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I don't think that there is a love triangle at all. There is a triangle of blood versues mind consciousness and Isabel is somewhere in between, mostly because of her contact with Maurice and perhaps because of her pregnacy which makes her closer to that mysterious world beyond reason.Quote:
Originally Posted by Quark
You made some good points in here D-M. I think you point out very well how Isabel is the trianglelated point between Bertie and Maurice. That is why she is always of two minds.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark Muse
Ok I think I've caught up with most of the posts. I think I've posted about five or six posts in a row. I hope that brings me up to date.
Nice to have you join in.
Yes I agree with that, I could see her becoming more withdrawn as Bertie is, if she were to loose Maurice for some reason.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
No I do think think the story has a war theme really, but even without the intent of making it in anyway about the war, it still demostrates how the lives of people can be touched by the effects of the war. By the fact that the war was the cause of his blindness was has affected Maurice and Isabel and the direction thier life will now take.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Good point, and I agree.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
LOL sorry I kind of responded to your posts in the reverse order from which you posted them in.
Read all and everyone seems to be in agreement on the basic points. Virgil, you did a good job of catching up and I am glad you did not miss out on this fine story. It was a good one and so has been our discussion.
I will try to post some thoughts in here tomorrow. I wanted to look a few things up - some passages about 'blood consciousness' and about the idea of the 'flower', as Lawrence sees a person in a relationship and of some other things that seem to relate to this story.
Well, considering I posted the announcement for this story on post #1080 something, and we filled up 8 pages discussing this story, I think we all did pretty well this time.
I just found this past post of yours, Virgil:
So the transfiguration aspect did cross your mind at least but now you dispute it. I can see your point that Bertie definitely was not transfigured and that Maurice's transfiguration would have come earlier when he first lost his eyesight. That was a good point to make.Quote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Janine
"Virgil, do you think the ending is a transfiguration for the two males? "
You'll have to wait until I read it. It did cross my mind as I read you and Dark Muse discuss it. If so perhaps I should have used it in my thesis. Could I have missed it? We'll see.
I can't think anymore now - too tired out. I need to go to bed - it is way late. See you all tomorrow. J
I feel so much relieved now that I can finally participate. Perhaps I rushed to the central part of the story just now. If I did not feel the need to rush in and get to the core of the story I would have gone through a discussion of a some other points, which would have ultimately reached that core. So perhaps we can back fill. How's this for an agenda: (1) Discussion of Isabel's and Maurice's relationship, (2) a discussion of Maurice's and Bertie's characters, (3) a discussion of blood consciousness, (4) a discussion of the climax, the touch exchange, and (5) a discussion of how Bertram Russell's and Lawrence's relatonship figures in the story, yes Janine a biographical discussion so look up that relationship in your Lawrence biographies. :) Do you think this is a good agenda?
It sounds good to me
Sure, Virgil, we can discuss in this order. We still have a lot of time left over this month. We did discuss each of those things in some detail, but I am sure you will add more to our former comments. 5) - more research??? Oh...ok.....where do you think I will find info...in the biographies? or the letters? I will see what I can dig up. I still do not think it a huge part of the story, or that important to Bertie's character. Maybe, I will feel differently when I discover more about Russell. I do think that Bertie could represent any man like Bertie who does not connect with woman - it does not necessarily mean Bertie is a homosexual or even has those tendencies. If he were, I imagine he would be even more disturbed during the incident in the barn with Maurice. But, I can't bring myself to see that in anyway as a sexual scene, nor did I think Lawrence intended it to be so.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
So anyway, Virgil, of course, you can back-up the wagon - go back to the beginning and start with the first item on your outline. It sounds good to me. I like the way you outlined the topics to discuss. I will let you lead with all of this, since I am a little 'burned-out' now with this discussion and with the Chekhov SS's, although we just started a second story in that one, so things are picking up. I had to put "A Tale of Two Cities" on hold temporarily and I am trying to finish listening to WIL on MP3....slow going, since I want to fully enjoy and absorb that great narration.
