passed.
The Princess was thirty-eight years old when her father died. And quite unchanged. She was still tiny, and like a dignified, scentless flower. Her soft brownish hair, almost the colour of beaver fur, was bobbed, and fluffed softly round her apple-blossom face, that was modelled with an arched nose like a proud old Florentine portrait. In her voice, manner and bearing she was exceedingly still, like a flower that has blossomed in a shadowy place. And from her blue eyes looked out the Princess's eternal laconic challenge, that grew almost sardonic as the years passed. She was the Princess, and sardonically she looked out on a princeless world.
She was relieved when her father died, and at the same time, it was as if everything had evaporated around her. She had lived in a sort of hot-house, in the aura of her father's madness. Suddenly the hot-house had been removed from around her, and she was in the raw, vast, vulgar open air.
People treat her with brutalness again comes up and foreshadows the climax. Now here is where we know that Lawrence is against her: "She was so assured, and her flower of maidenhood was so scentless." This is the perfect image of her sterility that Lawrence ends the paragraph with. And the Roman cabman is a stand-in for Romero. But this sentence is really loaded:Quote:
This earned her, also, strange antipathies. Cabmen and railway porters, especially in Paris and Rome, would suddenly treat her with brutal rudeness, when she was alone. They seemed to look on her with sudden violent antipathy. They sensed in her curious impertinence, an easy, sterile impertinence towards the things they felt most. She was so assured, and her flower of maidenhood was so scentless. She could look at a lusty, sensual Roman cabman as if he were a sort of grotesque, to make her smile. She knew all about him, in Zola. And the peculiar condescension with which she would give him her order, as if she, frail, beautiful thing, were the only reality, and he, coarse monster, was a sort of Caliban floundering in the mud on the margin of the pool of the perfect lotus, would suddenly enrage the fellow, the real Mediterranean who prided himself on his beauté male, and to whom the phallic mystery was still the only mystery. And he would turn a terrible face on her, bully her in a brutal, coarse fashion--hideous. For to him she had only the blasphemous impertinence of her own sterility.
"Phallic mystery," now that is a late Lawrentian term. It's really the culmination of Lawrence's thinking and upon which the feminists competely hate Lawrence. Phallic mystery is the concept that lawrence has that spituality, divinity comes from the male phallus, the cabman priding " himself on his beauté male." And women (a) don't have the power that comes from a phallus and (b) must be subserviant to it. Clearly Dollie is not subserviant to it and it disrupts the natural flow of human relationships. This is at the heart of where Lawrence sees the modern world gone wrong. Women not subserviant to the power of the male phallus. :D Now wish all women were subserviant to a man's phallus. :lol:Quote:
And the peculiar condescension with which she would give him her order, as if she, frail, beautiful thing, were the only reality, and he, coarse monster, was a sort of Caliban floundering in the mud on the margin of the pool of the perfect lotus, would suddenly enrage the fellow, the real Mediterranean who prided himself on his beauté male, and to whom the phallic mystery was still the only mystery.
And Lawrence continues with this:
This is what happens to Romero later on, and we must keep this in mind because Lawrence doesn't explain why Romero goes off.Quote:
Never for one minute could she see with the old Roman eyes, see herself as sterility, the barren flower taking on airs and an intolerable impertinence. This was what the Roman cabman saw in her. And he longed to crush the barren blossom. Its sexless beauty and its authority put him in a passion of brutal revolt.
Oh good, I will answer this tomorrow or Dark Muse can. I didn't notice this just now, before I wrote you the PM. I am watching a film, so will read this later on. Thanks for posting it, Virgil. Looks like you think clearly when you are away from home.
I just skimmed it and am laughing my head off at this line: "Now wish all women were subserviant to a man's phallus." :lol: ...yeah, right...
I would have to disagree with this. I did not think it was really all that unclear why Romero went off the way he did at the end. Though his reaction was not a normal one, nor was it one to be defended or seen as justified, but I think it was still understandable just what caused him to go off the way he did. His manhood was insulted after The Princess snubbed him. Her very response to their act of love diminished him and so he was driven with the need to hold power over her to "prove" himself. If she was going to insult him and cast him aside he was going to show her who was boss. I think his being a Spaniard was also an important aspect of this, considering the importance of machismo within the Spanish culture.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
I agree with both of you, actually. I think there were definite reasons shown why Romero 'went off' at the end. His manhood was insulted and diminished, as Dark Muse stated and in this way, so that he relates back to that cabman, who also feels insulted or defensive, towards the Princess. Wasn't he also afraid of being captured and going to prison? Did we ever know much about him or his past? I don't recall that we did.
Are you two actually disagreeing about that ending...or the reason that Romero reacts the way he does? I don't mean to say he acts at all logical or sane by lording his power over her. On the other hand she egged him on to take her to the mountains - she requested he warm her bed - she couldn't have been naive - it said she read Zola; so come on - she must have known what would happen next. Then when suddenly she rejects him; even tells him she didn't like it at all, I can well see how he 'went off'.
Anyway, I think that Virgil is right in saying that paragraph with the cabman does indeed foreshadow the events that will follow and how they play themselves out. I don't want to jump to the ending in too much detail yet; there is a lot going on there, we can discuss in more depth, when we get to that part of the story text.
I really like the line about her being a scentless flower - there again the flower image reappears in Lawrence's mind and writing; the perfect flower representative of the perfect state of being. In this case, the scentless flower, definitely indicates a lack of the full quality of a flower, thus the human-being.
I was just disagreeing with Virgil saying that Romero's actions were unexplaained. Becasue I felt that they were.