Quote:
In three crucial chapters at the heart of the book, the characters begin to choose which way they will go. Though there is space only to touch on these in reductive outline, here is where difficulty and disturbance concentrate, and an outline may serve as sounding board rather than imprisoning interpretation.
In chapter XVIII, 'Rabbit', Gudrun and young Winifred Crich set out to sketch the 'Looliness' of Looloo the Pekinese; and Winifred produces a wicked little diagram or caricature, which nevertheless is very 'like'. She's an apt pupil for Gudrun, who likes to pin things down, to grasp them once and for all: Gerald as wolf (14:40), birds as little Lloyd Georges (264:3). She sculpts figures of birds and animals one can hold in one's hand. Art for her is a means of knowing as possession, exerting a kind of power over the object - which is why the drawing may do Looloo 'some subtle injury' (236:6). But it is one thing to sketch Looloo, and quite another to haul the great buck rabbit Bismarck out of his cage by the ears, in order to do the same. For he has power of his own, and reacts against the attempts to 'grasp' him by instantaneous violence, tempestuous, almost uncontrollable. This in turn brings welling up in Gudrun; 'fury', a 'heavy cruelty', as her wrists are scored and she battles to control the 'bestial stupidity' (240:30-32). To hear her high voice 'like the crying of a seagull, strange and vindictive' (241:2) is to be reminded again of the scene with the horse at the railway crossing, especially when Gerald' takes over the struggle (110:9-II2:40). But the response of violence to rebellion is height¬ened this time as the man's hand comes down on the rabbit's neck like a hawk, and the animal screams in the fear of death - until, with a final writhe and tearing, it is mastered. Having taken in the scene with the mare, and the scene with the highland cattle which re¬orchestrated it, perhaps we are prepared for the struggle between man and animal to suggest something about the human 'war', the battle between the sexes. (So far, moreover, the action has been predominantly realistic, starting in comedy, surprised into violence.) But now, from behind the realism, once more, the new art begins to open up a dimension undiscovered in earlier fiction, for 'the scream of the rabbit ... seemed to have torn the veil of her consciousness' (241:20-21), and what lies behind the veil in Gudrun and Gerald is revealed to them both presently, beyond disguise.
The language shows the strain of having to put into words something which by definition is almost beyond articulation, and which may therefore seem far-fetched or even absurd - at first. Gudrun looks at him with eyes 'strained with underworld knowledge' (nearly a contradiction in terms, but not for Lawrence), '... like those of a creature which is at his mercy' (an expression caught in the eyes of rabbit and woman alike), 'yet which is his ultimate victor' (241:40-242:1) – unless he could treat her as he has treated Bismarck. He feels 'the mutual hellish recognition' (242:2) as 'she seemed like a soft recipient of his magical, hideous white fire' (242:4-5), of cruelty. 'There was a league between them, abhorrent to them both. They were implicated with each other in abhorrent mysteries' Then follows perhaps the most absurb-sounding sentence Lawrence had ever had ever written. ‘The long, shallow red rip seemed torn across his brains, tearing the surface of his ultimate consciousness, letting through the forever unconscious, unthinkable red ether of the beyond, the obscene beyond’ (242:37-7). But suppose one tried to puzzle this out? Is it that, as Gerald stares into the redness of that gash opened up by violence, he can momentarily sense his way through the bloody medium into this own psyche as well as hers? – and be enveloped and overcome by what comes out of the blood, the fascinating excitement of violence, or exerting power over a living creature sadistically, or masochistically? The Rainbow made it clear that sex is always, for Lawrence, a going through, beyond one’s ordinary self and old consciousness, into a new mode of being. But here the mode is ‘hellish’ and ‘obscene’ because because its ‘either’ – the medium in the space beyond the normal atmostphere, now within rather than above – is the pleasure in violence, whose final frisson is death. Bismarck, then, gets rid of distress and frustration by tearing round and round in meteoric frenzy, seeming mad but actually quite natural. (Yet that word poses disturbing questions in this context. What is ‘natural’? Is violence, war, ‘natural’, or ‘denaturing’?) But as the lovers exchange suggestive hints of the possibilities their subconscious has suggested, they show a readiness to offer and accept rabbit-sexuality and animal violence that may, even now (for conscious human beings), be ‘shocking’ in its ‘nonchalance’(243:33-4). However, the final sentence of the chapter (243:33-4) is a sudden reminder of the path that has been forsaken since ‘Water-Party’. For Bismarck is not the power-wielder and warmonger of his name. In truth he is a mystery, a wonder (like Gerald in the canoe), when seen with reverence for the ‘other’ rather than with the impulse to impose ones’s will and dominate – whether by Winfred’s fantasy and mothering, or in Gerald and Gundrun’s power struggle, to the death if it should come to that.
