The Dialectic of Seeing

In spite of his verbal and imagistic extravagance, Lawrence in fact shows in most of his work his hostility toward the dominating influence of language and vision on Western consciousness. By exaggerating the verbal and visual features of modern consciousness—dualism, verbosity, visuality, reflexivity, conceptualization,

etc.—Lawrence calls attention to the split of modern subjectivity and to the

undeserved priority given to the activities associated with one part of the body— i.e.

the head. As Lawrence sees it, this partial but dominant form of consciousness belittles or blocks the modes of knowing and being associated with the rest of the body. Echoing Levinas’s attack on light of reason, which tends to appropriate and thereby abolish things by means of conceptualization, Lawrence reasserts the primacy

of touch in a culture privileging specularity. Regarding the artist as the one who introduces innovative ways of seeing, Lawrence praises Cezanne for avoiding the

“optical cliché”in his portraits: “He wished to displace our present mode of mental-visual consciousness, the consciousness of mental consciousness, and

substitute a mode of consciousness that was predominantly intuitive, the awareness of touch”(P 579).

Therefore, while vision is usually the privileged faculty of perception in realist fiction, in most of Lawrence’s work, the primacy of dark unconsciousness is from time to time reasserted over the rational and reflective mind. Lawrence’s attack on the blinding function of rational light is manifest in The Rainbow. For instance, after Ursula has had ample opportunity to be disillusioned by those “priests of knowledge”

at the university, she laments how modern men have been blinded by light— the light of consciousness, which says“thereisno darkness”(R 436). We all live as prisoners of the light, Ursula decides, and are frightened by those “shadow-shapes of

wild-beasts”(R 436) whose menacing fangs we see illuminated by the arc-lamp of consciousness. Having been blinded by the light, we miss the “dark shadow-shapes of the angels”and the fertile darkness of the deepest recesses of our being (R 437).

In other words, we have not seen that “the angels in the darkness were lordly and terrible and not to be denied, like the flash of fangs”(R 438). For Ursula, what lies beneath the falsity of the university is the denial of eternal mysteries of unexplained powers and irrational forces. She feels deep contempt for the “stupid light”of civilization. In her dark sensual arrogance, she said to herself, “The stupid, artificial, exaggerated town, fuming its lights. It does not exist really. It rests upon the unlimited darkness”(R 443).

Ursula thus begins to yearn for something beyond “the lighted areas, lit up by man’s complete consciousness”(R 445). Newly returned from Africa, Skrebensky is

thus allied with darkness and becomes her means of exploring the “darkness”within herself. Ursula seems to identify Skrebensky with the “angel of darkness”: when she meets him she is frightened by his “self-effacing diffidence”(R 446). Their

consummation makes her soul “sure and indifferent of the opinion of the world of artificial light”:

She was caught up, entangled in the powerful vibration of the night. The man, what was he? –a dark, powerful vibration that encompassed her.

She passed away as on a dark wind, far, far away, into the prinstine darkness of paradise, into the original immortality. She entered the dark fields of immortality. (R 451)

It seems that “they were both absolute and happy and calm”(R 452). But then all Skrebensky’s negative aspects must be dealt with, aspects which have only

disappeared as sensual darkness has taken over the relationship and which soon come back. Skrebensky is for Ursula a signifier of her own potential. Their terrible consummation in Lincolnshire (R 479), which ends their relationship, restores to Ursula the recognition of the emptiness of the signifier and the final failure of transformation through a relation based on dark sensual absolute.

As we might see, the opposition of one metaphoric network (sight/ will/

knowledge/bondage) to another (darkness/lapsing/the unknown/freedom) appears frequently in Lawrence’s work. Fundamental to Lawrence’s thinking is the concept of polarity: female and male, body and spirit, impulse and ideal, blood-consciousness and mental consciousness, organic and mechanical principles, and so on. Yet the word “polarity”itself has an internal dichotomy— i.e., it can mean the possession or juxtaposition of two contrasted principles as well as the direction of thought or feeling towards a single point. This ambiguity is implied in Lawrence’s conception. He believed that no human being can develop except through the polarized connection

with other beings. This “circuit of polarized unison”precedes all mind and all knowing, and was embodied in the science of the pagan world, of Egypt and Greece, a

“science in terms of life”(FU 8). Clinging to the idea of opposition or reaction itself, Lawrence becomes a kind of dialectician. But he is a dialectician without

reconciliation—i.e., he does not always use his oppositions to seek the synthesis of the opposites, which is the usual goal of dialectic.

