Struggle for Verbal Consciousness

In articulating that there is no reason to support that language corresponds to the world, Nietzsche advocates an account of consciousness as a historical phenomenon.

He proposes that the development of consciousness was driven by our need to communicate with one another:

As the most endangered animal he 【Man】needed help and protection; he needed his fellows, he was obliged to express his distress, he had to know how to make himself understood—and for all this he needed

‘consciousness’first of all: he had to ‘know’himself what he lacked, to

‘know’how he felt, and to ‘know’what he thought . . . . In brief, the development of language and the development of consciousness—go hand in hand . . . . It was only as a social animal that man acquired

self-consciousness. (1974: 202. Emphasis added)

Because of their social origins, both consciousness and language are generalizing and simplifying functions which, according to Nietzsche, do not belong to man’s

individual existence but rather to his social or herd nature.

Like Nietzsche, Lawrence has never been a naïve literalist about language.

The gap between word and thing, between language and being, is the condition of creativity in language. His literary and art criticism is implicitly based on the belief that language and the external/material world are disjunctive, and that the one should not be allowed to appropriate the other.¹⁹ For Lawrence, language is part of the socialworld,an “outsidefate”that must not be allowed to dictate to the individual.

In his fiction, the novelist continues to show his awareness of the fact that language, as a medium of communication, is also an obstacle. Characters in many of his novels are often presented to be contemptuous of, or hostile to, language.²⁰ For example, Anna in The Rainbow dislikes words. Like her father Tom, who is inarticulate, Anna has trouble with words. But unlike Tom, words for Anna are not so much obstacles as corruptions. So words do not baffle her as they do him; they simply seem false:

Many ways she tried of escape. She became an assiduous church-goer.

But the language meant nothing to her: it seemed false. She hated to hear things expressed, put into words. Whilst the religious feelings were inside her, they were passionately moving. In the mouth of the

clergyman, they were false, indecent. She tried to read. But again the tedium and the sense of the falsity of the spoken word put her off. (R 99.

Lawrence’s italics)

Anna even avoids thinking because the words which go with the rosary are “notthe same as the palerosary meant”(R 101). Her daughter Ursula was also made to acknowledge the incompetence of verbal language to explicate any inner and

individual experience. When Ursula has to write to Skrebensky, she feels this task is burdensome and meaningless because the objective representation of her inner self

seems false and ultimately foreign to the thing itself: “Itbored herto writealetter even to him. After all, writing words on paper had nothing to do with him and her”(R 353). For both Anna and Ursula, verbal formulation elicits merely a painful sense of absence, of the disparity between words and their referents. In fact, the characters in the novel simply do not talk very much. Those scenes that have commanded the deepest sympathy of readers—such as Tom’s proposal to Lydia, his vigil with Anna in the barn, Anna and Will’s stacking of the sheaves, their visit to Lincoln Cathedral, Anna’s solitary dance in front of her bedroom fire, Ursula and Skrebensky’s intercourse beneath the moon— all give the effect of being conducted in silence.

While the men and women in The Rainbow are “incapable of saying much”

(Sanders 72), those of Women in Love spend much of their time in “conversation, argument, debate and reflection”(Alldritt 210). What is more, though Women in Love is filled with talk, it is even more skeptical about linguistic communication. In comparison with those in The Rainbow (especially with the earlier Brangwen

generations which are characterized by their subliminal, unself-conscious nature), the characters in this novel are much more aware of their own difficulties of expression.

Language in this novel becomes a medium through which one must pass in order to intuit a truth or reality that has been obscured by speech. While all the main characters share Gerald’s “passion for debate”(WL 22), it seems that language for them does not communicate as much as it expresses their “will to power.” All the characters, and especially Birkin, the wordsmith of the novel, talk to themselves.

Trapped in dead metaphors and false concepts, they are unable to act on their words and prone to self-pity. It is obviously ironic that Birkin, the exorcist of will and knowledge, the champion of “dark involuntary being,”is a brilliant talker. In contrast to Will Brangwen, who was himself unaware of what his forename

epitomized, Birkin talks about the issue of “will”in a programmatically

self-conscious way. He is, so to speak, willing himself not to will. He accuses himself of having unpacked his heart with wordsratherthan deeds:“How was it he was always talkingaboutsensualfulfillment”(WL 330)? And he also admits that all the talking about love and rebirth is a function of the failure to live: “Whatwas the good of talking any way? It must happen beyond the sound of words”(WL 327).

When we are told of this, we seemingly recognize a language nausea in the author himself whereby even his own articulateness could come to seem a burden and a cheat.

In the more self-conscious mode of Women in Love, the conceptual limitations of language are more significant and disturbing.²¹ In effect, the whole medium of the book is posited between two competing and complementary recognitions which are attributed to the conscious awareness of the characters themselves. In other words, it seems that language is compelling in its power to falsify and confuse while at the same time being regarded as indispensable and limited means of understanding.

