Women in Love (Barnes & Noble Classics S - D. H. Lawrence [8]
Lawrence appears acutely aware that love cannot be reinvented in the rigid formalism of traditional society. The liberation of love requires to some extent the general liberation of mankind. To this end, Lawrence opens Women in Love with the sisters Ursula and Gudrun having a frank discussion about marriage. Cleverly, Lawrence has Gudrun, the colder of the two sisters, whose relationship with Gerald will end in disaster, initiate the conversation about marriage:
“Ursula,” said Gudrun, “don’t you really want to get married?” Ursula laid her embroidery in her lap and looked up. Her face was calm and considerate.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “It depends how you mean.”
Gudrun was slightly taken aback. She watched her sister for some moments.
“Well,” she said, ironically, “it usually means one thing! But don’t you think anyhow, you’d be—” she darkened slightly—“in a better position than you are in now?”
A shadow came over Ursula’s face.
“I might,” she said. “But I’m not sure.”
Again Gudrun paused, slightly irritated. She wanted to be quite definite.
“You don’t think one needs the experience of having been married?” she asked.
“Do you think it need be an experience?” replied Ursula.
“Bound to be, in some way or other,” said Gudrun, coolly. “Possibly undesirable, but bound to be an experience of some sort.”
“Not really,” said Ursula. “More likely to be the end of experience” (p.5).
It is not lost on us that Ursula is embroidering, the symbol of the traditional woman. Lawrence uses this symbol to sharply contrast Ursula’s thoughts on marriage with those of most women in her time. Right from the beginning the reader is disabused of the notion that this will be a conventional novel. Lawrence establishes from the start that both sisters are distinctly modern women in their thoughts and feelings, despite their Edwardian surroundings. Ursula, for her part, does not reject the concept of marriage outright but merely the idea of marriage as it is traditionally conceived. Hence, her question about what precisely Gudrun means by marriage. For her part, Gudrun raises the issue of marriage in its practical aspects, whether it would be worth considering if it were financially beneficial, or whether one should consider it as a grand experience that might prove to be favorable or unfavorable. The question of love is never raised by Gudrun, but it is implicit in Ursula questioning of Gudrun’s specific definition of matrimony.
If the personalities of the two sisters are contrasted from the outset of the novel, Lawrence teases us as to who, in fact, is the more modern of the two without ever answering the question during the course of the novel in any definitive way. True, Gudrun initiates the discussion, which would at first make her appear the more traditional of the two. Gudrun seems to consider marriage as a practical institution unencumbered by love. However, we soon find out that Gudrun is anything but traditional in most of her thinking. She has gone off to live the life of a painter in London, an extremely radical act for a woman at that time and a bold one even today. Nor is her daring confined to London. She steals away to the local red-light district to be picked up by a working-class young man. In other words, she not only challenges the existing concepts of what a young woman should be, she seems interested in shattering those standards; yet she is willing to consider marriage for her own purposes.
Critics have noted that Gudrun’s name is that of a goddess in Norse mythology. Indeed, the whole of Women in Love has a Wagnerian flavor to it. Like a goddess, Gudrun appropriates for herself a freedom that apparently is beyond love or at least not subject to it. At the same time, she does not at first seem inclined to detach herself completely from traditional ways of doing things, even if she rebels. We are forced to ask whether Gudrun, who has moved beyond love as a defining principle and condition for male and female relationships, is more modern than her sister, who renounces love and marriage as they are presently and would revolutionize men and society in order to achieve happiness. Ursula is not looking for an expedient relationship. The sisters, Ursula and Gudrun, are really two sides of the same project of breaking with the past, and their relationship with Birkin and Gerald, respectively, explore from two different perspectives the possibilities of modern love.