Wow, I can't keep up with you guys. I can't respond to everything but since you bring up the horses i found this exchange in chapter 12 on the horses even more interesting than the actual scene where Gerald spurrs her:
Quote:
And Ursula, recovering from her ill- humour, turned to Gerald saying:
`Oh, I hated you so much the other day, Mr Crich,'
`What for?' said Gerald, wincing slightly away.
`For treating your horse so badly. Oh, I hated you so much!'
`What did he do?' sang Hermione.
`He made his lovely sensitive Arab horse stand with him at the railway- crossing whilst a horrible lot of trucks went by; and the poor thing, she was in a perfect frenzy, a perfect agony. It was the most horrible sight you can imagine.'
`Why did you do it, Gerald?' asked Hermione, calm and interrogative.
`She must learn to stand -- what use is she to me in this country, if she shies and goes off every time an engine whistles.'
`But why inflict unnecessary torture?' said Ursula. `Why make her stand all that time at the crossing? You might just as well have ridden back up the road, and saved all that horror. Her sides were bleeding where you had spurred her. It was too horrible --!'
Gerald stiffened.
`I have to use her,' he replied. `And if I'm going to be sure of her at all, she'll have to learn to stand noises.'
`Why should she?' cried Ursula in a passion. `She is a living creature, why should she stand anything, just because you choose to make her? She has as much right to her own being, as you have to yours.'
`There I disagree,' said Gerald. `I consider that mare is there for my use. Not because I bought her, but because that is the natural order. It is more natural for a man to take a horse and use it as he likes, than for him to go down on his knees to it, begging it to do as it wishes, and to fulfil its own marvellous nature.'
OK, that's fair enough, and somewhat conventional logic. But notice this after:
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`Quite,' said Birkin sharply. `Nothing is so detestable as the maudlin attributing of human feelings and consciousness to animals.'
`Yes,' said Hermione, wearily, `we must really take a position. Either we are going to use the animals, or they will use us.'
`That's a fact,' said Gerald. `A horse has got a will like a man, though it has no mind strictly. And if your will isn't master, then the horse is master of you. And this is a thing I can't help. I can't help being master of the horse.'
`If only we could learn how to use our will,' said Hermione, `we could do anything. The will can cure anything, and put anything right. That I am convinced of -- if only we use the will properly, intelligibly.'
`What do you mean by using the will properly?' said Birkin.
`A very great doctor taught me,' she said, addressing Ursula and Gerald vaguely. `He told me for instance, that to cure oneself of a bad habit, one should force oneself to do it, when one would not do it -- make oneself do it -- and then the habit would disappear.'
`How do you mean?' said Gerald.
`If you bite your nails, for example. Then, when you don't want to bite your nails, bite them, make yourself bite them. And you would find the habit was broken.'
OK this is rather interesting but it too signals how Hermione is a very "willful" person. And we know that already. But notice this:
Quote:
`It is fatal to use the will like that,' cried Birkin harshly, `disgusting. Such a will is an obscenity.'
Hermione looked at him for a long time, with her shadowed, heavy eyes. Her face was soft and pale and thin, almost phosphorescent, her jaw was lean.
`I'm sure it isn't,' she said at length. There always seemed an interval, a strange split between what she seemed to feel and experience, and what she actually said and thought. She seemed to catch her thoughts at length from off the surface of a maelstrom of chaotic black emotions and reactions, and Birkin was always filled with repulsion, she caught so infallibly, her will never failed her. Her voice was always dispassionate and tense, and perfectly confident. Yet she shuddered with a sense of nausea, a sort of seasickness that always threatened to overwhelm her mind. But her mind remained unbroken, her will was still perfect. It almost sent Birkin mad. But he would never, never dare to break her will, and let loose the maelstrom of her subconsciousness, and see her in her ultimate madness. Yet he was always striking at her.
`And of course,' he said to Gerald, `horses haven't got a complete will, like human beings. A horse has no one will. Every horse, strictly, has two wills. With one will, it wants to put itself in the human power completely -- and with the other, it wants to be free, wild. The two wills sometimes lock -- you know that, if ever you've felt a horse bolt, while you've been driving it.'
`I have felt a horse bolt while I was driving it,' said Gerald, `but it didn't make me know it had two wills. I only knew it was frightened.'
Hermione had ceased to listen. She simply became oblivious when these subjects were started.
`Why should a horse want to put itself in the human power?' asked Ursula. `That is quite incomprehensible to me. I don't believe it ever wanted it.'
`Yes it did. It's the last, perhaps highest, love-impulse: resign your will to the higher being,' said Birkin.
`What curious notions you have of love,' jeered Ursula.
`And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside her. With one will, she wants to subject herself utterly. With the other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.'
`Then I'm a bolter,' said Ursula, with a burst of laughter.
`It's a dangerous thing to domesticate even horses, let alone women,' said Birkin. `The dominant principle has some rare antagonists.'
First i think it's somewhat clear that Lawrence supports the breaking of the horse's will. At least that's how i read it. Second, he associates women's will to a horse's will. The concept of two wills, one as subjected and the other as free and wild, is incredibly imaginative and I think new. The fact that a woman's will is also of two wills (both subjected and free) here is not surprising for Lawrence. He seems to be saying that woman's wills must be controlled like that of a horse by men. Hermione represents what is wrong with modern women (this is Lawrence not me, :p ), willful and uncontrolled. Needless to say Lawrence was not a feminist. ;) I think the relationship between Gudrun and Gerald is an acting out of this attempt to controll the free and wild female.