As it is, irresoluble contradictions in Lawrence’s fiction make it impossible to impose a fixed pattern or “to nail anything down in the novel”(STH 172). For example, given Lawrence’s critique of mental consciousness, it seems natural that the great potential of unconscious darkness is explicitly given primacy in most of his fiction. However, a complex exploration of his novels demonstrates that the basic pattern in which light is undermined and darkness is glorified never becomes fixed.

George and Annabel in The White Peacock are examples to show that neither dark blood nor conscious mind is to be denied in modern men’s and women’s struggle to achieve a relationship with themselves, with each other, and with the circumambient universe. At the beginning of the novel George is living naturally, happily and freely in the healthy body which he is glad to be, and which he is proud of. At the end of the book this body is corrupted as a tree is corrupted by fungus. The cause is the fall into consciousness precipitated by friendship with Cyril and love for Lettie. The essential point about George is that the change, while horrifying, is natural and inevitable. Somehow the sensual man must emerge from unconsciousness—“the dark waters in which the gray fish glide”(WP 58)—and must connect himself with the“light”ofconsciousnessand ofspiritualdevelopment. Likewise, the gamekeeper Annabel, whose motto is “Beagood animal,trueto youranimalinstinct”(WP 112), is not presented in the novel as a final success, but as a wasted potential. As Annabel himself admitted, “Iam lifewith a good house, built and finished, and left to tumble

down again with nobody to livein it”(WP 175).

The difficulty with George’s and Annabel’s “dark freedom”is shared by Will in The Rainbow. In this novel, Will is usually associated with images of darkness and is appreciated for his intuitive mode of knowing and being. Anna’s first impression of Will is of “some mysterious animal that lived in the darkness under the leaves and never came out, but which lived vividly, swift and intense”(R 98). Will’ssoulis like“somestrange,underground thing,abstract”(R 148). Thereis“something subterranean about him, as if he had an underworld refuge”(R 149). It is this dark power which attracts Anna. On the other hand, like the male characters mentioned above, Will lacks the means by which his deepest sensibilities can be related to the daylight world. He isdescribed repeatedly as“unformed,”“uncreated,”and not brought forth. His real being lays in his dark emotional experience of the Infinity and the Absolute. While Will’s soul may have a range which Anna justly envies, Anna has a consistency of self-regard which makes her more confident and self-assured. Put differently, while Anna is so egoistic as to look at all things as radiating from herself, Will“putsasidetheegotist”so much thathecannot“conceive thewhole.”¹⁴ IfAnna’ssenseofselfistoo overbearing,Will’sistoo regressive and thus he lives too blindly and too invisibly. A passagefrom “TheCrown”offersa helpful gloss over the problem with “eternal darkness”as well as “eternal light”:

The barren womb can never be satisfied, if the quick of darkness be sterile within it. But neither can the unfertile loins be satisfied, if the seed of light, of the spirit, be dead within them. They will return again and again to the womb of darkness, asking, asking, and never satisfied.

Then the unconsummated soul, unsatisfied, uncreated in part, will seek to make itself whole by bringing the whole world under its own order, will seek to make itself absolute and timeless by devouring its opposite.

Adhering to the one eternity of darkness, it will seek to devour the eternity of light. Realizing the one infinite of the Source, it will endeavor to absorb into its oneness the opposite infinite Goal. This is the infinite with its tail in its mouth. (RD 28-9)

In other words, Will’sinfinite,which containsforhim both beginning and end,is indeed the most complete satisfaction of which he is capable, but it represents an ontological regression. Anna makes a needed and natural correction when she insists that the sky, not the cathedral roof, is the ultimate confine. It almost seems as if Anna has indeed converted Will to an attitude which willallow more“light,”at a cost of making Will losing his absolute (R 203).

