2 (p. 6) But both had the remote, virgin look of modern girls, sisters of Artemis rather than of Hebe: Artemis is the virgin goddess of hunting and nature in Greek mythology. Hebe is the goddess of youth and spring. Lawrence is saying that Ursula and Gudrun have the appearance, at least, of being wholesome country girls, not ones sowing the wild oats of youth.
3 (p. 6) “So you have come home, expecting him here?”: In The Rainbow, Gudrun is studying to be a painter, though there is no mention of her going to London, or of Mr. Brangwen’s sharp objection to Ursula’s wanting to go to London to teach. Lawrence resolves this by suggesting some conflict between Gudrun and her father.
4 (p. 12) There was something northern about him that magnetized her. In his clear nortbern flesh and his fair hair was a glisten like sunshine refracted through crystals of ice: Lawrence is establishing Gerald as a symbol of the “snow-abstraction” of northern cultures in the West, which in his view are doomed, at least in their present state.
5 (p. 13) This was Hermione Roddice, a friend of the Criches: This character is based on Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873-1938), a member of the Cambridge-Bloomsbury circle and a cultural force in her own right around whom a number of great writers and thinkers gathered. Ezra Pound immortalized her in one of his best lyric poems, “Portrait d’une Femme.” T. S. Eliot also pays her a rather begrudging tribute in “Portrait of a Lady.” Since the character of Hermione is so firmly based on Lady Morrell, naturally speculation arises as to whether she and Lawrence shared the same intimate relationship as Hermione and Birkin, Lawrence’s surrogate in the novel. There is no definitive evidence that they did.
6 (p. 13) Her long, pale face, that she carried lifted up, somewhat in the Rossetti fashion, seemed almost drugged: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) was a leading Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter. His sumptuous portraits of women were famous for their vague and dreamy classical style.
Chapter II
1 (p. 24) “Am I my brother’s keeper?” he said to himself, almost flippantly.... Not that he was Cain, either, although he had slain his brother: In the Bible (Genesis 4:8-9), Cain kills his brother Abel. Previous editors have noted that Gerald’s character is partially based on Sir Thomas Philip Barber, member of a prominent Nottinghamshire family who accidentally killed his brother. The point Lawrence is making, however, is that Gerald has been born with the mark of Cain.
2 (p. 26) “A race may have its commercial aspect, ”he said. “In fact it must.... You must make provision. And to make provision you have got to strive against other families, other nations”: Gerald is advocating social Darwinism, which Hermione and Birkin oppose. In later works, The Plumed Serpent in particular, Lawrence is not opposed at all to minority white rule among darker people.
Chapter III
1 (p. 36) “Do you really think the children are better for being roused to consciousness?”: Though Hermione has a very open attitude about race, she is very condescending toward members of the lower classes. Lawrence, himself a miner’s son, never makes a direct attack on the upper classes, with whom to some extent he wanted to identify On the other hand, Birkin can be scathing to Hermione when she acts grand, and Gerald is the symbol of what is wrong with Europe.
2 (p. 40) “But why should I be a demon—?” she asked. “ ‘Woman wailing for her demon lover’—” he quoted: The line Birkin quotes is from “Kubla Khan,” by Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834). Coleridge wrote the poem while under the influence of drugs; thus it is an example of a sort of knowledge or a work that bypasses the intellect and comes straight from the unconscious, or the blood, as Lawrence would put it. Unfortunately, Coleridge was never able to finish the poem because he could not recapture the same drug-induced state of mind.
Chapter IV
1 (p. 44) He waved again, with a strange movement of recognition across the difference. “Like a Nibelung, ” laughed Ursula: Here Lawrence again links one of his characters to the work of Richard Wagner and his Ring of the Nibelung, a series of four operas based on Norse mythology. This time the reference is in relation to Gerald and to the Nibelung king of the underworld who steals the ring from the fair Rhine maidens.
