The ideal gender relationship model in “Women in Love”

Abstract: Lawrence is one of the most outstanding, creative and imaginative writers in Britain in the 20th century. Most of his works are about the relationship between men and women. “Women in Love” is his famous work. In the work, Lawrence vividly describes the love between Ursula and Birkin. It shows readers a new type of relationship between men and women that is more harmonious, more humane and more vital.
Keywords: men, women, gender relations, model

Throughout the ages, love, as a theme of literary creation, has shined in the writings of Chinese and foreign literati. From Shakespeare to Hardy, the love in the eyes of the authors is influenced by the social, family and other environments. Therefore, the lovers they describe break through many obstacles, or sing the praises of sincere love, or criticize the dark society, or reflect the tragedy of mankind. The vivid image of the protagonist pours out all the author’s love and hatred, which is deeply touching and tear-jerking, achieving an unattainable aesthetic effect.
D.H. Lawrence, a British novelist, poet and essayist, is one of the most important and controversial novelists in Britain in the 20th century. As a shining star in the history of British literature, he has always regarded the relationship between men and women as the main theme of his creation. Lawrence was born in Nottingham, England in 1885. His father was a miner who could barely read newspapers. His mother came from a petty bourgeois family. She loved literature and poetry and often talked about literature with some literati. The different values between his parents led to the disharmony of their marriage and directly led to Lawrence’s “Oedipus complex”, which affected his views on marriage, family and sex. However, he also held a unique perspective on the relationship between love, marriage and sex in his literary creation. At the same time, he was influenced by Freud’s psychoanalysis and created many shocking works. His most famous works include “Sons and Lovers” (1913), as well as the trilogy of “The Rainbow” (1915), “Women in Love” (1921) and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” (1928).
Among them, Women in Love is regarded by Lawrence as the masterpiece that fully demonstrates his personal style among his many novels. It explores the ideal gender relationship model in Lawrence’s eyes with high enthusiasm and unprecedented depth, representing the highest achievement of Lawrence’s works. The story is very simple: the protagonists are a pair of sisters – Ursula and Gudrun. The elder sister Ursula is a gentle and beautiful middle school teacher, and the younger sister Gudrun is a well-known and arrogant artist in the local area. They met the local inspector Birkin and the mine owner Gerald at a wedding, and then the four young people fell in love respectively – Ursula and Birkin, Gudrun and Gerald. Lawrence compared the gender relationships of these two pairs of lovers. After the brief and violent passion between Gudrun and Gerald, the disappointed and painful Gudrun fell into a carnival of love with a sculptor. Finally, the depressed Gerald died in an avalanche while traveling; Ursula was determined to make the other party a prisoner of love, while the other party hoped to keep the distance between each other in the blending of spirit and flesh, just like two stars in a constellation, independent but inseparable. In the end, the two people’s views gradually merged and tended to be consistent, forming a relatively perfect relationship between the sexes.
Lawrence focused on describing the love between Ursula and Birkin in his works, showing readers a new type of relationship between men and women that is more harmonious, more in line with human nature, and more vital. Ursula is the heroine of the last part of The Rainbow, the sister work of Women in Love, and the whole book of Women in Love. At the end of The Rainbow, Ursula parted ways with Sgrabenski, and she was still alone, immersed in the beautiful vision brought to her by the rainbow. At that time, Ursula’s exploration of the ideal relationship between the sexes in real life did not get any actual results. In Women in Love, Birkin comes to Ursula as a prophetic figure and forms a relationship with her. This is in sharp contrast to the relationship between Gerald and Gudrun, another pair of lovers in the novel, who demand and destroy each other. The relationship between Ursula and Birkin does not end with the destruction of one party, but has experienced constant adjustment and reached the beautiful state of “balanced twin stars”. Through the relationship between Birkin and Ursula, Lawrence vividly expounds his thoughts on gender relations.
Ursula is a product of her era, or more precisely, the era in which Lawrence lives. She is full of vitality, holy and unworldly, as “fresh as a flower that has just bloomed”, symbolizing Lawrence’s views on the new woman. Freedom and rebellion are innate to her, and her most daring behavior is a challenge to religion, the most powerful pillar of the old Western values. After she became an adult, her previous yearning for clothing and etiquette disappeared. In Christianity, kissing and money are hidden with evil, but to Ursula, these sermons are hypocritical. Ursula is also different from the previous generation. Her attitude towards education at that time is not worship, but criticism. She hates the education system at that time because teachers are usually harsh and unkind. While disappointed with the missionary training and education, Ursula encountered a problem that is crucial to every young person, that is, the relationship with the opposite sex. Because this issue has always been the theme of Lawrence’s literary works, most of the book describes Ursula’s exploration in this regard.