Ok, great. Let's look at Isabel's and Maurice's relationship. Two early paragraghs are insightful. Here's the first:
What is interesting is that they have blocked the outside world. These are interesting setences: "She and he had been almost entirely alone together since he was wounded. They talked and sang and read together in a wonderful and unspeakable intimacy." They have built life together, but wy is it "unspeakable intimacy?" They have blocked the outside world, but it is Isabel who requires the outside world. "Sometimes, after months of this intensity, a sense of burden overcame Isabel, a weariness, a terrible ennui, in that silent house approached between a colonnade of tall-shafted pines." And this ennui tinges Maurice into depression. It seems that the outside world destroys the happiness that they have formed. Here's the other early important paragragh:Quote:
He had been home for a year now. He was totally blind. Yet they had been very happy. The Grange was Maurice's own place. The back was a farmstead, and the Wernhams, who occupied the rear premises, acted as farmers. Isabel lived with her husband in the handsome rooms in front. She and he had been almost entirely alone together since he was wounded. They talked and sang and read together in a wonderful and unspeakable intimacy. Then she reviewed books for a Scottish newspaper, carrying on her old interest, and he occupied himself a good deal with the farm. Sightless, he could still discuss everything with Wernham, and he could also do a good deal of work about the place--menial work, it is true, but it gave him satisfaction. He milked the cows, carried in the pails, turned the separator, attended to the pigs and horses. Life was still very full and strangely serene for the blind man, peaceful with the almost incomprehensible peace of immediate contact in darkness. With his wife he had a whole world, rich and real and invisible.
There's that word again, "unspeakable." Why unspeakable? Well, I think we see the basis of their relationship with the following from a bit later:Quote:
Dazed, she schemed for a way out. She invited friends, she tried to give him some further connexion with the outer world. But it was no good. After all their joy and suffering, after their dark, great year of blindness and solitude and unspeakable nearness, other people seemed to them both shallow, prattling, rather impertinent. Shallow prattle seemed presumptuous. He became impatient and irritated, she was wearied. And so they lapsed into their solitude again. For they preferred it.
That's one of those paragraghs that drives the feminist nuts. ;) She will submit her life to Maurice's and she severs her friends. At least for a bit. But it doesn't answer why unspeakable.Quote:
She had one great article of faith, which was, that husband and wife should be so important to one another, that the rest of the world simply did not count. She and Maurice were husband and wife. They loved one another. They would have children. Then let everybody and everything else fade into insignificance outside this connubial felicity. She professed herself quite happy and ready to receive Maurice's friends. She was happy and ready: the happy wife, the ready woman in possession. Without knowing why, the friends retired abashed and came no more. Maurice, of course, took as much satisfaction in this connubial absorption as Isabel did.
Without copying too much from the story, let it suffice that Bertie's and Isabel's relationship rests heavily on speach and speaking. He shares her "literary activities." They have extended conversation and try to reason out life and Maurice. Early on before Bertie shos up, Isabel tries to find Maurice out back, in the barn, and we have this passage:
This is the passage where Isabel comes into contact with Maurice's dark world. I use the word "contact" very specifically. So much suggestive language here. The horse smell, the "hot animal life," "the dark, hindquarters of the horses," and Isabel passing through the lower half of the barn door while the upper half is closed. It's as if she has come in contact with another world. And notice this sentence: "She saw nothing, and the sound of his voice seemed to touch her." "Touch" is such a loaded word in this story. Animals and humans and people all touch in some way, especially at the end betwenn Bertie and Maurice. So why unspeakable? Because touch is a means of communication without language. Because Isabel has come into touch with Maurice and has been altered by it. She cannot speak of it because there is no human language that can explain it.Quote:
She reached at last the just visible door of the stable. There was no sign of a light anywhere. Opening the upper half, she looked in: into a simple well of darkness. The smell of horses, and ammonia, and of warmth was startling to her, in that full night. She listened with all her ears, but could hear nothing save the night, and the stirring of a horse.
'Maurice!' she called, softly and musically, though she was afraid. 'Maurice--are you there?'
Nothing came from the darkness. She knew the rain and wind blew in upon the horses, the hot animal life. Feeling it wrong, she entered the stable, and drew the lower half of the door shut, holding the upper part close. She did not stir, because she was aware of the presence of the dark hindquarters of the horses, though she could not see them, and she was afraid. Something wild stirred in her heart.
She listened intensely. Then she heard a small noise in the distance--far away, it seemed--the chink of a pan, and a man's voice speaking a brief word. It would be Maurice, in the other part of the stable. She stood motionless, waiting for him to come through the partition door. The horses were so terrifyingly near to her, in the invisible.
