Time and space in Women in Love

Question 1

number chapters

Answer 1

32 chapters in total. Enigmatic subjects, remain elusive : impression of disjointed scene connected together without any particular logics. The title of the chapters themselves are indicative of this helter-skelter structure.

Question 2

The chapters are connected to the titles :

Answer 2

only once you have read the chapter you get the meaning of the title and not vice versa as usual
Intertwinaces of the titles YET there are a few clues : the title isn’t a clue to the chapter but the chapter illuminates the title.

Question 3

Some motifs recur throughout the text :

Answer 3

animals and human beings almost equally referred to ⇒ balance is created as a whole.

ING verb forms : sort of permanence (carpeting / flitting) VS past participle of “snowed up” : final state, past action whose result is conspicuous : Ursula is trapped in her relationship with Gerald as if she were trapped by the snow : frozen, like Gerald who dies buried in the snow.

Question 4

General structure of the novel

Answer 4

Chap 17 = pause narrative, intrigue avance pas. Sinon pas de structure nette qui ressort comme structure en miroir. Parfois echos comme man to man ou woman to women. Forme de précipitation vers la fin du texte. Précipitation qui s‘accompagne de chapitres de + en + longs.

⇒ impression d’un fouillis, d’un texte foisonnant,

Question 5

chap 19 ET 23

Answer 5

mise en abyme, relation entre ursula et birkin = moins antagoniste, relation un peu contenue dans relation entre gerald et Gudrun.

Question 5

chap 19 ET 23

Answer 5

mise en abyme, relation entre ursula et birkin = moins antagoniste, relation un peu contenue dans relation entre gerald et Gudrun.

Question 6

WHL, time is compressed.

Answer 6

“He was in the last war” = indication that allow us to date the plot quite precisely as oppose to other time indications “the week passed away”

Question 7

We come and go btw several spaces that are very confined

Answer 7

Chapter Mooney and then change from time-contained room, ++ secluded to a much more open space towards the end of the text. Shift btw beldover to a more specify open space which are more symbolical than the space at the beginning of the novel.
⇒ tendency to go from very tight space to freedom.
But is the open space of the mountain an illusory space where they can act freely? Displacement btw claustrophobic spaces to the open space of the mountain.

Question 8

Quotation from the foreword to Women in love written 12/09/1919 : help understand how Lawrence conceive his own novel :

Answer 8

“This novel was written in its first form in the Tyrol, in 1913. It was altogether re-written and finished in Cornwall in 1917. So that it is a novel which took its final shape in the midst of the period of war thought it does not concern the war itself. I should wish the time to remain unfixed so that the bitterness of the war may be taken for granted in the characters”

Question 9

Contradictional novel :

Answer 9

want it to be undetermined : modernist text that changes shape & at the same time the war = the background on which you have to read the novel to understand. War is ++ present in characters and absent from the plot.

Question 10

Cautionary message that does not clarify the situation

Answer 10

If it is not a war novel then how can the bitterness of the war be taken for granted ? If time remains unfixed how can one account for the traces it leaves on people and objects?

Question 11

I. Realism of the time pattern and of the spatial references
a. Cultural background identifiable

Answer 11

→ Meticulous description of the colliery town of beldover : auto/biographical recreation of Eastwood, near Nottingham where DHL grew up. Shortlands inspired from the house of the Director of the mine where DHL’s father worked ( Seeapendiiw IV p 531 for more details “the setting and the people”.

→ Simple geography : London / beldover / Breadalby / Willey Water

→ WIL is indisputably anchored in its time, GB in the 1910-19220s : Ref to Paul Poiret a reputed french designer quoted in “ A chair”, 26, p 356 The Pussum’s clothes with their ample fluid shape take after the stage costumes designed for the russians ballets of Diaghilev (mentioned p 91, ch Breadalby note p 54 ⇒ world of dance, literary intelligentsia etc mix

Question 12

Painting Mark Gertler “The Merry go round” (1916)

Answer 12

Lawrence said “it is the best modern picture I’ve ever seen”
⇒ DH Lawrence was influenced by the futurist mvt = fascination for war, speed, violence.

