Lawrence as a Male Feminist—The Patriarchy of Feminist Ideology

The question of men’s presence in feminism has always been a controversial one. Many feminists regard men’s involvement with feminism as an act of penetration, violence, coercion, or appropriation. For instance, Showalter gives expression to the fear of the “raid”of feminist criticism by male critics (Showalter 129). Ruth Klein has portrayed men’s intrusion in feminism as an attempt to appropriate women’s experiences and discursive spaces to sustain patriarchal representations of women as “other”(418). Indeed, there might be suspicion that how can a man implicated in patriarchal speak for a woman constrained by it. Yet attempts to excommunicate men from feminism pose some troubling issues for males who engage in feminist critical discourse. Denying men the promise of feminism does not only evoke an essentialist argument, but also falls into the trap of the imperialist tendencies of a Eurocentric male discourse of binaries. In other words, while some feminists recommend the rejection of patriarchal theory and patriarchal philosophy in favour of “woman-centred”theory, they fall into the same trap of the patriarchally uncontaminated theory. For instance, some radical feminists assume

that their targets—i.e., men— possess a given and unvarying essence which is

identified as the source of the ills of the world. Mary Daly’s derogatory descriptions of male nature imply a naïve morality which assumes that those who suffer have moral purity, simply by virtue of their suffering. Evil is thus given a Manichean status where men are associated with the demonic powers of darkness and the “True Self”of women with “life-loving energy”(Daly 355). Gyn/ecology merely reverses the traditional associations between the dualisms such as good/bad, light/dark,

man/woman. Alfred Kazin has perceptively identified women’s narrow ideological attacks as the symptom of cultural disease “at a time when Freud’s Victorian illusion that women have penis envy has been replaced in up-to-date America by penis hatred”

(44).

Grounding on biological essentialism, Bart et al. (1991) assert that “one must inhabit a female body to have the experience that makes one a feminist”(191).

Given the fact that biologically men cannot be in the place which women experience, it’s understandable that Stephen Heath admits: “Men’s relation to feminism is an impossible one”(1). However that may be, while the relationship between women and feminism is clearly more possible than that for men, it is also, in various ways, an impossible one because our lives as “social”men and women are heterogeneously composed of an array of subject positions. Therefore, the stand advocated by radical feminists that women are equally oppressed by patriarchy is problematic, given that the experience and life chances of poor and minority women are at least as much shaped and limited by class oppression and racism as they are by their sex. For instance, while women of color have challenged the sexism within their own

communities, they are less likely to see masculinity per se as the enemy or to assume a self-evident connection between men and oppressive cultural power. Obviously certain women have more luxury of perceiving the male/female divide as the

foundational division, simply because their own (privileged) class or race position remains unmarked and hence invisible. Therefore, the vision that the female is “pure oppressed otherness”fails to recognize how the social constructions of race, class, and sexuality profoundly alter the status of gender, complicate identity, and fundamentally pluralize and particularize the meaning of “women.”

Correspondingly, “man”is not a universal but a gendered category inflected further by race, class, sexual orientation, etc. Examining the radical feminist’s claim that all men have a shared interest in the subordination of women, Jaggar argues that

“most men, in fact, are victims of a small, white ruling class that maintains its domination through the interrelated structures of racism, imperialism and class society”(118). In other words, not all men are white, European, let alone

empowered. Even as a white European, Lawrence himself was still marginal to the world of men because of his class, his temperament, his preoccupations, even his health state. His hero Somers in Kangaroo is not recognized “as a man among men”

(K 124) because he was rejected on health grounds for military service. Men’s minority position in the categories of race, class, religion, and ethnicity regularly place them in some respects in the situation of women and these are usually the experiences that have made them empathy with feminism. Retaining an equation of power with the phallus, some feminist theorists, however, uphold the convenient fiction that power is an exclusively male phenomenon. In the process of their argument, heterogeneity inherent in the idea of “men”has vanished altogether insofar as “men”are transformed into an army of indistinguishable, unnamed “they’s.” As a result, the so-called “political correctness”has made the work of male-feminists somehow distorted and misread due to some ideological presuppositions.