As the title of this novel implies, this text has set into motion the binary of conflicting desireswith allofthatbinary’srestlessimpulse to move toward ending yet resist ending. In other words, this text is embedded in a tension between narrative closure and textual openness. The rainbow as the spectrumizing of light, wherein light can be seen, deconstructs and problematizes the binary of light and darkness, visibility and invisibility, with each of the polar opposites dependent on the other while holding the potential to annihilate the other. Thus the binary opposites are not combined to resolve their conflicts but to demonstrate their interdependence and intercontamination. Moreover, as the metaphor of the rainbow suggests, the existence of the visible rainbow is made possible and complete with its invisible counterpart lying underground, beyond the worldly reality. Put differently, if the arch/rainbow is a circle whose other half is hidden but existent beyond the knowable world, then the arch is the acceptance of the objective world combined with the realization that it will never be enough by itself.¹⁵ Lawrence sees that in this cosmic war between light and darkness, there is no absolute winner. If darkness triumphs over light, or light over darkness, annihilation occurs.

While in The Rainbow, the dialectic interplay of image pattern related to light/darkness is manifest, in Women in Love, Lawrence’s denigration of vision is more direct and severe. Lawrence radicalizes the disavowal of ocular recognition through Birkin who demands from Ursula, not a high physical profile, but an essential invisibility—in effect, a negation of the claimsofidentificatory vision:“It’snota question of visual appreciation in the least . . . . Idon’twantto seeyou. I’ve seen plenty of women, I’m sick and weary of seeing them. Iwantawoman Idon’tsee” (WL 147).¹⁶ Unlike Birkin, Ursula does not so consciously and urgently demand the discarding of the eye, but her gaze is presented as being drawn, not to that which is (most) visible, but to that which is (most) invisible. And so her knowledge of Birkin comes from something beyond visualization and conceptualization:“Shewas watching him ...notreally awareofwhatshewasseeing”(WL 44). It is her gaze that lets the invisible shine in its uncanny beauty. A number of words and phrases suggest that Ursula isseeing something “hidden”—“anothervoice,”“another

knowledge,”“invisible”; “shecould notsay whatitwas”(WL 94). An episode from the “Moony”chapter reveals the way Ursula looks at things without imposing images familiar to the (human) self. At the end of this chapter, the Brangwen sisters are walking along a lane and see “a robin sitting on the top twig of a bush, singing shrilly”(WL 262). Gudrun reacts first by deciding that the bird looks as if “he feels important”(WL 262). Infected by Gudrun’s observation, Ursula “saw the persistent, obtrusive birds as stout, short politicians lifting up their voices from the platform, little men who must make themselves heard at any cost”(WL 263). But days afterward her attitude changes:

Some yellow-ammers suddenly shot along the road in front of her. And they looked to her so uncanny and inhuman, like flaring yellow barbs shooting through the air on some weird, living errand, that she said to

herself:“Afterall,itisimpudenceto callthem littleLloyd Georges. They are really unknown to us, they are the unknown forces. It is impudence to look at them as if they were the same as human beings.

They areofantherworld. How stupid anthropomorphism is!” (WL 264)

What Ursula learns is the way to see things as they are. Detaching itself in a critical way from worldly temptations, Ursula’s gaze hence attempts to see things without stereotyping, fixation, or reifying.

In this novel, Lawrence critically challenges the traditional notion that the

“highest”forms of thought are the most disembodied, and he suggests the suppressed tactile dimensions be restored. Refusing to reduce the other or translate experience by visual conceptualization, Birkin and Ursula communicate through the language of touch: “Darknessand silencemustfallperfectly on her, then she could know

mystically,in unrevealed touch”(WL 319). The“mysteriousnight”thatenfoldsthe lovers isastateofbeing “neverto be seen with the eye, or known with the mind, only known as a palpable revelation of living otherness”(WL 320). This unspeakable knowledgeismediated by atactilelanguage,and thereisno translation ofthis“dark, subtlereality” into any mental images or concepts. Birkin and Ursula see and know each otherin waysthatareparadoxically “neverto berevealed”and thatconfirm the

“death ofknowledge”(WL 319). The organ of exploration is no longer the eye but the hand since tactility thwarts precisely the possessive interiorization and

mentalization of the “living otherness”inherent in the other. In addition to that of the embodied eye, the sovereignty of the mind’s eye is also subverted by the spontaneous motion of the hand. In so doing, the lovers achieve a mutual

“revelation ofmysticotherness”thatcannotbeeitherseen orknown.

