Lawrence in Love (with himself)

Oh Lawrence… How your pomp does make me laugh!!!

I spent the weekend reading D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love. If you haven’t had the pleasure I would recommend waiting until you have absolutely nothing else you could possibly do – when you have finished every book on your shelves – when no one is around to entertain you – basically, don’t waste your time. That is, unless, you enjoy reading simply to discount everything that a book suggests. This novel is a romance of sorts, but no romance any woman I know would want to take part in. It is also a philosophical discussion of love and death. It is chauvinistic and pompous. The women seem to have all the wrong ideas, and the “right” ideas are so far fetched it is hard to take the work seriously. However, I do not think it was written as a comedy.

As an example, let us take the main character of Rupert and extrapolate his ideas. Just to note, this character is supposed to be the voice of reason in the novel, and his ideas are carried throughout as solid.

Here is an instance of Rupert sharing his ideas (which he constantly feels the need to do) with Ursula (his “love” interest):
“I don’t believe in love at all–that is, any more than I believe in hate, or in grief. Love is one of the emotions like all the others–and so it is all right whilst you feel it. But I can’t see how it becomes an absolute…it is only part of any human relationship. Any one should be required always to feel it…I cannot conceive.”
This is how Rupert woos Ursula, telling her that love does not exist and that she should not expect him to feel it.
Again, Rupert woos Ursula with his endearing words:
“I don’t feel the emotion of love for you–no, and I don’t want to. Because it gives out at the last issues…There is a real impersonal me, that is beyond love, beyond any emotional relationship…we want to delude ourselves that love is the root…The root is beyond love, a naked kind of isolation, and isolate me, that does not meet and mingle, and never can…Ultimately, there is no love.”
This is Rupert’s proclamation to Ursula urging her to unite with him, but not for love, for Something. Despite her insistence for an explanation of what this Something is, Rupert can offer none.
He continues by telling Ursula, “I don’t want your good looks, and I don’t want your womanly feelings, and I don’t want your thoughts nor opinions nor your ideas…”

(He does however want her to climb into bed with him).

Ursula does fight him and first, and tells him that his ideas are ridiculous, but the novel suggests that she feels inevitably drawn to him despite her disgust.
At any rate, she does end up first his mistress, then married to him and decides that all his ideas on love and life are right. Near the end of the novel she says to her sister, talking of Rupert’s Something, “But there can be something else, can’t there…One can see it through one’s soul, long enough before it sees itself through in actuality. And then, when one has seen in one’s soul, one is something else.” When her sister questions her and tells her that she can’t get away from love, Ursula responds saying, “Love is too human and little. I believe in something inhuman, of which love is only a little part. I believe what we must fulfil comes out of the unknown to us, and it is something infinitely more than love. It isn’t so merely human.”

This goes back to Rupert’s disgust with humanity which he expresses to Ursula in one of his wooing lectures. He says, “[Humanity] has become dead to me. I don’t believe in the humanity I pretend to be a part of…I hate the dying organic form of social mankind…” Ursula now encompasses all of Rupert’s ideas. She is no longer an individual. Her sister on the other hand maintains her individuality in her relationship and ends up less than happy where as Ursula appears to be so.

The themes discussed in this novel are beyond pretentious and Lawrence’s treatment of women is ridiculous and appalling. He pretends to know something of the way women think. The title itself is a presumption that the text cannot live up to.

I will leave it at that. If you are interested in discovering what Rupert’s thoughts are on death, men, and many other exciting topics set aside 10 hours or so and prepare yourself for some laughs mingled with endless disgust.