DH Lawrence, Women in Love Flashcards
(42 cards)
Why is it art…
‘Why is it art?
‘It conveys a complete truth’, said Birkin. ‘It contains the whole truth of that state, whatever you feel about it.’
the old story…
‘the old story - nothing but action and reaction, and nothing inbetween’
‘one shouldn’t talk when…’
one shouldn’t talk when one is tired and wretched. One Hamletizes, and it seems a lie’
‘she seemed to try and put…’
she seemed to try andput her hands out, likke an infant in the womb, and she could not…still seh had a strange prescience, an intimation of something yet to come’
What does Hermione claim?
it is better to be ‘animals, crude, vioelnt, anything, rahter than the self-consciousness …this NOTHIGNESSS’
what does Hermione claim humans are?
‘overconscious, burdened to death with consciousness’
Hermione: ‘when we have knoweldge..#
‘when we have knowledge, don’t we lose everything but knowing?…forfeiting life for this dead quality of knowledge’
What does Rupert argue of Hermione?
‘you don’t want to BE an animal, you want to observe your own animal functions..the last and worst kind of intellectualism…pornography….[to] have it all in your consciousness, mkae it all mental’
Biikrin: you’ve got to learn not-to-be….
You’ve got to learn not-to-be, before you can come into being. But…we’d rather die than give up our little self-righteous slef-opinionated self-iwll’
What does Birkin claim of people?
They “aren’t sensual, only sensuous”, and “refuse to live in another world, from another centre”
How is Birkin’s escape to nature described?
He was “barely conscious, and yet perfectly driecti in his motion”, and “this was his marraige-plae”
Gudrun, sketching plants:
what she could see was mud….but sehcoudl feel their turgid feshy structure as in a sensuous vision, she KNEW how they rose out of the mud’
Why should you always be doing…
Why should you alwyas be DOING? …it’s so plebian. I think it is better to be really patrician, and do nothing but be oneself, like a walking flower?
What does Herimone vs Birkin insist about the will?
Hermione insists “the will can do anything”, but birkin calims that to use the will like that is “obscenity” and “fatal”
what does Heriome say se really wants?
I really DO want to see things in their entiret,y, with their beuaty left to them….their natural holiness. don’t you feel you can’t be tortured into any more knwoeldge?’
Ursula: it is so IRREVERENT…
It is so IRREVERENT to hink evryhtin gmust be realised in the head Really, something must be left to the Lord”
What does Rupert claim the search for absolute knweoldge is like?
” it is….tearing a bud to see what the flower will be like…purely destructive”
birkin “this life…”
This life…we’ve got to bust it completely, or shrivel inside it…for it won’t expand’
What is Gerald’s fear?
‘being locked up anythere - or being fastened….bound hand and foot’
Birkin: “if manking is esroyed…I am …”
If manking is destroyed…I am satisfied. That which informs all is there, and cnan never be lost. After all, what is mankind byt just one expression of the ncomprehensible….Humanity doesn’t embdoy the utterance of the incomprehensible any more Huamnity is a dead letter….let humanity disappear as quicly as possible’
What does Birkin claim humanity iself is?
Humanity itself is dry-rotten…[people won’t] fall off the tree when they’re ripe till they beocme infested with ltitle wroms and dry-rot#
Birkin: humanity is a huge…
Humsnity is a huge aggresage lie…far less than the indiviudal, becuase the individual may soemtimes be capable of turht, and huamnity is a tree of lifes”
as opposed to “the real tree of life”
What does Ursula calim of the wrold?
“man will never be gone…the wrold will go with him”
“so we cover the earth wtih foulneess….”
So we cover the earth wtih foulness; life is a blotch of labour…so your miner can have a pianoforte”
though Ursual argues “it is a sysmbold for something very real, a real desire for something higher”,Birkin dispures thsi existence
