Conclusion

Abstract

The ending of Women in Love is indeed impressive, because the questions it puts are very honest ones, and honestly questions, not, for the most part, statements masquerading as questions, or long passages from Birkin that need satiric comments from Ursula to redeem them from being simply Lawrentian propaganda. Nevertheless, it is Birkin’s mind that is dominant there at the end; and certainly his own impulse is still to think, not in terms of any broad set of relationships between people, but rather in terms of some particular individual who may supplement his own individual relationship with Ursula. Clearly what he wants is a ‘marriage’ that might include a man too, but hardly ‘men’ or ‘mankind’. And, equally clearly, Lawrence sympathises with this impulse towards a post-Romantic, élitist life, with an artist-figure dominating the scene.