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By Root 7648 0

Lawrence is interested in showing us the dilemma of everyday life, his characters are not beyond overreaching, petty jealousies or being downright silly. Ursula insists on using the old-fashioned word “love,” but she pretends to herself that she is put out by Birkin’s proposal to her. She insists that she does not want to give herself up to him, and it is not difficult to grasp her exasperation with him in his vague insistence on wanting “more than love.” Such a state of affairs creates strange bedfellows: Natural allies may turn against one another, and one’s natural enemy may come to one’s side. It should not shock us, therefore, that Mr. Brangwen bullies Ursula to answer Birkin’s marriage proposal, a proposal he delivers to his daughter secondhand, rather than waiting for Birkin to do so. On the other hand, it is Hermione who sides with Ursula against Birkin, supporting Ursula’s decision to accept or reject Birkin’s proposal on her own terms, a truly Christian gesture on Hermione’s part, since she would have loved to have had Birkin under any circumstances. “Wisdom is a butterfly / And not a gloomy bird of prey,” the poet W. B. Yeats reminds us. Birkin and Ursula understand this and find that the most direct route to truth is a circuitous one. Preconceptions lead to the dead, unproductive, snow-abstraction of Gerald and Gudrun. A life of pursuing one’s instincts leads back to Pussum.

In order to reinvent the past, one must start over completely. This means turning one’s back on the present as well as the past. Birkin urges Ursula to quit her job and to leave England with him. Theirs will be a whole new beginning. Ursula will not entertain the idea that Hermione and Birkin can remain friends if Ursula and Birkin are to reinvent themselves. Personal relationships, too, must fall victim to this radical transformation. If Gerald and Gudrun are not put aside, at least as their respective intimate relationships with Birkin and Ursula are presently constituted, it is because they are assumed to be traveling along the same path. When this proves not to be the case, a distance immediately inserts itself between Birkin and Ursula and their intimates. Gerald undergoes the ultimate alienating experience, and Gudrun’s behavior, primarily toward Gerald, serves to divorce her from her sister and Birkin. This is, after all, a true marriage not only of minds but also of souls. One must be morally responsible toward others, but one cannot tolerate immoral, callous behavior from those with whom one is intimate.

Of course, already at the end of “Moony,” Ursula has accepted the necessity of putting distance between her and Gudrun. “So she withdrew away from Gudrun and from that which she stood for, she turned in spirit towards Birkin again” (p. 264). Ursula’s sacrifice is, of all the characters‘, the greatest. Consequently, her growth during the course of the novel surpasses even that of Birkin. Gudrun is, after all, her sister and someone she loves dearly, so it takes great moral courage on Ursula’s part to understand what has to be done and do it. Birkin, as we shall see, never makes a complete break with Gerald as a love interest and until Gerald’s death is looking for a way to fuse his relationship with Gerald with his relationship with Ursula. “‘He should have loved me,’ he said. ‘I offered him’ ” (p. 483). To Ursula, Birkin’s insistence is not only stubbornness, but a violation of their hard-won comprehension of the nature of modern love and their participation in it.

“Did you need Gerald?” she asked one evening.

“Yes,” he said.

“Aren’t I enough for you?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “You are enough for me, as far as a woman is concerned. You are all women to me. But I want a man friend, as eternal as you and I are eternal.”

“Why aren’t I enough?” she said. “You are enough for me. I don’t want anybody else but you. Why isn’t it the same with you?” (p. 484).

Ursula is right. Birkin’s position is “false, impossible.” It does not matter whether Birkin wants a friendship with a man—and here Ursula is extremely mature not to deal with