For Ursula in her teenage years, Sgrabenski, her first lover, first brought her a sense of the outside world. Ursula soon regarded him as a dream sustenance, but soon felt deeply disappointed. Ursula resolutely announced her decision to cancel her engagement with Sgrabenski. It’s like the immortal bird has been reborn. At this time, Ursula is more steadily moving towards her ideal marriage model-“balanced double stars”. In the book Women in Love, her pursuit of an ideal life is mainly expressed through her pursuit of perfect love and marriage. Her union with Birkin shows that she has realized the ideal that her predecessors could not achieve but dreamed of. In the novel, Ursula and Birkin are like philosophers living in a spiritual atmosphere. The dialogue between them is a mysterious and lightning-fast communication, flashing with the wit and interest of philosophical thinking. The principle of “double star balance” is the basis for their love relationship. Lawrence believes that this also applies to all human beings in the new era.
On the issue of love, Ursula and Birkin had different views. Ursula believes that love is everything, it transcends personality and is supreme. Both parties in love should be captives of love, surrender to love, and achieve the perfection of life in giving up themselves. Birkin disagrees with Ursula’s view that both parties in love must absolutely give up themselves. He believes that “the world is held together by a mysterious combination, the ultimate union between people, and a contract – a contract between men and women.” He emphasized the importance of “self”, believing that “love is an unadorned transcendence, a transcendent self. The only thing needed is a vow between two people. We must give up everything, even ourselves, to the point of being unrecognizable, so that a perfect self can be born between us”. Undoubtedly, the “self” emphasized by Birkin is actually the unconscious impulse of human beings and their natural instinct. He believed that this was the premise of love, and only in this unconscious realm could men and women establish an eternal “alliance” and make a permanent vow. Only in this way can the transformation of the relationship between people be achieved. Therefore, love in Birkin’s eyes “has a far-reaching realm, which goes further than love and transcends the limitations of love, just as stars transcend vision: some stars are beyond vision”. This place beyond vision is the unique personality of an individual that cannot be replaced. This is a balanced relationship, “a pure balance between two individuals – just as the stars are balanced with each other”.
With the help of Birkin’s distinctive artistic image, Lawrence expressed his beliefs and ideals: the creation of a new world can only be achieved through the establishment of a new relationship between men and women. This new relationship between men and women should be a blend of spirit and flesh, “neither sacrificing the spirit for the flesh, nor sacrificing the flesh for the spirit”; men and women in love are both independent individuals and inseparable wholes, just like two adjacent stars in the sky, which attract and repel each other, and their forces reach a balance and become a constellation. In the novel, Lawrence makes Birkin and Ursula correspond to each other, and through the process of their constant struggle, recognition, struggle and recognition, he vividly expounds his exploration of the ideal relationship between the sexes. With a vision of a perfect life, Birkin and Ursula have been arguing and adjusting along the way. After experiencing many setbacks, their views gradually converged and they finally established a more perfect relationship between the sexes. Although they still have doubts, they both desire equality and real emotions, which makes their love contain the beauty of life. Although the new relationship between Ursula and Birkin is far from natural and perfect, and is also mysterious and worrying, compared with the common possessive marriage and loveless marriage, their relationship is more natural, more in line with human nature, and more vital. There is no doubt that Lawrence’s love between men and women has a dual nature: it is both spiritual and physical: it has both perfect harmony and relative independence. He once said: “Complete love between men and women is dual, it is both a melting movement that merges the two into one, and a strong force movement with friction and sexual passion, the two are burned and burned completely apart. Become completely different bodies.”

“Women in Love” was published shortly after the war. The nightmare of war made Lawrence more angry with the real world, but he still trudged along his determined goal, more eagerly seeking a more perfect relationship between people. Even if his ideal did not exist in his real life, it was finally realized in his works. “Balanced Double Stars” – the love principle of Ursula and Birkin, is actually Lawrence’s proposition for changing the existing relationship between the sexes. Its most prominent feature is that it breaks away from the traditional so-called ideal model. It is not “two halves” merged into one, but insists on the separation of personality in the combination. The relationship developed according to this principle is never a closed circle, it is open and always in motion. In addition to being connected to each other, the “double stars” are also connected to the entire universe. This principle applies not only to love and marriage, but to all people in Lawrence’s view. In this way, Lawrence completed the task he had undertaken more than ten years ago, and finally found his ideal model of gender relations in “Women in Love” – “balanced double stars”.

References:

1. Lawrence: “Women in Love”, Penguin Publishing House, London, 1982 edition.

2. D.H. Lawrence: “Sex and Beauty”, in “Lawrence’s Essays”, Haitian Publishing House, 1996 edition.

3. Zheng Dahua et al., translation: “Women in Love”, Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House.