2 (p. 45) “Oh, eighteenth century, for certain; Dorothy Wordsworth and Jane Austen, don’t you think?”: Writer Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855) was the sister of William Wordsworth (1770-1850). Lawrence uses novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817) in the chapter entitled “A Chair” as a symbol for an idyllic English past that the modern age has corrupted (as when Gerald Crich installs electricity in a classic English house).
Chapter V
1 (p. 50) Now Birkin started violently at seeing this genial lookflash on to Gerald’s face, at seeing Gerald approaching him hand outstretched: This scene between Gerald and Birkin, with its frank discussion about love, parallels the opening scene in the novel, where Gudrun and Ursula express similar concerns.
2 (p. 57) “you’d better come round to the flat, and see what you can make of Halliday and his crowd”: With the character Halliday, Lawrence satirizes the real-life composer Philip Heseltine (1894-1930). Better known as Peter Warlock, he was a prominent composer admired for his editions of Elizabethan music. Warlock was originally a great supporter of Lawrence but later became a sworn enemy.
Chapter VI
1 (p. 62) “He’s a soldier, and an explorer, and a Napoleon of industry,” said Birkin, giving Gerald his credentials for Bohemia: Lawrence is cleverly continuing his use of Gerald as a symbol: He has the mark of Cain, and he kills his darker brother. Gerald’s snow-abstraction destructiveness is opposed in this chapter to Birkin’s championing of primitive, more sensual cultures, as symbolized by the African statue. This is one of the central themes of the novel.
2 (p. 66) “I should adore some oysters”: Oysters are a symbol of sexuality Lawrence is establishing Pussum as sensual, linking her with the African sculpture. In other words, she is Gerald’s direct opposite, as well as Gudrun’s and Hermione’s.
3 (p. 72) there were several negro statues, wood-carvings from West Africa, strange and disturbing: A bohemian apartment such as Halliday’s is the appropriate place for these West African statues. Lawrence uses these as a symbol of sensual, instinctive primitive cultures, as opposed to the cold, industrialized, dehumanized culture of Europe.
4 (p. 74) And yet the black looks of her eyes made Gerald feel drowned in some dreadful, potent darkness that almost frightened him: Again Lawrence connects Pussum with the African statue and his assumption of the greater sensuality of darker people.
Chapter VII
1 (p. 75) Totem: As the chapter title suggests, this chapter establishes more fully the African sculpture as a theme and lays out its symbolism. The beauty of what Lawrence accomplishes here is that, in having this and the last chapter set in Halliday’s apartment, Lawrence loses none of the realism of his novel even while he works in abstract symbolism. African art became popular in the early twentieth century, when the French painter Maurice de Vlaminck (1876-1958) found an African sculpture on a Paris quay. The artists Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Georges Braque (1882-1963) popularized African art; its influence, combined with that of the work of Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), helped lead them to invent Cubism. After them, a whole host of artists got on the African art bandwagon. Philip Heseltine, on whom Lawrence based the Halliday character (see note 2 to chapter V), had several pieces of African art.
Chapter VIII
1 (p. 80) Breadalby was a Georgian house with Corinthian pillars, standing among the softer, greener hills of Derbyshire, not far from Cromford: Breadalby is based on Lady Ottoline Morrell’s Garsington Manor. Lady Morrell (see note 5 to chapter I) was one of the great hostesses and conduits for writers, artists, and intellectuals of the early twentieth century; her Garsington Manor was the setting for many of their gatherings. Lawrence carefully placed this chapter after “Totem,” opposing sensuality against will, order, rational consciousness, coldness, and violence.
2 (p. 80) her brother, a bachelor, and a Liberal member of
Parliament: Alexander Roddice is based on Lady Ottoline’s husband, Philip Morrell (1870-1943).