As a male writer dealing with female sexuality, Lawrence becomes a significant case in the question of men’s relationship to feminism. As Simpson has asserted,

“Attacks on Lawrence’s misogyny and praise for his sensitive portrayals of femininity have co-existed since the inception of the critical debate”(13). The Second Sex was one of the first works to raise the contention that Lawrence celebrated the phallic at theexpenseofwoman’sreality and being. Thecentralconcern of de Beauvior’s book is with the male representation of woman as the Other. She accuses Lawrence for using his charactersto promoteand justify the “Myth of Woman”that has been for so long a feature of the relations between men and women in most cultures. She argues that “the very expression ‘phallic marriage’means that Lawrence passionately believes in the supremacy of the male”(248-9). On the other side, Lydia Blanchard holds quite a different view from that of de Beauvoir, calling attention to the gap between Lawrence’s non-fictional and fictional writing. While Lawrence’s non-fiction spouts much nonsense about the subjugation of women, Blanchard

suggests, his fiction “presents a very different kind of picture, one illuminating for any person seriously interested in exploring the myriad relationships possible between man and woman”(1975: 432). While Blanchard’s neat division of fiction and non-fiction is arbitrary, her argument is inspiring in an age in which Lawrence is often read to see whether he fits into the straitjackets of feminist ideology. For instance, Kate Millet displays scant concern for subtle nuances in Lawrence’s fiction. Like the radical feminists mentioned above, she is avowedly on an ideological hunt for male demons, as she concludes determinedly that Lawrence’s work is reactionary and unwholesome for its “absorption in phallic consciousness”and a “doctrinaire

male-supremacist ethic”(257), paying little attention to the artistic quality of

Lawrence’s fiction. The weakness of Millett’s approach is that her ideological view of Lawrence’s fiction has been allowed to override her aesthetic response to them as art.

There is, of course, no point in denying that Lawrence is sometimes sexist and

politically reactionary in his adoption of plot arrangement and male images associated with patriarchal implication. But in some respects and to a certain degree Lawrence matches Boone’s assertion that “men participating in feminism should make their own oppressive structures present for critique”(24). More than often Lawrence’s fiction both builds its plot on the hidden structure of patriarchy and criticizes it at the same time. For instance, at first sight, The Rainbow seems to be based on a patriarchal notion of a family unit and patrilineal inheritance—the division of labor according to the sexes, the division of the spheres of life between the home and the workshop.

Patriarchy structures the relationship of individuals in this novel. However, while depending upon patriarchy, this novel paradoxically challenges male dominance in its final vision. Forced toward change by physical and spiritual rupture, Ursula throws off the old pattern of marriage— i.e., childbearing and submission to the man. It is the institution of patriarchy that the end of the novel implicitly repudiates. Instead of following the footsteps of his patriarchal precursors who depicted women either as timid victims or as perverse fiends, Lawrence created female characters who are naturally enraged by their subordinate situation, and rebel against male authority. In this way Lawrence’snovelentersinto adialoguewith itsown sub-text and is made to interrogate its own ideology and the systems of values underlying its themes and variations.

Likewise, though the phallus image predominates in his fiction, rather than presenting us with women lying helplessly in the grasp of a hermeneutics of male supremacy, Lawrence’s fiction presents us with female characters who consistently undercut, rather than affirm, the doctrinal pronouncements of the (male) hero, narrator, and author. As I have shown in Part One, much of the power and originality of Lawrence’s fiction lies in the ways it invites readers into “the thick of the scrimmage”

among the multiplicity of voices, attitudes, feelings, thoughts, disagreements and

quarrels which it dramatizes. Put more precisely, Lawrence’s writing often uses different techniques to make “whatis said”a problem, to break up our perception of any noncontradictiory meaning-of-the-text, and to deconstruct our illusion that the text nonideologically mirrors or expresses what is generally accepted as true. One of the most effective techniques is Lawrence’s designation of female voices to compete with the dictatorial male voices. Through female voices, Lawrence tries to articulate female resistance to the male definition of their world, including his own creation of it.

Therefore, at the moment when Lawrence attempts to interpret woman’s experience or even to prescribe a course for her, such interpretation and prescription are then

challenged and undercut by the conviction that her inevitable rejection and criticism must be heard. For instance, as has been mentioned in Part Two, while Paul sees Miriam as a “Dreaming Woman”and reproaches her for being such, Clara’s

interrogations of Paul serves as a female corrective to contest Paul’s male fantasy that Miriam wants “soul communion”rather than physical love. Clara’s insight is confirmed by Miriam’s later complaint about Paul: “It has always been you fighting me off”(SL 297). Female presence in Lawrence’s fiction more than often

deconstructs the discourse of the teller and the male protagonists.

