46
EUGENE GOODHEART
In order to see what is involved in moving from the little human
world to the greater world of the body, we should turn to
Women
in Love,
his richest
if
not his most successful novel, in which we
are given a striking demonstration of his imagination of transcendence.
As
critics have pointed out, the relationship between Birkin
and Ursula is intended to represent the expansion and realization
of vitalities in them, while the relationship between Gudrun and
Gerald develops, in contrast, toward catastrophe and death. The
love of Birkin and Ursula, however, is successful only by contrast
with the disastrous connection between Gerald and Gudrun, for if
we ignore the counterpointing of the two relationships and consider
simply the evolution of Birkin in the novel, then the "fulfillment"
of his relationship with Ursula seems a rather dubious affair. What
characterizes Birkin's action throughout the novel is a search for
transcendent states of being, and that search draws him away
from women, not toward them. Thus Birkin's desire to break free
from Hermione cannot be explained exclusively as a recoil from
the predatory female. To be sure, Hermione in her awful willfulness
is an enemy of life and spontaneity, and Birkin's flight from her is
the necessary act of self-preservation. But Birkin's suspicion of
Hermione remains a constant posture in Birkin which determines
his relations with Ursula. Again Birkin's violent and suspicious be–
havior toward Ursula cannot be explained as merely the suspicious–
ness of a man who has been burnt badly by a particularly noxious
female. His recoil from her is a recoil from the "eternal feminine,"
and this is graphically illustrated by the episode in which Birkin
tries to destroy the reflection of the moon upon the water. The
image, of course, is indestructible, and Birkin's anger finally re–
leases his passion for Ursula. The "mystic" consummation in dark–
ness, however, is short-lived, and the battle goes on between them.
If
we consider the consummation itself, or the "love-ethic"
that Lawrence attaches to it, we can perhaps begin to appreciate
the extent of Birkin's recoil from the act of love. The merging of
identities-what the Elizabethans called "the little death"-is pas–
sionately repudiated by Birkin. Instead the act of love becomes
a male-female polarity-or in one of Lawrence's metaphors "a
star equilibrium"-in which the separate identities of the lovers
are maintained even at the moment of consummation. Even Ursula,