This painting was meant to express the kind of social mechanics
⇒ Not normal merry go round, something wrong : here not children n it, adults on it seem to be petrified, devoid of any life expression.
⇒ no control or power over the event.
⇒ expression of some kind of malaise :

Question 13

Socio-economic context

Answer 13

Can be traced all along the novel. Working class fiction : mine = metaphor of human beings : exploitation of the soil / of the human mind. The mine : metaphor of human beings in the modern ages

Creating characters = like digging caves. Want to recuperer what lie deepest in their minds.

The industrial magnate : three phrases traditionally associated with economic development : laissez faire / paternalistic system (Victorian ethos) / Sheer productivity, cf p 224 et seq
“Then there was need for a complete break..

Question 14

Extreme industrialisation : first step towards humanity’s disintegration and chaos

Answer 14

1 = win win system
2 = patron devient philanthrope
He justified his mechanisation as a kind of ineluctable change
3 = Sentence = machine : dehumanised etc..

Question 15

Industrialisation and war both reify human beings reducing man to a machine or to cannon-fodder

Answer 15

Ref to Boer’s war (1899-1902) “He was in the last war’ about Gerald, Creme de menthe p 64

Travelling to Tyrolh through regions that were to be ravaged by WW a few years later but which seem strangely enough devoid of any sign of war at that time

⇒ YET carefree and insouciant atmosphere of the early 1910s (in pompadour café for example), the whole novel is seen in a bleak way. Sadistic fight btw men and women. Oppressive atmosphere (cruelty btw human beings : 8 Breadalby, 20 Gladiatorial), cruelty towards animals (9 coaldust, 18 rabbit) and death (4 shortlands, 14 water party, 21 death and love, 31 snowed up). Paradox of the liminal quotation somehow characterises the whole novel.
Very little deviations from chronological unfolding of events but time and space equally distorted by uncertainty and doubt.

Question 16

Continental

Answer 16

= chapitre de l’itinéraire, de la mouvance.
⇒ heavy and oppressive atmosphere, death pervade the all novel and at a microcosmic level we get to see sadistic relationship either btw man and women

Question 17

Fin p 430 : Loerke déteste le futurisme.

Answer 17

Dans ce qu’il vient de dire = illustration de “art for art sake” = l’art pour l’art = mvt de Oscar Wilde, les symbolistes, prône détachement complet de l’art qui doit être supérieur à la réalité. Forme suffit à faire sens par elle-même.

Question 18

II. Loss of traditional landmarks : crisis
a. Very few moments of self-fulfilment

Answer 18

Time passing is synonymous with waste of time, loss of identity (cf sunday evening, p193). → p 191 : alliteration “l” = fluidity, soft sounds
Ursula prefers death to an empty life. Time goes by routinely mechanically. Spatial and temporal orders dissolve as the plot progresses.

Question 19

Each sunday evening is similar to the other sunday evening

Answer 19

This moment = an example of all the other similar moments.

Question 20

TIme and space are fused

Answer 20

loss of bearings that climaxes in the snowy eternity of snow-capped mountains of Tyrol. Vacuity, idleness. Time and space are annihilated. Presque plus de mention d’espace à la fin.
⇒ pré-science de ce train comme univers concentrationnaire.
⇒ idée que la montagne est aussi un espace concentrationnaire à sa façon.