For instance, Ursula’s distrust of language is explicitly revealed in her conversation with Gudrun: “She listened, making out what she said. She knew, as well as he knew, that words themselves do not convey meaning, that they are but a gesture we make, a dumb show like any other”(WL 186). Yet Ursula is at the same time sensitive to a general problem in being “always frightened of words, because she knew mere word-force could always make her believe what she did not believe”(WL 437). For all his distrust of language, Lawrence reminds his readers in the “Foreword”to Women in Love thatthe“struggleforverbalconsciousnessshould notbeleftoutin art”:

Man struggles with his unborn needs and fulfillment. New unfoldings 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. (WL 486)

Lawrence’s identification of the “struggle for verbal consciousness”with the individual’s efforts “to know”and “to understand”implies that conscious being is inevitably determined by language. Despite inherent confusion and travesty, language is the necessary way to being.

Lawrence’s battle to bend the form of the novel to suit his visionary goal serves as the frame for Birkin’s struggle to find the language which can accommodate his doctrine. In other words, Lawrence’s authorial reflections correlate, at some points, with Birkin’s thoughts: “There was always confusion in speech. Yet it must be spoken”(WL 186). The following passage shows how Lawrence, while recognizing the epistemological fall out in all language use, nevertheless believes in the struggle to express, or deliver, new ideas. For Birkin, at one time, there is ultimately no real speech except silence:

He stood on the hearth-rug looking at her, at her face that was upturned exactly like a flower, a fresh, luminous flower, glinting faintly golden with the dew of the first light. And he was smiling faintly as if there were no speech in the world, save the silent delight of flowers in each other.

Smilingly they delighted in each other’s presence, pure presence, not to be thought of, even known. But his eyes had a faintly ironical contraction.

(WL 357. Emphasis added. )

The full power of the passage lies in the hypothetical slant—“as if there were no speech in the world.” This scene is in fact the linguistic analogue of Birkin’s

favorite fantasy, the lovely clean humanless world— a world swept bare of words.

But the irony in Birkin’s eyes suggests the double perspectives of speechless and speech—for humanity alone, there is no reaching the perfect silence without language.

This difficulty introduces the expressive problem which we are compelled to confront: Birkin wants to utter the revolutionary word, but he has only dead letters with which to spell it. Precisely in becoming a conscious struggle for new meanings, the language of the book is put under a new strain. Birkin seeks a clean rupture with the values of his kind, but to describe the new values he must use the language of the kind. It is therefore not surprising that he comes to a bitter skepticism towards the efficacy of language. However, needless to say, his suspicion of language does not make himself fall silent. Birkin is a great talker as well as a natural thinker. In his mind the experience of the world is ceaselessly transformed into a conscious

knowledge, which gives him the inevitable urge to say. Yet, by making Birkin’s verbosity and assertiveness a conscious theme, Lawrence successfully avoids reducing the novel to a sermon book. In his dialogue with Ursula on multifarious concerns, Birkin reveals himself over and again to be still not free from the modern malaise of the split of verbal and intuitive consciousness, which Ursula finds objectionable—i.e., whenever Birkin gets serious he suffers from the internal split between the speaking subject and the subject that enjoys the speech. Birkin carries his words and ideas as if they were for sale. His amusement in criticizing humanity arises rightly from this reified relation of him to his own words.

Birkin’s dilemma—i.e., human beings are usually trapped by their conscious existence, which is essentially the value and result of articulation —is further

dramatized by other characters, especially by Hermione. In “Class-Room”chapter, Hermione preaches a crude version of Lawrence’sdoctrineofspontaneity,instinct, and relaxation of will. Lawrence brilliantly theatricalizes the dissonance between

Hermione’sself-consciousness and her doctrine of spontaneity. Her convulsed behaviour of body and voice as she preaches animality dramatizes her difficulty of renouncing herself. The following long passage is worth quoting:

Then, piling herself together with a convulsed movement, Hermione resumed, in a sing-song, casual voice.

‘Butleaving meapart,Rupert;do you think thechildren are better, richer, happier, for all this knowledge; do you really think they are? Or is itbetterto leavethem untouched,spontaneous. Hadn’tthey betterbe animals, simple animals, crude, violent, anything, rather than this self-consciousness,thisincapacity to bespontaneous.’

They thought she had finished. But with a queer rumbling in her throatsheresumed,‘Hadn’tthey betterbeanything than grow up crippled, crippled in their souls, crippled in their feelings—so thrown back—so turned back on themselves—incapable—’ Hermioneclenched herfist like one in a trance—‘ofany spontaneousaction,alwaysdeliberate,always burdened with choice,nevercarried away.’

Again they thought she had finished. But just as he was going to reply, she resumed her queer rhapsody—‘nevercarried away,outof themselves, always conscious, always self-conscious, always aware of themselves. Isn’tanything betterthan this? Betterbeanimals,mere animals with no mind at all, than this, this nothingness—’

‘Butdo you think itisknowledgethatmakesusunloving and self-conscious?’heasked irritably.

She opened her eyes and looked at him slowly.

‘Yes,’shesaid. Shepaused,watching him allthewhile,hereyes vague. Then she wiped her fingers across her brow, with a vague

weariness. Itirritated him bitterly. ‘Itisthemind,’shesaid,‘and thatis death.’ Sheraised hereyesslowly to him:‘Isn’tthemind –she said, with theconvulsed movementofherbody,‘isn’titourdeath? Doesn’tit destroy all our spontaneity, all our instincts? Are not the young people growing up to-day,really dead beforethey haveachanceto live?’