There is violence and deathliness in Birkin and Ursula, too. Yet the crucial discovery of chapter XIX, 'Moony', is that there is a kind of violence that can heal, as well as a violence that destroys. The changeability of this pair has -been evident since 'Water-Party'. Birkin has been ill, withdrawn. Ursula has again reacted in repulsion at what she sees as his deathliness, and, moreover, with a kind of pure hatred for his very being, oppressive to her ego. As she wanders through the dark trees, she is in a mood of almost annihilating repudiation - hating the brilliant moonlight which makes everything definite and visible to consciousness, drawn to the darkness in which we can lose oneself. Yet here by the pond is Birkin, a shadow, muttering ludicrously, so that she wants to laugh. The flower-husks he drops in the water are reminders of the flowers they scattered on the pond in chapter XI, 'An Island", when they first admitted their love, now gone dead and dry, Birkin thinks that all relations with women are an antiphony of lies. Indeed, the moon suggests to him a horrible female power, like the Syrian goddess of violent sexuality. So it seems in hatred of Woman that he begins to stone the moon's reflection. But, when it is over, he will ask '"Was it hate?"' However much is may be (both in Birkin and the watching Ursula) a wroking off of anger, dislike, frustration, it seems also more, and deeper than that. What happens to dark water and white moon -- as well as in people?
The impact of the first stone makes the moon's reflection look like a writhing cuttlefish, and with a second stone the moon explodes. Waves of darkness run into the centre, but after the near-destruction the moon re-forms. Again, with stones close together, Birkin's explosions momentarily obliterate the moon, but again it re-forms. Then he throws stone, after stone, after stone. And here what seems important is to submit imaginatively to the experience in the language and the rhythm, let it happen within: 'And he was not satisfied ... whole and composed, at peace' (247:35-248:22). It is an experience of extraordinary violence, yet after and through it comes a strange peace, and tenderness, in which words of simple truth can be spoken. Neurosis, hatred, deathliness have vanished (though they may come back). Moreover, after the apparently destructive violence the moon looks different. It no longers seems hard, triumphant, a thing of power. It has become a rose, 'constellated' in the dark water - reminding one of Ursula's rose (not afleur du mal) against Birkin's dark river of dissolution, and of how the rosy lantern balanced and harmonized with the dark one and its writhing sea-creature, and of the symbolism of the rose in many languages. What has happened in the pool and in the subconscious of the lovers seems to be a mode of 'love' in which the relationship can grow through conflict, the clash of personalities, even violence, to harmony and peace. In The Rainbow sex had been seen as a kind of death and rebirth, a loss of consciousness and experience of oblivion at the hands of the 'other' (like the result of the first stonings here), but opening up a new life beyond. But then, as Lawrence rewrote his 'philosophy' in 'The Crown', he had seen that there were times when violence and destruction have to go far indeed before new creation can begin. The subconscious may have to be deeply agitated, neurotic consciousness broken apart or indeed almost completely disintegrated, before the new harmony can come about and the whole self become calm and composed. Yet come about it experientially does - because (this seems important) neither of the opposed forces can overcome the other. Out of the writhing polyp, the crashing noise, the broken water, the splintered light, the shattering violence, come healing, peace and tenderness. '''There is a golden light in you, which I wish you would give me''', says Birkin (249:15), something more than merely personal.
Yet as soon as they begin consciously to speak, misunderstanding flares and conflict begins again. Ursula thinks Birkin is demanding male supremacy, that she should submit and serve, and he is unclear about what he wants. He is also infuriated by the 'Magna Mater' (the Great Female and Mother) in her, and her assertive will and self-insistence (against his). Nevertheless, what they reached for a moment was real, and will come again when the words and the self¬willed 'old stable egos' give way. Afterwards, Rirkin is able to clarify to himself the. different ways that modern men and women can go. In Halliday's African statuette there seemed to be embodied a mode of being which - no longer fusing body, mind and spirit - has given itself over entirely to experiencing and knowing through the senses. This is in the mode of dissolution because it is a falling apart of unified being, reducing back to one element, though Birkin admires its civilization, which has gone much further down the road than his own. (Dissolution may be necessary before new integration can begin.) There is also an opposite 'Arctic' way of disintegration and reduction, when life is wholly dominated by mind and will, the 'white' life we have seen in Gerald.to But now the Birkin who preached about the 'River of Dissolution' has been brought by Ursula and the experience of the pond to glimpse a third way, which he calls 'paradisal', over-optimistically. Yet he has glimpsed a vio¬lence and disintegration which can heal, a conflict after which the 'opposites' can each be themselves again, perhaps indeed more so, but 'constellated' together in new peace and beauty of relation. He goes off impulsively to ask Ursula to marry him - which turns out to be grimly funny, because he doesn't yet understand what he has glimpsed, and because Ursula has changed again, so that another row results. Yet he has found a way ahead.
That is all for now until I scan the remainder. You may have noticed W speaks of 3 key chapters and only two are mentioned here; this is where I left off scanning and will resume soon. I think these passages, and pointing out these three chapters, will give you much to think about and clarify some parts and ideas we discussed throughout the postings. Keep in mind that the next part I post disgusses the 'third chapter' Worthen is referring to so...this is to be continuted.