3 (p. 81) There were present ... a learned, dry Baronet of fifty, who was always making witticisms and laughing at them heartily in a harsh, horse-laugh: Sir Joshua Malleson is based on the philosopher Lord Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). Lawrence and Russell met through Lady Morrell. At first Russell considered Lawrence something of a genius, but later he described him as “a positive force for evil.”
4 (p. 104) Hurriedly, with a burrowing motion, he covered his head under the thick volume of Thucydides: The Greek historian Thucydides, who lived in the fifth century B.C., wrote The History of the Peloponnesian War. The volume saves Birkin’s life. Lady Morrell gave Lawrence a copy of this same volume, a gift that increased speculation about the exact nature of their relationship.
Chapter IX
1 (p. 109) Whilst the two girls waited, Gerald Crich trotted up on a red Arab mare: Lawrence uses the horse as both a symbol of Gerald’s power and his abuse of it, his snow-destructiveness. Note this is a mare, a female horse. In the chapter titled “Water-Party,” Gudrun will taunt bulls.
Chapter XI
1 (p. 122) An Island: Lawrence uses the island as a symbolic paradise where Ursula and Birkin, a new Adam and a new Eve, begin to deal with the modern problem of love.
2 (p. 126) “Look at all the millions of people who repeat every minute that love is the greatest, and charity is the greatest—and see what they are doing all the time”: See the Bible (1 Corinthians 13:13). The hypocrisy of people who praise love and charity has made Birkin disown the word “love.” It has become a cliché.
Chapter Xll
1 (p. 133) Carpeting: In this chapter, which is Hermione’s chapter, carpeting symbolizes her attempt to impose her will on Birkin in the form of decorating ideas. This chapter is opposed by a later chapter entitled “The Chair,” in which Ursula and Birkin buy a chair together and then decide that they have no need of possessions.
Chapter XIII
1 (p. 149) “I agree that the Wille zur Macht is a base and petty thing”: The German phrase means “will to power,” an idea popularized by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) meaning that all living things have an incarnate will to “grow, spread, seize, become predominant,” as Nietzshe put it in Beyond Good and Evil. In Women in Love, Lawrence makes clear he is against the Nietzschean will to power, but in his later works, The Plumed Serpent in particular, Lawrence appears very much in favor of it.
2 (p. 149) “Ah—Sophistries! It’s the old Adam”: Ursula is saying that Birkin is falling back into the old, historical pattern of thinking that men should dominate women. Lawrence also wrote two stories, “The Old Adam” and “New Eve and Old Adam,” on this topic.
Chapter XIV
1 (p. 163) So saying, having givenher word like a man, she and Ursula entered the frail craft, and pusbed gently off: Lawrence establishes here both the repressed condition of women, whose word is not ordinarily taken as binding, and Gudrun’s liberated ideas. Gudrun not only gives her word like a man but insists on rowing her own boat, an obviously symbolic action.
2 (p. 167) Nevertheless, Gudrun, with her arms outspread and her face uplifted, went in a strange palpitating dance towards the cattle: Gudrun’s dance symbolizes both her own liberation and her desire to dominate and even madden males, here symbolized by bulls.
3 (p. 170) “You have struck the first blow”: Gerald’s is a prophetic statement, one that anticipates the end of the novel.
4 (p. 172) “You mean we are flowers of dissolution—fleurs du mal?”: This is another reference to a French Symbolist poet, this time to Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), whose book Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil) introduced both Symbolism and modernism into French poetry.
5 (p. 172) “You know Herakleitos says ‘a dry soul is best’”: The Greek philosopher Herakleitos, also spelled Heracleitus or Heraclitus (c. 540-480 B.C.), believed all things were in flux and therefore subject to constant change. He believed fire’s combustion was the origin of the cosmos, anticipating the “Big Bang” theory. In many sources, Herakleitos is quoted as having said, “A dry soul is the wisest and best.”