‘Notbecausethey havetoo much mind,buttoo little,’hesaid brutally.

‘Areyou sure?’shecried. ‘Itseemsto methereverse. They are over-conscious,burdened to death with consciousness.’

‘Imprisoned with alimited,falsesetofconcepts,’hecried.

But she took no notice of this, only went on with her own rhapsodic interrogation. (WL 44-5)

As the above passage shows, the way in which Hermione’sargumentsareproferred tells us much more about her than the ideas themselves. Those narratorial details surely establish a contradiction between the gospel of spontaneity Hermione is articulating, and the actual psychological conditions she speaks from. Words are slippery, and Hermione is able to turn truth into lies by preaching what she does not practice.

Indeed, at first sight, what Hermione utters is what the world has been content to take for the Laurentian doctrine. Yet Birkin’sresponseto Hermionemakesthings more complicated: “To know,thatisyourall,thatisyourlife—you have only this, thisknowledge. Thereisonly onetree,thereisonly onefruit,in yourmouth”(WL 46). Birkin’s exasperation is pointed at Hermione’s self-gratifying will to utter the idea— i.e., the will to intellectual masturbation, whose very existence gainsays the truth of what urges her to say. Her self-conscious parroting of Birkin’sideology drives him to criticize severely her insincerity. Yet if Hermione is tormented by the

self-consciousness she verbally denounces, so is Birkin. In other words, what Birkin excoriates so brutally in Hermione is what he knows as a dangerous potentiality in himself. The paradoxicalnatureofBirkin’sendeavor is that it is an intellectual search for a mindless self, a conscious condemnation of consciousness itself. As such, his articulation functions as both doctrinal revelation and the disclosure of its inadequacy. We might say that he is the man, shouting about the value of silence, suddenly embarrassed by the sound of his own voice.

In a nutshell, the whole paradox –“the articulate quest for the ineffable”— lies at the heart of the Lawrentian dialectics, in which “unknowingness”convergeswith vital“knowing.” Therefore Birkin’s urging of Ursula— “You’vegot to learn

not-to-be before you can come into being”(WL 48)— sounds ironic. WhileBirkin’s statementconveysacompletetruth in termsofLawrence’stheme, it reflects ironically on Birkin, who is lecturing in strident tones about a condition he cannot achieve through his will. Lawrence’s presentation of Birkin’s dilemma—i.e. the conscious ego in the world is always burdened by its own existing—calls to our mind Levinas’s declaration of the existence of the ego as a solitary “enchainment”with being (TO 56).

Even the famous freedom of thought exercised in knowing the world is incapable of breaking this enchainment: “this freedom does not save me from the definitive

character of my very existence, from the fact that I am forever stuck with myself”(EE 84). Yet Lawrence, as a novelist, foregrounds the dilemma by dramatic situation, methods of characterization, and narrative technique. Both the characters and their statements are located into a dramatic context which qualifies, relativizes, and criticizes any didactic intention. The “Lawrentian”argumentsare presented as dramas, and what people say are played off against what they are.

While the increasing self-consciousness of the characters and of the narrator about their speech in Women in Love attests to Lawrence’sdeepening awarenessof the

inevitability of “struggle for verbal consciousness”and complexity of the process in which the prison-house of language blocks consciousness from an experience of life, in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lawrence seeks to find a new language to make a vital conjunction between art and experience, language and being. The consciousness of the separation between language and life is, as in his previous novels, one of the dominant themes. From the first chapter, Lawrence makes it clear that talking has been one of the most important things for the men and women of the modern world.

Yet what is most ironic is that, as Connie laments, “all the great words . . . were cancelled for her generation”(LCL 63). Words like glory and honor had been stripped of their meaning by the insanity of trench warfare during World War I, and the word love had lost its mysterious and regenerative meaning by being embalmed through countless repetitions. In the first seven chapters of the novel, the talk at Wrabgy Hall between Clifford and his friends centers around these “cancelled”words and ideas. It is for this reason that Connie at Wragby “hated words, always coming between her and life”(LCL 34).

In sharp contrast to the opening chapters, wherein the dominant verbs of consciousness involve thinking, talking, or seeing, the love scenes in the latter part of this novel are permeated by the “unfathomable silence”between Connie and Mellors.

“And ofthis,they would neverspeak”(LCL 188). It is so individual that neither of them can talk about it, and yet it remains regenerative. In his attack on

ocularcentrism and logocentrism, Lawrence makes it clear that “critical reflection is thus most useful when it gives rise to silence, thereby paving the way for ineffable numinousexperience”(Burack 493). Yet to create a “silent”text is surely a difficult or even impossible task. Mellor’s and Connie’s actual silence can be enacted and described for the reader only through the narrator’s verbal abilities and the literary discourse that describes it. To put this another, it requires that Lawrence use

language to move the reader beyond language. And so it means that the state beyond

language to move the reader beyond language. And so it means that the state beyond