Certainly the most evident example of the female corrective to male doctrines is Ursula in Women in Love. With their preformulated indictment of sexism, Millett and other ideologues, ignoring the dialectical balance in this novel, view Ursula merely as “Birkins’wife and echo”(Millet 265) and as the “satellite to Birkin’s star”

(Heilbrun 102). As I have mentioned in Part One, Lawrence urges the pattern of dialectical opposition as the necessary component of a truly moral novel. Birkin’s

“system of morality”is continually submitted to the scrutiny of Ursula’s skeptical antagonism, which is a skepticism rooted in the instinctual essence of her being as a female. After listening to Birkins’explanation of star-equilibrium, Ursula argues her

position as the feeling female while she indicts his brand of blindness and conceit:

“‘You are very conceited, Monsieur,’she mocked. ‘How do you know what my womanly feelings are, or my thoughts or my ideas’”(WL 139)? From her perspective Birkin’s doctrine becomes his evasion and his means to avoid honest commitment. Far from being “the epitome of passivity”(Millett 264), Ursula is used skillfully by Lawrence to fashion a sustained and effective critique of Birkin’s most cherished theories. Millett’s discussion of this novel has demeaned Ursula’s strenuous interrogation of her lover.

Females’eloquent voices are adopted in such ways to undercut especially Lawrence’s misogynistic doctrinal pronouncements. On the above account, even if we want to believe that Lawrence wrote his fiction with misogynous intentions, the text confounds us by presenting patriarchal discourse not only within what Booth calls

“achorusofvoices, each speaking with its own authority”(446), but also within a femininized cosmosthatmostoften seemsto affirm afemalecharacter’spointofview.

On that ground, we should attend very carefully to the wide variety of the author’s speaking positions on gender politics. For example, in the chapter “Carpeting”, Birkin asserts that there are two innate wills in horses and in women—the will to subjection and that to revolt. Although Birkin attacks Hermione forher“obscene will,”hedescribesGerald’smarein “thedominantprinciple”:

‘And ofcourse,’hesaid to Gerald,‘horseshaven’tgotacompletewill,like human beings. A horse has not one will. Every horse, strictly, has two wills. With one will, it wants to put itself in the human power

completely—and with the other, it wants to be free, wild.’ (WL 132) Ursula objects:“Why should ahorsewantto beputitself in the human power”(WL 133)? Birkin replies that the impulse to do so is “perhapsthehighestlove-impulse:

resign yourwillto thehigherbeing”(WL 134). When Ursula jeers,headds,“and

woman is the same as horses”(WL 135). Referring to this passage, Kate Millett condemns Lawrence for his concern to subjugate the woman: “Birkin is full of opinions and ideas and holds forth all through the book while Ursula puts docile leading questions to him . . . . Birkin will play as the Son of God, Ursula revolving quietly at his side”(263-4). As common sense shows us, to identify Birkin with Lawrence is an oversimplification. Moreover, Ursula’s response to Birkin is far from flattering or docile. As has been mentioned several times in this study, Birkin’s authority is from time to time ironically undermined by other characters, especially by Ursula. So Ursula sees in Birkin not only “an utterly desirable man”(WL 89) but also “a prig of the stiffest type”(WL 245). All throughout the novel, the narrative records Ursula’s resistance as well as Birkin’s assertion. As such, far from following Birkin “in apostolic faith”(Millet 262), Ursula’ssentimentatthispointwhen Birkin makes his misogynistic assertion is that“Birkin seemed to her almost a monster of hatefularrogance”(WL 141).

As we have learned in Part One, Lawrence’sfullmeaning (if there could be one) emerges only after the arguments are carefully weighed, not only against the known biases of the speakers but against each other. Inthechapter“Woman to Woman,”we come to see Birkin’s former juxtaposition of horses’willwith women’swill as a reflection of his experience with Hermione in their love affair. Hermione is the kind of woman who desires to be made subservient to her lover. As Ursula tells her about Birkin’ssuspiciousdemand forher“submission,”Hermione is made in the following scene to expose her slavish mind which matches Birkin’s description of “the will to subjection”:

“Hewantsmereally to accepthim in marriage.”

