Nietzsche in Women in Love
Lawrence’s Women in Love
significantly reworks Nietzsche’s central concept of the Will to Power.
Lawrence saw modern literature as a mode of representing the ‘fluidity’ of life
in a way that could counteract the rigid discourses of philosophy and religion.
His representations of the Will to Power are therefore more nuanced and complex
than Nietzsche’s UberMensch, and attempt to recuperate a mode of aesthetic
experience from the framework of the will altogether.
Perhaps the most recognizable instantiation of the Will to Power in Women in Love occurs in Hermione. Lawrence establishes through her an emphatic rejection of the will as knowledge, thereby setting the stage for the main characters to pursue more meaningful modes of experiences in art and love. Birkin’s outburst couches Hermione’s faults in very definite terms, that of the will and a manic desire for power through intellectual control: “You only have your will and your conceit of consciousness and your lust for power, to know.” In the moral and perceptual universe of this novel, Hermione commits the cardinal sin of asserting her will through the intellect alone, thereby denying her sensual and creative self.
Gerald, the industrial magnate, is also treated with the language of asserting his will over the world, and over Gudrun. In the chapter Coal-Dust, a roaring industrial train terrifies Gerald’s horse. As Gudrun and Ursula look on, Gerald brutally controls the horse with sheer physical domination, the expression of his inescapable “will.” The mechanical subtext of the episode is blended with an eroticism we experience from Gudrun’s “spellbound” perspective. This foreshadows a later, violent sexual encounter in Innsbruck, where Gudrun’s withdrawal into aesthetic contemplation prompts Gerald to unsuccessfully assert his will over her.
Birkin and Ursula reject the “Wille zur Macht” as “base,” and Birkin tries to educate Ursula into a different understanding of the will (a “volonté de pouvoir”) as part of his vision of the ideal human relationship as “a pure stable equilibrium” of individual wills, in which neither fully succumbs or dominates. Meanwhile Gudrun rejects Gerald’s sexual will, and embraces what seems like a Will to Power as Art, notably through eurythmic dance. Yet Lawrence seems to want to shield art from an all-encompassing notion of the will. In Gudrun he brackets off a mode of experience – that of aesthetic contemplation – in which the will dissolves altogether.
The blending of philosophical concepts with literary innovation in the novel performs the kind of fluid representation that Lawrence sought to recuperate from the discourse of philosophy. Even as he rejects intellectual experience on its own, Lawrence’s use of Nietzsche shows that he saw philosophy as a fertile ground from which to structure his literary representations of the quintessentially modern problems of the individual’s relationship to others, and to a world of violent, industrial forces.
Perhaps the most recognizable instantiation of the Will to Power in Women in Love occurs in Hermione. Lawrence establishes through her an emphatic rejection of the will as knowledge, thereby setting the stage for the main characters to pursue more meaningful modes of experiences in art and love. Birkin’s outburst couches Hermione’s faults in very definite terms, that of the will and a manic desire for power through intellectual control: “You only have your will and your conceit of consciousness and your lust for power, to know.” In the moral and perceptual universe of this novel, Hermione commits the cardinal sin of asserting her will through the intellect alone, thereby denying her sensual and creative self.
Gerald, the industrial magnate, is also treated with the language of asserting his will over the world, and over Gudrun. In the chapter Coal-Dust, a roaring industrial train terrifies Gerald’s horse. As Gudrun and Ursula look on, Gerald brutally controls the horse with sheer physical domination, the expression of his inescapable “will.” The mechanical subtext of the episode is blended with an eroticism we experience from Gudrun’s “spellbound” perspective. This foreshadows a later, violent sexual encounter in Innsbruck, where Gudrun’s withdrawal into aesthetic contemplation prompts Gerald to unsuccessfully assert his will over her.
Birkin and Ursula reject the “Wille zur Macht” as “base,” and Birkin tries to educate Ursula into a different understanding of the will (a “volonté de pouvoir”) as part of his vision of the ideal human relationship as “a pure stable equilibrium” of individual wills, in which neither fully succumbs or dominates. Meanwhile Gudrun rejects Gerald’s sexual will, and embraces what seems like a Will to Power as Art, notably through eurythmic dance. Yet Lawrence seems to want to shield art from an all-encompassing notion of the will. In Gudrun he brackets off a mode of experience – that of aesthetic contemplation – in which the will dissolves altogether.
The blending of philosophical concepts with literary innovation in the novel performs the kind of fluid representation that Lawrence sought to recuperate from the discourse of philosophy. Even as he rejects intellectual experience on its own, Lawrence’s use of Nietzsche shows that he saw philosophy as a fertile ground from which to structure his literary representations of the quintessentially modern problems of the individual’s relationship to others, and to a world of violent, industrial forces.
TEXTUAL HISTORY
Both The Rainbow and Women
in Love have their origins in a 1913 draft called ‘The Sisters.’ The next
year, Lawrence revised it further into a novel entitled The Wedding Ring,
which Methuen agreed to publish in 1914. The outbreak of war late that year
caused the publisher to renege on the agreement, and Lawrence decided to rework
the source material, separating it into two novels.
The Rainbow, treating the
early lives of the sisters, was suppressed shortly after its publication in
1915 on grounds of obscenity. Lawrence then spent four years revising the
remainder of The Wedding Ring into a second novel, shopping it to
publishers without success until 1920, when Thomas Seltzer published the first
American edition.
Women in Love was
originally published in New York City as a limited edition (1250 books),
available only to subscribers; this was due to the controversy caused by The
Rainbow. Because the two books were originally written as parts of a
single novel, the publisher had decided to publish them separately and in rapid
succession. The first book’s treatment of sexuality, while tame by today’s
standards, was rather too frank for the Edwardian era. There was an obscenity
trial and The Rainbow was banned in the U.K. for 11 years, although it
was available in the U.S. The publisher then backed out of publishing the
second book in the U.K., so it first appeared in the U.S in 1920.
It was printed in England the
following year by Martin Secker. Although both editions were based on the same
copies prepared by Lawrence, the fate of The Rainbow led Secker to
limit his exposure by cutting sections of the text which might run afoul of the
censors. In fact, in the English second printing, Heseltine’s threat to sue for
libel resulted in changes to the descriptions of Halliday and the Pussum, changing
the one from pale and fair-haired to swarthy and the other from red-haired to
blonde.
In fact such are the textual
complications behind the text that there are now two or more versions, some of
which reproduce the original, and others which include formerly deleted scenes.
The most authoritative are those published in the Cambridge University Press
series of the definitive works of D.H.Lawrence.
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