Question 21

Time and space need to be read in a symbolic way : circularity

Answer 21

Symbolical geography : often polarised geography : opposition btw 2 places, London /Beldover, the North/ the south btw 2 elements : the earth and the moon. Geographical poles + Northern process VS Southern Process (see infra)

A nine-month- intrigue that reads like a “gestation”. Finishes on a nativity scene (Christmas is drawing near) (p380) which has nothing in a common with a usual delivery scene (painful delivery of death).
⇒ Link to progress in psychology because psychologist brings memories back up
Christmas = celebration of a birth. Celebrated in a hollow = reminiscent of a cradle. Cradle of snow = represents the navel of the earth

⇒ First half of the novel : spring, 2nd : autumn or early winter + move towards a cold region. Tyrol : navel of the earth, cradle (p40-401) and yet idea of burial. Obsessive circularity,vicious circle of time and space that create a claustrophobic atmosphere

Question 22

Dead-end. Obsession with death, emptiness and silence. P 478 “like a shallow pot” and p 481

Answer 22

Time escapes : often no answer to “What time is it ?” cf “In the train” p 53 or “fetish” p 79

Series of small deaths before the actual big one. Cf in Sunday Evening p 192 “the space of death” (collusion entre espace et temps) p 193 “ no flower grows upon busy machinery.. Rotary motion”

Cycle of deaths and initiatory resurrections “Moony” “excurse” continental” = moment of transitoriness, of transport, loss of time and space awareness.

Question 23

Motion / emotion.

Answer 23

Displacement of body and mind / ex-stasis : liminal spaces = Apocalyptic innuendoes : each time you trespass you really put yourself in danger.
Birkin would like to impose to Ursula his own version of a form of linearity of time based on accident and strokes of fate and effects of chance. Cf “Excurse” p 302** drifting along = preferred mode for birkin : you have no control : you are taken elsewhere. La vie comme roman picaresque = ++ dans bouche de Birkin. Ref littéraire censé représenter DHL. Picaresque : maîtrise rien et se laisse porter.

Question 24

Cosmogony

Answer 24

and chronology that somehow belittle men : lost, helpless creatures in a world too big for them “Excurse” p 302. Link with cosmogony and mythology. DHL crée cycle microscopique lié au cycle de création macroscopique. ⇒ temps mythique, mythologique.
Birkin is seen as the son of Genesis. Linearity both flaunted and negated by this return to origins : man cannot escape his destiny..
Ref to mythological mythical times : cf “Man to Man” p 201 : Myth of Androgyny. Impersonal tone.
In fact the realism of the novel is undermined by the numerous references to the elements : water, air, fire : this is the ultimate reality, one that is connected with the philosophical system of reference DHL favoured : human beings are linked by the elements to the cosmos.

Question 25

The Northern Process

Answer 25

the intellect, the machine, predators (the wolf, radium, rocks water snow ice, whiteness, grey and black

Question 26

VS the Southern Process

Answer 26

sensory impressions, mud, the lotus, geese, the scarab, the insects, the rat, the primitive woman, destruction by the sun, Loerke. Moving forward and escaping are denounced as mere illusions. Cf crossing the channel / styx p 389 ; Excurse “She looked at him he seemed so..” p312
→ “mystic universal degeneration” Both the white world, (northern process) and the primitive world (southern process) are bound to decade and to degenerate. Boue = southern = lieu ou racines pourissent et insectes se décomposent mais paradoxalement boue peut créer de la beauté cf la fleur de lotus.

Question 27

Faith

Answer 27

personified by Mr Crich. Cf Gerald’s body brought back to England, in spite of Birkin’ refusal p 475-481?. Cf also conversation between Ursula and Birkin, “Water-Party”, p 173.

Question 28

II. A text that deconstructs the traditional notion of Plot
a. Novel that plays with the idea of emplotment

Answer 28

Even the open air space are rather traumatic and frightening and claustrophobic.
erring
Text based upon digression, and circularity too.
Novel is both critical of space as such and it is itself can be considered as a space of crisis // crisis of space at a period of war. The Frontiers whether geographical or fictional spaces are threatened of annihilation : frontier btw reality and fiction are blurred.
⇒ It’s not a reassuring world were boundaries are clearly shown.
⇒ cf façon dont réalisme imprègne cette oeuvre

Question 29

Fluctuation of the conception of time + different beginnings :

Answer 29

10min in the life of a character can be 20 pages whereas sometimes a longer lapse = paragraph ; time is relative = mark of modernist novel = time as time going on the mind.

