International Journal on Multicultural Literature (IJML) (eBook)

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Portrayal of Man-Woman Pairs in the Fictional World of D. H. Lawrence: An Analysis

S. Chelliah

Abstract: This paper attempts to project D. H. Lawrence as a difficult writer gifted with the remarkable writing skill to fashion almost all characters portrayed in his novels after his own personality by showing to the world that anyone who writes on D. H. Lawrence today is out and out confronted with two formidable difficulties: the complexity of his writings and the size of critical and biographical literature which has accumulated around him. It clearly colours his conception of life and human relationship with a focus on his own statement as “Art should arise from life”. It studies in depth the changing rainbow of our living relationships through the relationships of two pairs, Gerald-Gudrum and Birkin-Ursula, making a drama of disintegration move to a frozen finality. This brief analysis testifies to the fact rather clearly that the future of mankind depends upon a man-woman relationship where there is full and free scope for the creative flowering of sex unhampered by the barriers of class and conventions.

Keywords: Psychoanalysis, Moral, Relationship, Conflict, Freedom

Anyone who writes on D.H. Lawrence today is out and confronted with two formidable difficulties: the complexity of his writings and the size of critical and biographical literature, which has accumulated around him. Almost everyone who knew Lawrence wrote a book about him and tried to highlight that part of him, which he or she knew. Lawrence became “a Johnson surrounded by a shoal of Boswells.” It is generally held that in the beginning of the twentieth century, emphasis in English fiction got shifted from the external to the internal, from the impersonal to the personal, from circumlocution to psychoanalysis. Consequently, the very structure of the novel gradually changed from that of a ladder to that of a cobweb. And the novel got entangled in the self rather than the social world. This change gave a fresh fillip to the writing of autobiographical fiction, although ever since the beginning of the novel as a literary genre, the personal element has been present in some form or the other. But the average fictionist dislikes being called “a parrot of fact” (Wallace 19) and prefers instead the distinction of being an original, imaginative creator who creates every character, theme and episode in tune with the personal experiences of a fictionist.

D. H. Lawrence’s personality was, as it were, a crystal of many facts. He fashioned many characters in his novels after his own personality. At times, he capitalized even one single facet, and very frequently more than one, bearing sufficient potentiality to create one remarkable full-size character. It is not possible for a literary artist to wave aside his personality and then write. Lawrence admits it in his essay, “Pornography and Obscenity” as: “The author never escapes from himself, he pads along within the vicious circle of himself. There is hardly a writer living who gets out of the vicious circle of himself or a painter either” (180). The novel could be “anything and everything.” Like the art-form the essay, it elides all attempts to circumscribe it within fairly precise limits. The novel has thus served as a medium for an astonishing variety of things from pontifical moral preaching to pulse-racing pornography. The most noteworthy novelists in English fiction were D. H. Lawrence, Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce of them, Lawrence and Joyce have dominated the interwar years in striking contrast to each other as writers of unquestionable genius.

D. H. Lawrence is a difficult writer for those who are introduced to him for the first time. In order to come to grip with his works, particularly the novels, one needs a fair measure of acquaintance with his expository works and a knowledge of the special sense in which certain key words are used. The peculiar approach to life and problems that springs from his special genius has imposed a good deal of hardship on him as a novelist, at the same time posing a serious challenge to any reader tackling him for the first time. In the first place, it is not easy to fit Lawrence into any obvious scheme of the modern novel.

Though he was a revolutionary like Joyce in the conception of prose fiction, he was not concerned with the problems of time and consciousness. He made no technical innovations, but revealed himself startlingly original in the matter of characterization. He is less concerned with the situation in which his characters are placed. His men and women are different from the flesh and blood characters we come into contact with in the novels of Dickens or Hardy. They are “centres of radiations quivering with the interchange of impulses” (371). Lawrence looks upon them as diverse manifestations of the life-impulse and therefore, ‘plot’ is hardly found in his novels in the usual sense of the term. There are neither moral issues to be finalized nor conflicts to be settled. As individuals are vehicles of energy, great importance is attached to the feelings of the people at the point of contact. The individuals are mutually attracted by mysterious forces and not by social graces. Love or the erotic impulse appears like an electric charge. The individuals are brought into violent contact with one another, thanks to certain chemical affinities. Lawrence has stated that “the goal of life is the coming to perfection of each single individual” (qtd. in Karl 154). A sincere student of Lawrence finds that he extends our universe. One encounters ideas and mental states that are “novel experiences until one comes to grips with them on the artistic plane” (Hough 4). In one of his novels, Lawrence came out with a statement on the true role of fiction which throws light on the status of Lawrence as a novelist and he is said to have broken away from the novelistic conventions of his predecessors because he wanted the novel to project his conception of life and human relationships. Art, according to Lawrence, should arise from life, “The business of art is to reveal the relation between man and his circumambient universe at the living moment” (175). Lawrence looks upon novel as the perfect medium for projecting the changing rainbow of our living relationships, Gerald-Gudrun relationship is a bond of hate-love, sado-masochistic sexuality. He has drawn the nature of their pulls and counter-pulls with such deep identification that he invokes “the surcharged convulsions and tumescences” with an intensity that often exceeds the dramatic needs “with an intensity that often exceeds the dramatic needs” (Cavitch 55). The two pairs, Gerald-Gudrum and Birkin-Ursula intertwine throughout the novel Women in Love, but they stand for opposed values, one ‘life-giving’, the other being ‘death-dealing’. When Birkin and Ursula succeed in solving their problems partially and find a sort of salvation, Gerald and Gudrum are caught in a whirlpool of intense violence and corruption. Theirs is a drama of disintegration that moves to a frozen finality.

Gerald was a marked figure from the beginning, a man under a cross, with the shadow of doom and death hanging over him ever since his birth. As observed by Birkin, Gerald was, like a man offering his throat to be cult. “The process of dissolution began with the accidental killing of his brother as a child. It was an instinctual flaw that symbolized his denial of any life-tie among men” (Cavitch 68). Throughout his life, he moved in an atmosphere of death and decay. He was often associated with water, one of the principal symbols of death and dissolution in the novel. In the very first chapter, Gudrum instinctively recognizes that Gerlad is her destined lover. As soon as Gerald Crich arrived, “good-looking, healthy with a great reserved of energy”, Gudrun left the place as she wanted to be alone to know the “strange inoculation that had changed the whole temper of his blood” (24). Throughout the first half of the novel, Gudrun thrilled with excitement at every meeting with him and at the prospect of some conflict with him. Gerald’s attraction for Gudrun was at first quite casual. Later, it turned into a consuming passion. His declaration of love came as a pleasant surprise to Gudrun. She was a thrilling partner from that period to satisfy all his pent-up feelings of lust.

In the torrid love-affair of Gerald and Gudrun, Lawrence represents all his ideas of the negative side of man-woman relationship, opposed to the kind of one he draws in the sexual intimacy of Mellors and his sweetheart. There are many evidences in the novel Women in Love to confirm that it is a relationship marked by intense sexual attraction of the sado-masochistic type. The first hint is given in the “mare” incident. This was followed by the “rabbit” scene (xviii). Gudrun is excited by the brute and mechanical in him. Yet, she develops in her soul irrepressible urge to get even with him. It is this “unconquerable desire for deep violence against him” that forces her to strike him in the face after the frenzied dance before the highland cattle that has all the symbolic intensity of a male-female sexual confrontation surcharged with violence. The nature of the Gerald-Gudrun relationship is highlighted in the episode: “You have struck the first blow, ‘he said . . . .‘And I shall strike the...