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EDZIA WEISBERG
and concede that important though sex may be, it is the greater
part of wisdom and virtue for her not to come to a climax.
It
is
interesting, though I suppose useless, to speculate on the reasons
why the cloud of incense burnt to celebrate Lawrence as the
prophet of sex has been so thick as to obscure the nature of his
prophecies. Though we are surely all on the side of Eros, we must
acknowledge, as Mr. Vivas points out, that Lawrence' confuses an
"ethics of duty" with an "ethics of satisfaction." When he insists
on the centrality of sex in life, Lawrence is neither silly nor wrong,
but when he proscribes what
should
be sexually satisfying to a
woman, some of us, at least, must take issue. Ursula may, in point
of fact, be satisfied with "a full mystic knowledge of his [Birkin's]
suave loins of darkness," and Kate may be glad of "the death in
her of the Aphrodite of the foam," but for most women it will
hardly do as a program.
Throughout the book, Lawrence's religious-political program
is examined both seriously and critically. Without calling names,
Mr. Vivas does say that "for all his contempt of Mussolini, Law–
rence had a well developed streak of proto-fascism. He was not
as
one might expect a consistent proto-fascist. But the tendency is
there and it is deep-rooted in a psychology incapable of love." It
is this same incapacity for love, Vivas insists, which made for
Lawrence's rejection of "Agape" in favor of "Eros." It is this deep–
rooted alienation which makes the Laurentian heroes always cry
"I want, I want," in bed as well as in politics. The point is worth
making and Vivas makes it well.
In a short chapter entitled "Lawrence Imitates Lawrence,"
Mr. Vivas recognizes that perhaps more so than any other con–
temporary novelist Lawrence had one story to tell, and told and
re-told it in not too many different guises. Eventually it became a
formula. The hero, dark, short and soulful; the heroine, dissatis–
fied with ordinary men and willing to listen to the hero's philoso–
phy and to experiment in living; a male friend who finally dis–
appoints the hero and an unvarying cast of a half a dozen non–
entitities. In
Women in Love
this cast gives a stellar performance.
But, when Birkin degenerates into Somers, or into a horse, when
Gerald becomes Rico, and Ursula, Lou Witt, the performance
be–
comes as tedious as it is strange. Thus Vivas maintains, and with
