The End of Women in Love
I didn’t want to write immediate comments about the end of D.H. Lawrence’s novel Women in Love until I’d had some time to think it over. My conclusion is that D.H. Lawrence is giving us a three-layer mixed message about homosexuality, higher love, and homosexuality again. He throws out the theme of plain homosexuality to bait the reader, but then hopes that we’ll see a higher message about pure love. Finally, we’re left with an obstinate question—“Can’t you have two kinds of love?”—that leads us back to a wistful homo/bi-sexual yearning (421).
I offer the following passages as evidence. First, Birkin’s post-Gerald love confession to Ursula offers a strong pro-homosexuality position:
“He should have loved me,” he said. “I offered him.”
She, afraid, white, with mute lips answered:
“What difference would it have made!”
“It would!” he said. “It would.” (420)
Because Birkin offers his love to a man and his woman asks rhetorically what difference it would have made, his descendent reply “It would” gathers more force. We’re convinced by the end of the passage that a Birkin-Gerald union would indeed transcend the sad events surrounding his death and the interplay of heterosexual love.
But, we cannot assume that D.H. Lawrence is so obvious. He cannot be simply advocating homosexual love in reflection of his personal lifestyle. There’s more at stake here than that. The real message is about higher love. Birkin says,
“To make it complete, really happy, I wanted eternal union with a man too: another kind of love.” (421)
In this passage, homosexuality is secondary and subordinate to the notion of “another kind of love.” We finally feel that D.H. Lawrence is reaching for something higher than base sexuality by expression through Birkin’s voiced thoughts.
The final paragraph confuses me:
“You can’t have two kinds of love. Why should you!”
“It seems as if I can’t ,” he said. “Yet I wanted it.” (421)
This has little to do with high love, but rather bisexuality, loving both a man and a woman at the same time. This splits the point. We now are left wondering “if there’s a higher love” and “if a man can love twice at once.” Maybe we’re supposed to fold both into one and assume that “the higher love is loving a man and woman at once,” but there’s nothing to tie them together, and we end the book feeling … confused?
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 27th, 2005 at 2:22 pm and is tagged with novel women, birkins, personal lifestyle, eternal union, sad events, d h lawrence, mixed message, birkin, interplay, two kinds, confession, passages, ursula, homo, sexuality, stake, reflection, lips, notion, reply. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.