Half-way into Women in Love, I can say with vehemence that I am absorbed and shocked, but I cannot with certainty say I like the novel. The main issue is it's often hard to imagine the feelings and thoughts that Lawrence gives these characters, and identifying with their world is difficult. Their feelings are desribed so intensely as to make it almost uncomfortable.
"The same secret seemed to be working in the souls of all alike...All had a secret sense of power, and of inexpressible destructiveness, and of fatal half-heartedness, a sort of rottenness of will." (138)
The reason it took me so long to finally read the book in the first place was the opening dialogue between Ursula and Gudrun. The text was quite heavy and intense, and I always felt I was missing something vital. I finally was able to enter their world and understand their language, and only this allowed me to keep reading.
It is a violent, consuming world. Gudrun and Ursula are sisters, in their mid-twenties, and they are both entering strange relationships with men. Gudrun, creative and willfull, has captured the attention of Gerald, a magnate in coal mines. Gerald is a master of men and animals and, though he realizes he is in love with Gudrun, it is not an easy, romantic, loving affair. There is an essence of danger that seems to follow all characters and their unions.
This is especially true for Ursula, who has fallen in love with Birkin. A schoolteacher, Birkin has fallen into a state of alienation from the world. His view of the world and society is so bleak as to be refuting. He craves being alone, purely alone, and often is ill. Ursula, who craves him and also seeks this type of final solitude, deals with a false understanding of herself. She tries to ignore her unhappiness and fear of her world, but Birkin sees through that and recognizes in her a kindred spirit.
It is a violent, consuming world. Gudrun hits Gerald. Birkin is almost murdered by a past lover named Hermione. So far, there have been two scenes where animals are treated coarsely, if not violently. And death, hatred, all-consuming anger are always around.
An example of the eerie world in Women in Love is foud in chapter XIV, The Water-Party. All the characters are at a party held in Gerald's family residence, where there is a lake. As the party progresses, drama ensues between Gudrun and Gerald--they kiss, she slaps him. Birkin and Ursula, too, are facing each other in the party. As this is happening, Gerald's little sister drowns in the lake. The strange part is how nonchalant everyone is. Not only is neither Gerald nor his mother terribly sad, but it is only after the death that Gerald's family is really explained. The book unravels at a very strange pace. Basic information that might have been provided early on is being established way later.
The novel is also very interesting to me because it speaks of egoism. In my Honors class, we have been studying different ethical systems, and, interestingly enough, we looked at Max Sterner's egoism right as I was reading Women in Love. I'm amazed at the similarities. Freedom- there is a passage in the novel where Gerald's influence in the coal mines is discussed, and freedom is mocked much the same way Sterner shows freedom, as understood by most, to be empty. Gerald is a great example of the type of ideal that Sterner warns us against obeying or devoting our selves to. At the same time, the novel often raises issue of freedom and following one's own will, impulse, desires, even the most basic ones of going for a swim, taking clothes off. I very much want to explore this connection more thoroughly, and I've found some articles online to help me do so!
"Can't you see that to help my neighbors to eat is no more than eating myself. 'I eat, thou eatest, he eats, we eat, you eat, they eat'-- and what then? Why should every man decline the whole verb. First person singular is enough for me." (60)
Here are some quotes I think do a good job at encompassing the four main lovers' characters.
Gerald:
"The world was really a wilderness where one hunted and swam and rode. He rebelled against all authority. Life was a condition of savage freedom." (269)
"He was afraid, in mortal dry fear, but he knew what of." (282)
Ursula:
"She was silent for some minutes, struggling with her own self-deception. It was an instinct to deceive herself. 'But I'm happy--I think life is awfully jolly...'" (147)
"One was a tiny little rock with the tide of nothingness rising higher and higher. She herself was real, and only herself--just like a rock in a wash of flood-water. The rest was all nothingness." (297)
Birkin:
"But it infuriates me that I can't get it right, at the really growing part of me. I feel all tangled and messed up, and I can't get straight anyhow. I don't know what really to do. One must do something somewhere." (147)
"Better a thousand times take one's chance with death, than accept a life one did not want. But best of all to persist and persist and persist for ever, till one were satisfied with life." (241)
Gudrun:
"And it did rather annoy [Gerald], that Gudrun came dressed in startling colours, like a macaw, when the family was in mourning. Like a macaw she was! He watched the lingering way she took her feet from the ground. And her ankles were pale yellow, and her dress a deep blue yet it pleased him. It pleased him very much. He felt the challenge in her very attire--she challenged the whole world. And he smiled as to the note of a trumpet." (291)
"She was watching him all the time with her dark, inchoate eyes. She leaned forward and swung round her arm, catching him a light blow on the face with the back of her hand....And she felt in her soul an unconquerable desire for deep violence against him. She shut off the fear and dismay that filled her conscious mind. She wanted to do as she did, she was not going to be afraid." (204)
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