Chapter XV
1 (p. 190) there was no beyond, from which one had to leap like Sappho into the unknown: A legend that has grown up around lyric Greek poet Sappho (c.610-c. 580 B.C.) is that, in despair over an unrequited love, she took her own life by throwing herself into the sea. Ursula, unlike her sister Gudrun, shows herself to have deep feelings about love, though she does not accept the fact that it must come with “baggage.”
2 (p. 192) There is complete ignominy in an unreplenished, mechanised life: Lawrence here is saying that death is better than the mechanized love of meaningless routine. It sounds romantic and heroic, but it is unlikely that either Lawrence or Ursula would actually be willing to die rather than live a life of infinite boredom.
Chapter XVI
1 (p. 198) The old way of love seemed a dreadful bondage: This is further evidence that Birkin’s intent, like that of Ursula, and of Lawrence, is to reinvent love. This chapter, “Man to Man,” explores the idea of male love as an alternative to the old way of relating, a dominant theme throughout the novel.
2 (p. 206) “You know how the old German knights used to swear a Blutbruderschaft”: The German word means “blood-brotherhood.” Birkin wants to evoke the old German ritual, which for Lawrence has latent homosexual undertones. Lawrence proposed a similar pact to his friend John Middleton Murry (1889-1957), which apparently Murry accepted after Lawrence browbeat him.
Chapter XVII
1 (p. 210) The Industrial Magnate: In Sons and Lovers, Lawrence explores the condition of miners in England largely from an autobiographical perspective. Here he covers some of the same material, but this time from the perspective of the mine owners.
2 (p. 230) There was a new world, a new order, strict, terrible, inhuman, but satisfying in its very destructiveness: Gerald symbolizes the mechanization of modern society and thus the destruction of humanity. At the same time, Lawrence is opposed to democracy, though not to individualism in society. This would appear to be a contradiction, but Lawrence does not appear to be troubled by contradictions.
Chapter XVIII
1 (p. 243) “God be praised we aren’t rabbits....—All that, and more. ”Her eyes looked up at him with shocking nonchalance: This is a clear sexual suggestion that again shocks Gerald. The madness of the rabbit is linked by Lawrence with Gudrun’s taunting of the bulls and the subsequent smacking of Gerald.
Chapter XIX
1 (p. 244) Moony: This is the pivotal chapter in Women in Love. Most of the major themes are addressed or re-addressed here. As mentioned in note 1 to chapter I, the name Ursula is associated with the Norse moon-goddess of the same name. There is also the pun in the word “moony,” the idea of madness or delirium that superstitions attribute to the effects of the moon.
2 (p. 246) “Cybele—curse her! The accursed Syria Dea!”: Cybele is the Roman goddess of fertility, identified with the Great Mother. On the Day of Blood, initiates who worshiped the female principle in the person of Astarte, the Syrian moon goddess, or Syria Dea, often castrated themselves in sacrifice to her. This is Birkin’s lament on castrating women, which gets a rise out of Ursula.
3 (p. 253) He remembered the African fetishes.... one, a statuette about two feet high, a tall, slim, elegant figure_ from West Africa, in dark wood, glossy and suave: The questions about art and culture posed in “Totem” are resolved. Lawrence identifies man’s primitive past with sensuality and blood-knowledge and Western Europe, especially northern Europe, with snow-destruction and death, of which Gerald is the symbol.
Chapter XX
1 (p. 266) Gladiatorial: Some psychologists claim that wrestling has a latent homosexual character. There is no question that this is the case in the Japanese wrestling between Birkin and Gerald. Lawrence was very advanced to view homosexuality as a possible alternative for the reinvent
ion of love; the novel ultimately rejects it, while remaining extremely sympathetic. Evidently, Lawrence and his friend John Middleton Murry had sessions like these.
Chapter XXI
1 (p. 289) “Love isn’t good enough for you?: The fact that Birkin insists on a contract of marriage, and at the same time finds love insufficient, certainly seems a contradiction, unless we remember that Birkin is speaking of the old way of loving.
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