Question 30

End of the text for chracters

Answer 30

For Gudrun end of text : infinity of choices : is she going back to germany, or to England ⇒ they are coexisting and antithetical notion which brings you back ⇒ there is no escape
Birkin go back. Only Gudrun seem to invade this pre-determined idea of a vicious circle.

Question 31

Normally in 19th fiction, the emplotment must lead to a denouement

Answer 31

= an end, sometimes, the reader finds answers : sense of an ending ; texte est parachevé , pas de fuite possible, WIL propose seulement fuite en avant. Characters don’t go back to their routine, everything again is questioned inside their couple, the end is also opened for Gudrun. Death is itself a kind of possible escape. There is always a possible escape. Lose structure that becomes loose and collapses at the end.

Question 32

Death of diegesis as such

Answer 32

illusion of a structure that comes loose and collapses. No real chronology, blurred time references. Time is flexible: distortion, disfigurement and reconfiguration of the narrated time:
→ two or three hours can be dealt with in 16 pages (“Sisters”), whereas 2 days may be narrated in barely 3 pages (“Fetish”). Besides, the continuity between chapters may be real (as between 6 “Crème de menthe” & 7 “Fetish”: where the real chronology of events is respected), but most often the continuity between chapters and events is fake and spurious (as between 10 “Sketch-Book” and 11 “An Island”): “meanwhile” creates an impossible time frame as 10 = morning and 11 = afternoon/ Fictionalisation process underlined.

⇒ Impossible time frame
⇒ Sometimes draw our intention to the fact that any text is a fiction and we cannot look for consistency as time and space frame are concerned

Question 33

Most of the time references are close to creating a kind of atemporality

Answer 33

“on Fridays” “every year” “Sunday evening” is evoked the better to mention all the other days of the week : the specificity of the moment is lost to the benefit of routine and ordinariness / Humdrum of days going on without any difference btw them = monotony, repetitive pattern.

Question 34

Time conceived as in a theatre play

Answer 34

internal time-frame → unité temps espace et lieu dictée par theatre grecque, ici aps unité de lieu mais impression que temps tellement il est dissolu et fragmentaire est un hors temps, atemporalité. Forme d’utopie etc ar temps qui ne peut pas etre ==> temps avant guerre des beurres mais ne correspond pas à ce que pourrait etre déplacement des gens qui traversent alsace, luxembourg etc en temps de guerre ==> hiatus qui crée un trou temporel qui semble aspirer les personnages

Question 35

Episodical structure, several scenes with expository scene,

Answer 35

interval (17 “The Industrial Magnate”) kind of interlude / interval, p 211 and final scene “Exeunt” reads —- directions
⇒ Insistence on the movements, instabilité, nothing is fixed, tt est en mvt.
⇒ Ts ces mvts crée une angoisse
⇒ retour du refoulé : of the repressed : the one we don’t expect to appear and at the time you least expect

Question 36

Africa and primitivism

Answer 36

are associated with the southern process = are seen as a kind of return of the repressed → locus africa. Primitivisme = situation temporelle : espace et temps ⇒ statuette remettent en question les présupposés ethnocentrisme des perso, la présupposée supériorité de l’europe : espace temps autre qui menace l’intégrité d’ europe et de la modernité.

Question 37

Exemple de cet espace en crise numéro 2 :

Answer 37

différents espaces de voyage : chap 5,6, 7 = déplacement à Londres qui contient – // chap 29 “Continental” when travel to the continent.
Voyage est associé à “an unreal suspense”. Idée que le suspense qui fait partie de tout type de emplotement devient non plus simplement espace narratorial mais véritablement le symbole de toute une génération qui semble suspendue (au sens propre), suspendu

⇒ entre deux géographique aussi → idée d’une vie vécue entre deux entre vie et mort. Déplacement est un entre deux, un voyage final vers la mort, channel compared to the stix ⇒ living = entre 2 btw life & death

Question 38

Toujours expression de angoisse, entre-deux,

Answer 38

“in Ursula the sense of unrealized world ahead” ou encore “host-end” = idée de end, de finalité, alors que jamais a entendre au sens de complétude mais plutôt au sens d’accomplissement qui est tjs retardée. ⇒ finalité des evts toujours repoussée, jamais d’aboutissement réel.

