Reading was interrupted when my Nook failed as I was trying to finish this 1915 D.H. Lawrence novel. I ended up reading the last few chapters on the Kindle application on my smartphone. Ah, the joys of e-reading!
I was familiar with Lawrence, having read, and in some cases studied, Sons and Lovers, Women in Love (the sequel to The Rainbow), selected poems, a few short stories, and Studies in Classic American Literature, possibly the most idiosyncratic commentary on American literature ever written. I had also seen the 1969 Ken Russell film of Women in Love, but not the 1989 film of The Rainbow, also directed by Russell.
My undergraduate Modern Fiction professor had engrained in me the habit of reading Lawrence through a Freudian lens, while my graduate professor emphasized the “sense of the numinous” in Lawrence. That counterpoint sums up the experience of grappling with the almost whiplash-like contradictions in Lawrence’s work. As you will see in this blog post, I have added a socio-political lens as well.
On the one hand, the human experience in Lawrence boils down to the biological urge for pleasure and dominance played out in endless power struggles with family, lovers, society at large, and even oneself. On the other, it is nature and natural expression that offers the only hope of redemption in an overly-“civilized," mechanized modern society.
The Rainbow tells the story of three generations of Brangwens: Tom, who marries a Polish widow with a young daughter; Will, Tom’s nephew, who marries Anna, Tom’s step-daughter; and Ursula, eldest daughter of Will and Anna, who pursues a teaching career and has both a female and a male lover. Each character struggles with sexual desire and the urge to dominate in all relationships, whether sexual or not. All the relationships are fraught with conflict, both expressed and repressed. In addition, the characters seek some kind of fulfillment in a society that is bound by tradition, artificiality, alienation, and industrial dehumanization.
In each generation Lawrence dramatizes the relentless Freudian conflicts that, according to Freud, characterize the human condition. Yet, whereas in Freud, these conflicts are never resolved, except in momentary flashes of pleasure or triumph, Lawrence seems to hold out hope of “salvation” in nature, as symbolized, for example, by the rainbow that appears to Ursula in the final scene.
Or, is Ursula simply deluding herself that any kind of redemption is possible? Such are the whiplash contradictions between nature as power struggle and nature as spiritual reservoir.
The first chapter of the novel is a paean to the natural world in rural England, scarred by coal mining to feed the industrial factories and populated by those like the Brangwens who are trapped in the conflict between nature and society, closest to the redemptive power that nature seems to offer, yet yearning for the ego advancement that society can provide.
What is most remarkable to me in The Rainbow is the language that Lawrence creates to represent the teeming energy of the Freudian Id and the awakening of consciousness in his characters. No one before Lawrence had written in such concrete terms of sexual desire, aggression, the will to power, the urge to submit, the longing for unity and transcendence, and the ever incomplete process of growing awareness.
And as that language captures the conflicted tumult of human psychology, it is sometimes difficult to tell when it is the characters’ and when it is Lawrence’s psychology.
Case in point: Ursula’s affair with Winifred is introduced in affirmative terms in a chapter entitled “Shame.” The waning of Ursula’s passion for Winifred is comparable to the ebb and flow of her feelings for Anton, but she looks back on her relationship with Winifred as a death-dealing “side show,” as if it were a freakish affair, unlike the one with Anton. Her feelings of revulsion for Winifred are associated with her growing maturity. Is this Ursula’s homophobia or Lawrence’s or both?
Later, when Anton returns from Africa, telling Ursula about “the strange darkness, the strange, blood fear” and “the blacks,” who “worship…the darkness,” is that Anton’s racism or Lawrence’s or both?
The Rainbow is an iconoclastic novel, challenging Victorian conventions, easy sentimentalism, and British cultural traditions, especially with respect to sex, courtship, marriage, domestic life, women’s roles, and religion. While it boldly depicts a lesbian relationship, it fails to challenge the prevailing homophobic attitudes of its day. And while it seems itself at times to “worship” nature, darkness and all, it also seems to reinforce popular Western imperialistic and ethnocentric views of nature-worshipping “blacks” on the Dark Continent.
These contradictions are perhaps the most difficult for a contemporary, progressive, pro-gay rights, anti-racist reader to grapple with, while a conservative reader, like those in Lawrence’s time who prosecuted it for obscenity and banned it, will be most offended by its open treatment of human sexuality and its Freudian view of human relationships.