Hermione was silent for some time, watching Ursula with slow, pensive eyes.

“Does he?”shesaid atlength,withoutexpression. Then,rousing,

“And whatisityou don’twant? You don’twantmarriage?”

“No—Idon’t—notreally. Idon’twantto givethesortofsubmission he insists on. He wants me to give myself up—and I simply don’tfeel that Ican do it.”

Again there was a long pause, before Hermione replied:

“Notifyou don’twantto.” Then again there wassilence. Hermione shuddered with a strange desire. Ah, if only he had asked her to subserve him, to be his slave! She shuddered with desire. (WL 294)

Ursula’s contemplation following closely behind calls upon us to distinguish Hermione’sserviledesire and whatBirkin wants of Ursula:

After all, the tiresome thing was, he did not want an odalisk, he did not want a slave. Hermione would have been his slave—there was in her a horrible desire to prostrate herself before a man—a man who worshiped her, however, and admitted him as the supreme thing. —He did not want an odalisk. He wanted a woman to take something from him, to give herself up so much that she could take the last realities of him, the last facts, the last physical facts, physical and unbearable . . . . Hermione was likeaman,shebelieved only in men’sthings. Shebetrayed thewoman in herself. (WL 295)

This passage elaborates that Birkin’sdemand forUrsula’s submission is tantamount not to a self-centered instrumentalization but to her faithfulness to her female self, or

“thewoman”in herself,which alonewillgivefinality to theirrelationship. As one of the few women in Lawrence who ask for male domination, Hermione is usually the subject of ridicule, far from being used to justify women’s subordinated position.

Therefore, any ideologically orthodox expression of feminist sentiments fails to

constitute Lawrence’s fiction true value as a potential site for the articulation of promising femininity.

It is in this sense that Gilbert indicates that “Lawrence,even athismost overtly masculinist, did not quite fit into the so-called ‘patriarchalmodes’”because Lawrence the author is akin to Birkin the character in that they always have had “two aspects”(42).³⁵ The glorification of masculine power and the phallic mystique of many of the middle and later works testify to animosity against female dominance, yet Lawrence continues to create strong and independent females. He offsets his male argument for domination by positing the female characters to parodize the male characters’ideological statements. For example, Harriet, in Kangaroo, restates ironically and critically her husband’s proposal that she act as a nest to his dominant male phoenix-self thus: “So that he could imagine himself absolutely and arrogantly It, he would turn her into a nest, and sit on her and overlook her, like the one and only phoenix in the desert of the world, gurgling hymns of salvation”(K 178). The didactic Lawrentian hero Richard Lovat, who argues the desirability of male domination, is thus made to admit: “I am a fool”, and this “was the most frequent discovery he made”(K 285). In addition, just like Ursula often finds Birkin

ridiculous, Kate Leslie in The Plumed Serpent often thinks Cipriano, her husband, as an absurd figure. Kate, as skeptical a heroine as Ursula and Harriet, cries out at one point: “I am Kate Forrester, really. I am neither Kate Leslie nor Kate Tylor. I am sick of these men putting names over me. I was born Kate Forrester, and I shall die Kate Forrester”(PS 387). After undergoing rites in which she kisses her husband’s feet and allows herself to be celebrated as a female principle, Kate eventually learns that “she loved to be alone,”that she is “not going to submit”even to being ruled by sexual desire (let alone by the man who arouses it), and that “I want myself to myself”

ridiculous, Kate Leslie in The Plumed Serpent often thinks Cipriano, her husband, as an absurd figure. Kate, as skeptical a heroine as Ursula and Harriet, cries out at one point: “I am Kate Forrester, really. I am neither Kate Leslie nor Kate Tylor. I am sick of these men putting names over me. I was born Kate Forrester, and I shall die Kate Forrester”(PS 387). After undergoing rites in which she kisses her husband’s feet and allows herself to be celebrated as a female principle, Kate eventually learns that “she loved to be alone,”that she is “not going to submit”even to being ruled by sexual desire (let alone by the man who arouses it), and that “I want myself to myself”