Women in Love: Life as End

Abstract

In Women in Love Lawrence shows reaction against the old ideals to be as mechanical and sterile as the perpetuation of them. The older Crich dies, but so does Gerald, and the alternative of Loerke, towards which Gudrun’s path leads, is represented by an image of mechanised life carved in granite. Action and reaction lead only to perpetual tick-tack, mechanical motion destructive of life. What Lawrence offers instead is in terms of imagery a waiting for the old to die and the new to emerge in its own time, in the way that a deciduous tree sheds its leaves and puts forth new ones in the spring. The image recurs frequently, not only in Women in Love, but throughout Lawrence’s writing, particularly at this period. For example, in a letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell of 9 September 1915: let the old die altogether, completely. It is only the new spring I care about, opening the hard little buds that seem like stone, in the souls of people. They must open and a new world begin. But first there is the shedding of the old, which is so slow and so difficult, like a sickness’.¹ In the novel, this process is, of course, represented in the relationship between Birkin and Ursula.