→ Voyage vécu par Ursula : she is suspended and the same time she looks back “my good how far she has been projected from her childhood…” = she is taken at a stage where somehow she seems as suspended : far from her childhood + still has a lot to do.
⇒ unrealized future qui déconstruit également la personnalité ⇒ unrealised characterisation

Question 39

Prolespsis

Answer 39

from greek “ a taking beforehand, anticipation” Figurative device by which a future event is resumed to have happened : narrative suspense ) ; not a trope of the 19th century novel in which the narrator was omniscient. For a prolepsis tot ake place means that the narrator needs to discover the events as he is telling them (unlike the anticipation)

Question 40

b) Numerous analepses and prolepses

Answer 40

→ quand lit texte lire de manière circulaire et pas seult linéaire. Gudrun reste dans le même état d’indécision qu’au début. (alors qu’au début a l’air décidée hein) “one is bound to” = means that you’re doomed to do it, will happen anyway. It’s definite and then you see that somewhere remake, oxymoronic expression, phrasing, difficult to make sense of.
⇒ fundamental indeterminacy and inevitability of fate. “It seems the inevitable next step” p9
Beginning of the novel // the end. The brodbingam sisters are seem coming home, they are young women (25,26), relatively young but they are getting older and still spinsters (at that time not married at 22 = getting late) = young adult who regress, going back to their roots, to their origins

Question 40

b) Numerous analepses and prolepses

Answer 40

→ quand lit texte lire de manière circulaire et pas seult linéaire. Gudrun reste dans le même état d’indécision qu’au début. (alors qu’au début a l’air décidée hein) “one is bound to” = means that you’re doomed to do it, will happen anyway. It’s definite and then you see that somewhere remake, oxymoronic expression, phrasing, difficult to make sense of.
⇒ fundamental indeterminacy and inevitability of fate. “It seems the inevitable next step” p9
Beginning of the novel // the end. The brodbingam sisters are seem coming home, they are young women (25,26), relatively young but they are getting older and still spinsters (at that time not married at 22 = getting late) = young adult who regress, going back to their roots, to their origins

Question 41

Numerous prolepses at the beginning of the text

Answer 41

p 10 : “my coming back home was jst “reculer pour mieux sauter” (gudrun) (…) “one is bound to land somewhere” : Void / inevitability of fate : p 9 “it seems the inevitable next step”. The beginning off the novel : sort of regression into a pseudo uterine “home” going back to one’s roots / toone’s origin.

Sunday Evening, p 191 “the next step was over the border into death. So it was then !”
“I shall die” = tragic, as if she was determined to go to her death.

The sunday evening normally go forward to prepare the next steps // continental p 387. Cf the Beginning of Sunday evening p 191 and of “Contnental” p 387 = terme temporel // spatial : how the effects characterisation o and ursula in particular

Question 42

Analepses

Answer 42

look back at someone’s past.

P 191 : “She had travelled all her life.” Ursula as a “littlle creature of history” VS Gurdrun looking froward to events . Even when Ursula decides to look forward she is brought back full circle to her past : cf “Continental” p 387 and 388
→ Soit on se projette dans un avenir qui n’est pas soit dans un passé, une enfance qui est loin intouchable et ne revient pas, on est pas dans le présetnt

Question 43

⇒ prolepses only lead to analepse = paradox

Answer 43

= paradox prolepse qui devrait ouvrir est lannonce d’une mort, d’une circularité ⇒ textual and structural repetition