Like her Brangwen ancestors, Ursula inheritsthe“mystic body of reality”

through touch. While inheriting the same tradition, Gudrun is, on the contrary, featured by her X-ray vision and mental stranglehold. Lawrence’s attack on the predatory vision is especially manifested through Gudrun’scharacteristicmodeof seeing. Watching theguestsatLauraCrich’swedding “with objectivecuriosity,”she

“saw each oneasacompletefigure,likeacharacterin abook,orasubjectin apicture, or a marionette in a theatre,afinished creation”(WL14). As a painter, Gudrun tends to see things by enclosing the seen object within a frame, and this is also the link between her self-contained being and her nearly perfect art miniatures. Beyond that, Gudrun’s sensuous vision reveals a sadomasochistic desire to know, to possess, to usurp, to manipulate, and even to destroy. In her first encounter with Gerald, her gaze is presented as an aggressive, almost predatory, assault upon him. Looking at Gerald, she said silently to herself: “Ishallknow moreofthatman”(WL 15). On this account, Gudrun’s seeing is at least a double phenomenon: gazing at/familiarizing herself with Gerald will also be her way of knowing him. In this way, she will

“know”Gerald in an essentially Western mode of knowing. For Gudrun, the essence of looking seems an act of appropriation, a gesture toward possession, rather than a vulnerable encounter as well as a pleasurablebinding ofone’sbeing with theother.

In fact, Gudrun represents the fusion of psychological contraries: on the one hand, her sense of identity is so weak that she must always feel at the center of

attention; but on the other hand, to protect herself from the risks of such exposure, she must simultaneously remain the detached witness.¹⁷ The attempt to satisfy these two opposing needs creates a vicious circle. In order not to be negated by a hostile witness, Gudrun turns herself into one, but in so doing she risks the no-less annoying result of not being seen at all. “Alwaysthis desolating, agonized feeling, that she was outside of life, an onlooker, whilst Ursula was a partaker, caused Gudrun to suffer from a sense of her own negation, and made her feel that she must always demand the

other to be aware of her, to be in connection with her”(WL 165). In other words, while defying the aggressive gaze of others on her, Gudrun is at the same time yearning restlessly for their gaze and their word of confirmation about her existential significance. Unable to face the double demand of human existence—i.e., to look and to be looked at—Gudrun makes herself tortured by an utter sense of isolation and alienation. When she looks out on the mountain peaks of the Tyrol, “she could see it, she knew it, but she was not of it. She was divorced, debarred, a soul shut out”(WL 403). Putting herself in the position of the mocking witness gives Gudrun her (critical) power and (enclosed) security, but also exacerbates her bitterness: “She never really lived, she only watched”(WL 465).

Truly, Gudrun’s anxiety is in different degrees shared by all the other characters.

Her insights into people are not always wrong but are at times too penetrating. In other words, what is most problematic in her mode of seeing is the exhaustive way in which she reduces people. The “Moony”chapter reveals this “reductive practice”

of any reflexive being as well as the fear of being reduced by such practice, which are shown to be a kind of dilemma and difficulty confronting not only Gudrun but also Birkin and Ursula. The stoning episode enacts Birkins’attempt to elude self-reflexivity and to demand a different kind of accounting from the purely specular one of emblematic representation. Through projecting its full image, the moon receives back its own ideal reflection. On the unruffled surface of the water, all that can be seen is the whiteness, which is strictly a play of light. Only when

of any reflexive being as well as the fear of being reduced by such practice, which are shown to be a kind of dilemma and difficulty confronting not only Gudrun but also Birkin and Ursula. The stoning episode enacts Birkins’attempt to elude self-reflexivity and to demand a different kind of accounting from the purely specular one of emblematic representation. Through projecting its full image, the moon receives back its own ideal reflection. On the unruffled surface of the water, all that can be seen is the whiteness, which is strictly a play of light. Only when