Women in Love 697over the other. Considering himself dominated by
Gudrun, Gerald thinks, “If only I could kill her—I
should be free.” The artist’s model, the Pussum,
finally, intends “to capture Halliday, to have com-
plete power over him.”
Complementing the thematic discussion of
the will to power in relationships are numerous
instances of hostility between men and women.
Gudrun strikes Gerald, feeling “in her soul an
unconquerable desire for deep violence against him,”
while Gerald himself assaults her at the end of the
book, taking “the throat of Gudrun between his
hands” and “watching the unconsciousness coming
in her swollen face, watching her eyes roll back.”
Gudrun lives, but she drops to her knees, “like one
executed.” Earlier, two lovers are found drowned in a
lake, the woman’s “arms tight around the neck of the
young man, choking him.” Filled with hatred, the
rejected Hermione hits Rupert over the head with a
“ball of lapis lazuli,” an act from which she derives
“unutterable satisfaction.” The cruel Loerke has to
slap his female model to make her docile enough
to pose in the correct way for his sculpture. Even
the men fight with each other, as attested by the
homoerotic wrestling match between a nude Gerald
and Rupert in the “Gladiatorial” chapter. In each
case there is a disturbing mingling of aggressive and
sexual instincts.
Symbolic instances of violence are also in Women
in Love. The fight between the domestic cat Mino
and a wild female cat symbolizes the relationship
between Rupert and Ursula, as the latter realizes.
Bismarck, a rabbit, becomes a symbol for the mind-
less cruelty in men, as he scores the wrists of Gudrun
with Gerald watching. Rupert’s throwing rocks at
the reflection of the moon in a pond is a symbol of
his aggression toward Ursula, who secretly witnesses
the event, “dazed” as if she were Rupert’s target.
Before throwing the stones, Rupert curses goddesses
like “Cybele” and “Syria Dea,” strong maternal
images he associates with Ursula. Perhaps the most
striking symbolic act of violence is Gerald’s master-
ing a female horse in the chapter entitled “Coal
Dust.” His amusement at controlling, terrifying, and
torturing the horse is indicative of the sadism seen
in his relationship with Gudrun. It also expresses
his repressions and self-destructive masochism. As
Lawrence makes clear, Gerald is driven by a kind of
nihilism that the author associates with reason, sci-
ence, and industrialism.
Underwriting Lawrence’s portrayal of gender is
a persistent concern with the primitive, as seen, for
instance, in the African “negro statues,” particularly
the one of the woman giving birth, “conveying the
suggestion of the extreme of physical sensation,
beyond the limits of mental consciousness.” If gen-
der is absolute and impersonal, Lawrence suggests,
it is also primitive, consisting of largely erotic but
violent instincts that lead to combative relationships.
Mitchell R. LewisSexuality in Women in Love
Lawrence’s Women in Love presents a complex pic-
ture of human sexuality. Typically Lawrence portrays
sexuality as a mystical experience, a timeless ritual
linked to mythology and the unconscious. He also
links sexuality to primitivism, a theme developed in
relationship to African art. Lawrence’s main asser-
tion is that sexuality is impersonal and even “inhu-
man.” It transcends personality and knowledge,
allowing for a fulfilling mystical communion in
which each participant is still decidedly other. The
ideal experience appears to be represented in the
relationship between Rupert and Ursula. Lawrence
describes their sexual relationship in religious terms,
characterizing it as “ineffable” and as “mystically-
physically satisfying.” He portrays Rupert as one
of the “Sons of God” and as a potent “Egyptian
Pharaoh,” and he also describes Rupert’s embrace
of Ursula as “the fingers of silence upon silence, the
body of mysterious night upon the body of mysteri-
ous night, the night masculine and feminine.” It is
a sensual communion, described in the archetypal
language of religion and mythology.
This mystical, heterosexual experience, however,
is complicated by Rupert’s unfulfilled need “to love
a man purely and fully.” The “problem of love and
eternal conjunction between two men” undermines
Rupert’s relationship with Ursula. He believes that
his relationship with her will not be complete until
he has an “eternal union with a man too,” and he
desires such a union with Gerald. Ursula considers