The loud jarring of the inner door-latch made her start; the door was opened. She could hear and feel her husband entering and invisibly passing among the horses near to her, in darkness as they were, actively intermingled. The rather low sound of his voice as he spoke to the horses came velvety to her nerves. How near he was, and how invisible! The darkness seemed to be in a strange swirl of violent life, just upon her. She turned giddy.
Her presence of mind made her call, quietly and musically:
'Maurice! Maurice--dea-ar!'
'Yes,' he answered. 'Isabel?'
She saw nothing, and the sound of his voice seemed to touch her.
'Hello!' she answered cheerfully, straining her eyes to see him. He was still busy, attending to the horses near her, but she saw only darkness. It made her almost desperate.
Good, Virgil, you have zeroed in on the word 'unspeakable' and you have observed well why the word has been repeated several times throughout the text. Yes, to describe the state of non-speech is an unspeakable thing. This also is the thing that Isabel says she cannot describe to others.
Yes, the barn smells make it evident that there is a closeness and affinity to the animal connection to humans and people by means of smell and touch only. The darkness mimics Maurice's daily natural state now of sightlessness.
Isabel and Maurice exist in a world no longer needful of language - touch being prominent. So one could say the sightless world or state relies mainly on non language and most sensitively on touch alone. That is an interesting observation.
LOL you see I did not acutally view this as a bad thing. But in someways I rather shared Isabel's sentiment, and it sounded like a rather nice idea, to just be living out on a farm with your loved one exelcuded from the rest of the world. Though it does not work out so well for them in the long run, it sounded quite pleasent.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
As well in there case it was two-sideded I think, as ulitmately in the end they end up driving away Maurice's friends as well and both seemed quite pleased by that fact.
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She professed herself quite happy and ready to receive Maurice's friends. She was happy and ready: the happy wife, the ready woman in possession. Without knowing why, the friends retired abashed and came no more. Maurice, of course, took as much satisfaction in this connubial absorption as Isabel did.
That's a good description of what's behind their relationship and their "great year of blindness and solitude." This doesn't last, though. Something interposes and breaks up the close contact:Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Maurice's sadness, which is equally incomprehensible, disrupts their relationship. The same blindness that has brought him closer to his wife has separated him from other people, and the loneliness of his situation begins to set in. Isabel invites friends over, but nothing seems to help. Maurice worries that he's disfigured and a burden to his wife. All of this complicates their relationship. He eventually overcomes these problems with Bertie in the barn scene, but I wonder exactly how much success he has with Isabel.Quote:
But as time wore on, sometimes the rich glamour would leave them. Sometimes, after months of this intensity, a sense of burden overcame Isabel, a weariness, a terrible ennui, in that silent house approached between a colonnade of tall-shafted pines. Then she felt she would go mad, for she could not bear it. And sometimes he had devastating fits of depression, which seemed to lay waste his whole being. It was worse than depression--a black misery, when his own life was a torture to him, and when his presence was unbearable to his wife.
It's interesting about Maurice's period of sadness. I read that as the outside world intruding on his tranquility. And that by the story's present time, he's overcome it. I guess we can talk about that when we discuss the climax. I guess i don't see how Maurice changes after that barn scene. It's Bertie who's altered.Quote:
Originally Posted by Quark
Virgil, I do think we disagree here. You had better go back over the story. First off, I do think that some time has passed for Maurice and Isabel and they are not experiencing (continually or consistently) the marital bliss they first felt when he came home wounded and blind. I don't know if the text indicates just how much time has elapsed, but I felt it was at least a year. It seems that at first they needed only themselves, and then later Isabel, feeling something is missing, invited her friends to visit, and finally Maurice's; however, the friends never seemed to stick around very long and once again, M and I were left entirely to themselves and in a sort of isolation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
The second thing we see differently, is that when Maurice comes out of the barn with Bertie, Maurice is quite elated; yet in the prior scene, when he was sitting at the table with Isabel and Bertie, Maurice was not connecting with them at all, and he was in a low state of mind, feeling shut out; therefore he retreated to his own dark world in the barn. I think this was compounded by the unsure reasons he states to Bertie in the barn - about what his scar looks like and how he expresses his deepest insecurities. Below I posted that part of the text:
I think that passage clearly shows the insecurity that Maurice is feeling in relation to his wife. I think that actually, Bertie, now becomes the one outside source or 3rd party that Maurice can call upon to question and confide in about these feelings he has as a male. Bertie being male and Isabel being a woman will not understand in the same way. This is finally Maurice's chance to know the truth about things that had to be bothering him within his own mind and being. It is ironic and odd that this source of confidence should end up being Bertie. I feel that this comes about because Maurice is set appart at the table and he sees from a different perspective how well Isabel and Bertie can communicate platonically in a language based way. Whereas, Maurice does not approach his wife in this mannor and apparently does not feel secure enough to say to her - is my scar horrid, am I ugly, repulsive, am I a burden. What husband could say that really? I think that, therefore, Maurice is totally transformed when he emerges with Bertie from the barn. He has gained his self confidence and can move on now without being burdened by these inner thoughts of his own worthlessness.Quote:
'I hope I'm not in your way at all at the Grange here,' said Bertie, rather shy and stiff.
