I couldn't leave chapter eight without commenting on that great scene where Hermione whacks Birkin over the head with a ball of lapis lazuli. First what instigates the conflict is this exchange:
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If,' said Hermione at last, `we could only realise, that in the spirit we are all one, all equal in the spirit, all brothers there -- the rest wouldn't matter, there would be no more of this carping and envy and this struggle for power, which destroys, only destroys.'
This speech was received in silence, and almost immediately the party rose from the table. But when the others had gone, Birkin turned round in bitter declamation, saying:
`It is just the opposite, just the contrary, Hermione. We are all different and unequal in spirit -- it is only the social differences that are based on accidental material conditions. We are all abstractly or mathematically equal, if you like. Every man has hunger and thirst, two eyes, one nose and two legs. We're all the same in point of number. But spiritually, there is pure difference and neither equality nor inequality counts. It is upon these two bits of knowledge that you must found a state. Your democracy is an absolute lie -- your brotherhood of man is a pure falsity, if you apply it further than the mathematical abstraction. We all drank milk first, we all eat bread and meat, we all want to ride in motor-cars -- therein lies the beginning and the end of the brotherhood of man. But no equality.
Lawrence does not favor democracy. People are not equal to him. This is somewhat shocking at first to people. Some of his later novels (The Plumed Serpent, for instance) seem to suggest facism and he has been accused of being sympathetic to it.
Another point is that Hermione really wants to kill him. It's not just a her taking a crack at him, but her really trying to murder him, and it comes from her unconscious, deep within her:
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Terribly shocks ran over her body, like shocks of electricity, as if many volts of electricity suddenly struck her down. She was aware of him sitting silently there, an unthinkable evil obstruction. Only this blotted out her mind, pressed out her very breathing, his silent, stooping back, the back of his head.
A terrible voluptuous thrill ran down her arms -- she was going to know her voluptuous consummation. Her arms quivered and were strong, immeasurably and irresistibly strong. What delight, what delight in strength, what delirium of pleasure! She was going to have her consummation of voluptuous ecstasy at last. It was coming! In utmost terror and agony, she knew it was upon her now, in extremity of bliss. Her hand closed on a blue, beautiful ball of lapis lazuli that stood on her desk for a paper-weight. She rolled it round in her hand as she rose silently. Her heart was a pure flame in her breast, she was purely unconscious in ecstasy. She moved towards him and stood behind him for a moment in ecstasy. He, closed within the spell, remained motionless and unconscious.
Then swiftly, in a flame that drenched down her body like fluid lightning and gave her a perfect, unutterable consummation, unutterable satisfaction, she brought down the ball of jewel stone with all her force, crash on his head. But her fingers were in the way and deadened the blow. Nevertheless, down went his head on the table on which his book lay, the stone slid aside and over his ear, it was one convulsion of pure bliss for her, lit up by the crushed pain of her fingers. But it was not somehow complete. She lifted her arm high to aim once more, straight down on the head that lay dazed on the table. She must smash it, it must be smashed before her ecstasy was consummated, fulfilled for ever. A thousand lives, a thousand deaths mattered nothing now, only the fulfilment of this perfect ecstasy.
It reminds of what Birkin said to Gerald about taking two to make a murder, both the murderer and the murderee agreeing to it inside their unconsciousness. But the language Lawrence uses to show Birkin's reaction is fascinating:
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He was shattered, but he was not afraid. Twisting round to face her he pushed the table over and got away from her. He was like a flask that is smashed to atoms, he seemed to himself that he was all fragments, smashed to bits. Yet his movements were perfectly coherent and clear, his soul was entire and unsurprised.
`No you don't, Hermione,' he said in a low voice. `I don't let you.'
He saw her standing tall and livid and attentive, the stone clenched tense in her hand.
`Stand away and let me go,' he said, drawing near to her.
As if pressed back by some hand, she stood away, watching him all the time without changing, like a neutralised angel confronting him.
She has murder inside her soul but he does not have the soul of a murderee. Notice also that "he seemed to himself that he was all fragments, smashed to bits." This echoes Gerald's "all in bits" and Hermione's "ghastliness of dissolution" that i mentioned earlier But there is a very important difference. Yes under the stress of being attacked Birkin person is fragmented, but he goes on and reintegrates himself throug nature.
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Yet he wanted something. He was happy in the wet hillside, that was overgrown and obscure with bushes and flowers. He wanted to touch them all, to saturate himself with the touch of them all. He took off his clothes, and sat down naked among the primroses, moving his feet softly among the primroses, his legs, his knees, his arms right up to the arm-pits, lying down and letting them touch his belly, his breasts. It was such a fine, cool, subtle touch all over him, he seemed to saturate himself with their contact.
But they were too soft. He went through the long grass to a clump of young fir-trees, that were no higher than a man. The soft sharp boughs beat upon him, as he moved in keen pangs against them, threw little cold showers of drops on his belly, and beat his loins with their clusters of soft-sharp needles. There was a thistle which pricked him vividly, but not too much, because all his movements were too discriminate and soft. To lie down and roll in the sticky, cool young hyacinths, to lie on one's belly and cover one's back with handfuls of fine wet grass, soft as a breath, soft and more delicate and more beautiful than the touch of any woman; and then to sting one's thigh against the living dark bristles of the fir-boughs; and then to feel the light whip of the hazel on one's shoulders, stinging, and then to clasp the silvery birch-trunk against one's breast, its smoothness, its hardness, its vital knots and ridges -- this was good, this was all very good, very satisfying. Nothing else would do, nothing else would satisfy, except this coolness and subtlety of vegetation travelling into one's blood. How fortunate he was, that there was this lovely, subtle, responsive vegetation, waiting for him, as he waited for it; how fulfilled he was, how happy!
And so on.
