Read Online Women in Love (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by D. H. Lawrence - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: D. H. Lawrence
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speak for myself. I am accused, in England, of uncleanness and pornography. I deny the charge, and take no further notice.
In America the chief accusation seems to be one of “Eroticism.” This is odd, rather puzzling to my mind. Which Eros? Eros of the jaunty “amours,” or Eros of the sacred mysteries? And if the latter, why accuse, why not respect, even venerate?
Let us hesitate no longer to announce that the sensual passions and mysteries are equally sacred with the spiritual mysteries and passions. Who would deny it any more? The only thing unbearable is the degradation, the prostitution of the living mysteries in us. Let man only approach his own self with a deep respect, even reverence for all that the creative soul, the God-mystery within us, puts forth. Then we shall all be sound and free. Lewdness is hateful because it impairs our integrity and our proud being.
The creative, spontaneous soul sends forth its promptings of desire and aspiration in us. These promptings are our true fate, which is our business to fulfil. A fate dictated from outside, from theory or from circumstance, is a false fate.
This novel pretends only to be a record of the writer’s own desires, aspirations, struggles; in a word, a record of the profoundest experiences in the self Nothing that comes from the deep, passional soul is bad, or can be bad. So there is no apology to tender, unless to the soul itself, if it should have been belied.
Man struggles with his unborn needs and fulfilment. New un-foldings struggle up in torment in him, as buds struggle forth from the midst of a plant. Any man of real individuality tries to know and to understand what is happening, even in himself, as he goes along. This struggle for verbal consciousness should not be left out in art. It is a very great part of life. It is not superimposition of a theory. It is the passionate struggle into conscious being.
We are now in a period of crisis. Every man who is acutely alive is acutely wrestling with his own soul. The people that can bring forth the new passion, the new idea, this people will endure. Those others, that fix themselves in the old idea, will perish with the new life strangled unborn within them. Men must speak out to one another.
In point of style, fault is often found with the continual, slightly modified repetition. The only answer is that it is natural to the author ; and that every natural crisis in emotion or passion or understanding comes from this pulsing, frictional to-and-fro which works up to culmination.
Hermitage
12 September, 1919
CHAPTER I
Sisters
URSULA AND GUDRUN BRANGWEN sat one morning in the window-bay of their father’s house 1 in Beldover, working and talking. Ursula was stitching a piece of brightly-coloured embroidery, and Gudrun was drawing upon a board which she held on her knee. They were mostly silent, talking as their thoughts strayed through their minds.
“Ursula,” said Gudrun, “don’t you really want to get married?” Ursula laid her embroidery in her lap and looked up. Her face was calm and considerate.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “It depends how you mean.”
Gudrun was slightly taken aback. She watched her sister for some moments.
“Well,” she said, ironically, “it usually means one thing! But don’t you think anyhow, you’d be—” she darkened slightly—“in a better position than you are in now?”
A shadow came over Ursula’s face.
“I might,” she said. “But I’m not sure.”
Again Gudrun paused, slightly irritated. She wanted to be quite definite.
“You don’t think one needs the experience of having been married?” she asked.
“Do you think it need be an experience?” replied Ursula.
“Bound to be, in some way or other,” said Gudrun, coolly. “Possibly undesirable, but bound to be an experience of some sort.”
“Not really,” said Ursula. “More likely to be the end of experience.”
Gudrun sat very still, to attend to this.
“Of
In America the chief accusation seems to be one of “Eroticism.” This is odd, rather puzzling to my mind. Which Eros? Eros of the jaunty “amours,” or Eros of the sacred mysteries? And if the latter, why accuse, why not respect, even venerate?
Let us hesitate no longer to announce that the sensual passions and mysteries are equally sacred with the spiritual mysteries and passions. Who would deny it any more? The only thing unbearable is the degradation, the prostitution of the living mysteries in us. Let man only approach his own self with a deep respect, even reverence for all that the creative soul, the God-mystery within us, puts forth. Then we shall all be sound and free. Lewdness is hateful because it impairs our integrity and our proud being.
The creative, spontaneous soul sends forth its promptings of desire and aspiration in us. These promptings are our true fate, which is our business to fulfil. A fate dictated from outside, from theory or from circumstance, is a false fate.
This novel pretends only to be a record of the writer’s own desires, aspirations, struggles; in a word, a record of the profoundest experiences in the self Nothing that comes from the deep, passional soul is bad, or can be bad. So there is no apology to tender, unless to the soul itself, if it should have been belied.
Man struggles with his unborn needs and fulfilment. New un-foldings struggle up in torment in him, as buds struggle forth from the midst of a plant. Any man of real individuality tries to know and to understand what is happening, even in himself, as he goes along. This struggle for verbal consciousness should not be left out in art. It is a very great part of life. It is not superimposition of a theory. It is the passionate struggle into conscious being.
We are now in a period of crisis. Every man who is acutely alive is acutely wrestling with his own soul. The people that can bring forth the new passion, the new idea, this people will endure. Those others, that fix themselves in the old idea, will perish with the new life strangled unborn within them. Men must speak out to one another.
In point of style, fault is often found with the continual, slightly modified repetition. The only answer is that it is natural to the author ; and that every natural crisis in emotion or passion or understanding comes from this pulsing, frictional to-and-fro which works up to culmination.
Hermitage
12 September, 1919
CHAPTER I
Sisters
URSULA AND GUDRUN BRANGWEN sat one morning in the window-bay of their father’s house 1 in Beldover, working and talking. Ursula was stitching a piece of brightly-coloured embroidery, and Gudrun was drawing upon a board which she held on her knee. They were mostly silent, talking as their thoughts strayed through their minds.
“Ursula,” said Gudrun, “don’t you really want to get married?” Ursula laid her embroidery in her lap and looked up. Her face was calm and considerate.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “It depends how you mean.”
Gudrun was slightly taken aback. She watched her sister for some moments.
“Well,” she said, ironically, “it usually means one thing! But don’t you think anyhow, you’d be—” she darkened slightly—“in a better position than you are in now?”
A shadow came over Ursula’s face.
“I might,” she said. “But I’m not sure.”
Again Gudrun paused, slightly irritated. She wanted to be quite definite.
“You don’t think one needs the experience of having been married?” she asked.
“Do you think it need be an experience?” replied Ursula.
“Bound to be, in some way or other,” said Gudrun, coolly. “Possibly undesirable, but bound to be an experience of some sort.”
“Not really,” said Ursula. “More likely to be the end of experience.”
Gudrun sat very still, to attend to this.
“Of
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