'My way? No, not a bit. I'm glad Isabel has somebody to talk to. I'm afraid it's I who am in the way. I know I'm not very lively company. Isabel's all right, don't you think? She's not unhappy, is she?'
'I don't think so.'
'What does she say?'
'She says she's very content--only a little troubled about you.'
'Why me?'
'Perhaps afraid that you might brood,' said Bertie, cautiously.
'She needn't be afraid of that.' He continued to caress the flattened grey head of the cat with his fingers. 'What I am a bit afraid of,' he resumed, 'is that she'll find me a dead weight, always alone with me down here.'
'I don't think you need think that,' said Bertie, though this was what he feared himself.
'I don't know,' said Maurice. 'Sometimes I feel it isn't fair that she's saddled with me.' Then he dropped his voice curiously. 'I say,' he asked, secretly struggling, 'is my face much disfigured? Do you mind telling me?'
'There is the scar,' said Bertie, wondering. 'Yes, it is a disfigurement. But more pitiable than shocking.'
'A pretty bad scar, though,' said Maurice.
'Oh, yes.'
There was a pause.
'Sometimes I feel I am horrible,' said Maurice, in a low voice, talking as if to himself. And Bertie actually felt a quiver of horror.
'That's nonsense,' he said.
Now the next part of the text:
Ok, that part describes the intense experience Maurice is emersed in and the uncomfortable aspects of this experience for Bertie. It does not really describe what Bertie is feeling, as Maurice is touching him, but only his prior reaction to the request and afterwards - the result, quoted below:Quote:
Maurice again straightened himself, leaving the cat.
'There's no telling,' he said. Then again, in an odd tone, he added: 'I don't really know you, do I?'
'Probably not,' said Bertie.
'Do you mind if I touch you?'
The lawyer shrank away instinctively. And yet, out of very philanthropy, he said, in a small voice: 'Not at all.'
But he suffered as the blind man stretched out a strong, naked hand to him. Maurice accidentally knocked off Bertie's hat.
'I thought you were taller,' he said, starting. Then he laid his hand on Bertie Reid's head, closing the dome of the skull in a soft, firm grasp, gathering it, as it were; then, shifting his grasp and softly closing again, with a fine, close pressure, till he had covered the skull and the face of the smaller man, tracing the brows, and touching the full, closed eyes, touching the small nose and the nostrils, the rough, short moustache, the mouth, the rather strong chin. The hand of the blind man grasped the shoulder, the arm, the hand of the other man. He seemed to take him, in the soft, travelling grasp.
'You seem young,' he said quietly, at last.
Only one line in that passage seems to indicate Maurice's reaction to the encounter - "trembling in every fibre, and rocking slightly, slowly, from side to side." This is confusing to me - this is referring to Maurice, correct. So if this is indeed referring to Maurice he is also feeling this intense experience with Bertie, but his is not of revulsion. The last text also seems to indicate some sense of power that Maurice now has over the smaller man and the weaker one. Weaker, in the sense that Bertie keeps himself very much appart from others in a physical sense. He is the weaker counterpart of the animalistic power that Maurice represents. In this scene they are now directly pitted against each other - the man of language and intellect and the man of 'blood consciousness' or animal instinct. The underlined words do indicate that the 'blood consciousness' has the upper hand in power here. This whole section of the story is very powerful.Quote:
The lawyer stood almost annihilated, unable to answer.
'Your head seems tender, as if you were young,' Maurice repeated. 'So do your hands. Touch my eyes, will you?--touch my scar.'
