A Study of D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love

This paper proposes to study Women in Love as a novel that questions the meaning of the age of technology. At the same time, it attempts to explore a "Third World" perspective in our reading of European literature. Such a perspective would naturally have to be more than a defense mechanism on the part of Third World readers, and contribute to a truer understanding of the work in question. TWO assumptions underlie our reading of Women in Love. First, a work which obviously falls short of any comprehensive treatment of the industrial-technological civilization may nevertheless question its meaning in an essential manner, because "the essence of technology" (in Heidegger's words) "is not anything technological." Secondly, it is a work that addresses itself to the real questions of the real world in a "realistic" way-only exploring a dimension of reality neglected by even the greatest novelists of the previous century. The essential meaning of technology is questioned most explicitly through the figure of Gerald, the "industrial magnate", especially in Ch. 17. His death brings to light the danger for man in the technological age. But the story of the more successful pair, Birkin and Ursula, cannot be fully appreciated, either, unless seen against the background of the world-historial destiny that Gerald represents. Much critical incomprehension as to the artistic rightness of particular passages or episodes may be traced to this failure. To many Western readers, especially those who are termed "progressive" within the limits of the Western world, suggestions of a racial destiny in Gerald present an added difficulty. From the vantage point of the Third World, however, these rnerely reflect the actual conflation of the destinies of European races with a particular (the earlier) phase of global rule of technology. Gerald's failure does imply adverse judgment of the Western man in that phase but no blanket condemnation, for it presents not an allegory of fatality but a realistic character alongside others of the same race pointing to a different course. Birkin's search for "another kind of love" also takes on a fuller meaning in the Third World context, not because the more "backward" nations remain (as yet) closer to thedays of Blutbriiderschaft but because in their encounter with technology as a global destiny the achievement of some such comradely love on a massive scale becomes as much a key to survival and freedom as any technical ability to duplicate Gerald's industrial accomplishment