Now Bertie quivered with revulsion. Yet he was under the power of the blind man, as if hypnotized. He lifted his hand, and laid the fingers on the scar, on the scarred eyes. Maurice suddenly covered them with his own hand, pressed the fingers of the other man upon his disfigured eye-sockets, trembling in every fibre, and rocking slightly, slowly, from side to side. He remained thus for a minute or more, whilst Bertie stood as if in a swoon, unconscious, imprisoned.
As you pointed out before, Virgil, I think that this would be so parellel to the relationship Lawrence had with Bertrum Russell. I still do not think that would have been a sexual or homosexual thing between them but rather this deep platonic with physical closeness that Lawrence talks of with a man in his letter and in his novels - very much so in "Women in Love". I believe in "The Plumed Serpent" he nearly or does achieve this sort of union with another male. I am sure the way Bertrum Russell shunned Lawrence and cut off their friendship would be similar to the feelings that Bertie has in this story; referring to his feelings of repulsion and the need to get away from the man (Maurice, possibly representative of Lawrence himself, in concept). Did we establish that this story was indeed written a few years after that break. It may have been a story in Lawrence's mind and did not come to the page until later on - perhaps several years.Quote:
Then suddenly Maurice removed the hand of the other man from his brow, and stood holding it in his own.
'Oh, my God' he said, 'we shall know each other now, shan't we? We shall know each other now.'
Bertie could not answer. He gazed mute and terror-struck, overcome by his own weakness. He knew he could not answer. He had an unreasonable fear, lest the other man should suddenly destroy him. Whereas Maurice was actually filled with hot, poignant love, the passion of friendship. Perhaps it was this very passion of friendship which Bertie shrank from most.
Obviously, the encounter and experience has changed and transformed Maurice, but not Bertie. Their final reactions are quite different. This reminds me somewhat, of the wrestling scene between Ruppert and Gerald in "Women in Love" - Ruppert being the more sure of the physical close contact with another male and Gerald entertaining the thought, but not quite of the same mind, or fully understanding/connecting with Ruppert's idea of the perfect male union (not in a homosexual context). In this case there is no sense of revulsion, but there is a difference of the two men - one who cannot fully connect with other humans on a 'blood consciousness' level. In some ways this makes Ruppert the more powerful in the end. I think that not only Bertrum Russell, was put-off by this idea of Lawrence's, but throughout L's life there were other close friends who shunned his way of thinking. I know that Murray was one. He pretty much told Lawrence to abandon this idea. I have read it in some letters.Quote:
'We're all right together now, aren't we?' said Maurice. 'It's all right now, as long as we live, so far as we're concerned?'
'Yes,' said Bertie, trying by any means to escape.
Maurice stood with head lifted, as if listening. The new delicate fulfilment of mortal friendship had come as a revelation and surprise to him, something exquisite and unhoped-for. He seemed to be listening to hear if it were real.Then he turned for his coat.
'Come,' he said, 'we'll go to Isabel.'
Bertie took the lantern and opened the door. The cat disappeared. The two men went in silence along the causeways. Isabel, as they came, thought their footsteps sounded strange. She looked up pathetically and anxiously for their entrance. There seemed a curious elation about Maurice. Bertie was haggard, with sunken eyes.
'What is it?' she asked.
'We've become friends,' said Maurice, standing with his feet apart, like a strange colossus.
When Dark Muse said that she thought Maurice was absorbing Bertie or taking from him she most likely got this idea from this passage:
I don't exactly know what to make of this statement, but I don't think he took from Bertie anything permanently. However, in the moment, he did seem to 'take him in', as one experiences something tactile or aromatic. With sight we need not get even close to the other human being to perceive them; but, without sight, only the other closer - animalistic/instinctive senses can be relied on to reveal or know the other person.Quote:
He seemed to take him, in the soft, travelling grasp.
What an outstanding post Janine. I will have to read carefully what you highlighted and get back. :)
Virgil, oh thank you so much for the compliment - it means a lot. It is a wonder I can think - I am so tired. Maybe, I was relying on my own 'animal blood consciousness' to write that post.:lol: Gee, and I was disagreeing with you, too. hahaha.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Seriously though, after you review, it let me know what you think of the ideas I have layed out. It took me a good hour to compose that post.
Glad you had not requoted me yet, Virgil; one of my end [/quote]'s was missing and I had to revise it just now.