Showing posts with label human sexuality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label human sexuality. Show all posts
Friday, April 8, 2011
Monday, September 27, 2010
Dracula III
Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published in 1897 at the height of cultural anxiety over changing sexual mores and the social role of women. During the 19th century, a major debate raged over the social role of women, their legal and political rights and their sexuality.
The novel captures some of the ambiguity with which the so-called “new woman” was viewed. While Lucy is almost entirely a damsel in distress, at Dracula’s mercy and completely dependent on others to save her from him, Mina becomes an active participant in the quest to hunt down and defeat Dracula, at least up to a point. Lest her active participation cause too much anxiety, at a certain point her role is diminished, and then, she, in turn becomes Dracula’s victim. As such, it is the men who finally take over the role of saving her and destroying Dracula, except that, under hypnosis (a semi-conscious state), Mina is able to connect with Dracula psychically and provide information on his whereabouts.
Thus, while the novel presents the image of an active, intelligent, capable woman, able to take care of herself and others, it reverses itself and reduces her role before it concludes, as if to reassure its late 19th century readers of women’s traditional role. Similarly, those readers, while titillated by women’s sexuality, needed to be reassured about female modesty and innocence.
One of the most anxiety-producing dimensions of the 19th century debate over the “new woman” had to do with women’s sexuality. “Victorian” women of good reputation were not supposed to have sexual feelings. Sexual desire was reserved for men and for “low” women. Dracula disguises its sexual content by substituting the oral exchange of blood for the genital exchange of semen.
The female vampires who swarm Jonathan Harker in Dracula’s castle are seductive sexual temptresses, like those “low” Victorian women, who the respectable Harker resists.
Lucy, Dracula’s first victim in London, is portrayed as a more refined and proper temptress who strings several suitors along before choosing one. Dracula attacks her in her sleepwalking state, a symbolic rape, functioning as a displacement of Lucy’s own repressed desire, which can only be expressed while she is an unconscious victim.
The more responsible and capable Mina, while vulnerable to Dracula’s power, is more resistant, suggesting either a weaker sexual desire or a stronger conscious control or both. Ironically, the more traditional woman character is portrayed as more sexually receptive, more akin to the “low” woman, than is the “new woman.”
In any case, woman’s sexuality is thus able to be openly represented but only through indirect means, which displaces it to the monster outside instead of the desire within, thus reassuring us of women’s innocence. Significantly, both women spend much of their time in the novel in a less than conscious state, Lucy asleep and Mina under hypnosis.
The vampire can be traced back to the “incubus” figure in ancient mythology, a supernatural being that rapes women in their sleep. The female “succubus” similarly seduces men as they sleep. These mythical creatures provide an explanation for sex dreams and/or orgasms during sleep, an explanation that conveniently removes responsibility from the sleeper. Perhaps our anxiety over human sexuality is universal.
Then again, perhaps it is both universal and specific to our own historical time and place. Why the upsurge in popularity of the vampire figure during the 1980’s? Could it have had anything to do with the AIDS crisis and increased anxiety over contact with bodily fluids? Why the recent popularity of the Twilight series among teenagers? Again, could it have anything to do with the post-sixties reaction to sexual promiscuity and the rise of abstinence-based sex education programs? The vampire boyfriend who loves you so much he won’t bite your neck is a substitute for the real life boyfriend who loves you so much he won’t ask you for sex.
In all its many variations the vampire seems to speak to our human fear of ourselves.
The novel captures some of the ambiguity with which the so-called “new woman” was viewed. While Lucy is almost entirely a damsel in distress, at Dracula’s mercy and completely dependent on others to save her from him, Mina becomes an active participant in the quest to hunt down and defeat Dracula, at least up to a point. Lest her active participation cause too much anxiety, at a certain point her role is diminished, and then, she, in turn becomes Dracula’s victim. As such, it is the men who finally take over the role of saving her and destroying Dracula, except that, under hypnosis (a semi-conscious state), Mina is able to connect with Dracula psychically and provide information on his whereabouts.
Thus, while the novel presents the image of an active, intelligent, capable woman, able to take care of herself and others, it reverses itself and reduces her role before it concludes, as if to reassure its late 19th century readers of women’s traditional role. Similarly, those readers, while titillated by women’s sexuality, needed to be reassured about female modesty and innocence.
One of the most anxiety-producing dimensions of the 19th century debate over the “new woman” had to do with women’s sexuality. “Victorian” women of good reputation were not supposed to have sexual feelings. Sexual desire was reserved for men and for “low” women. Dracula disguises its sexual content by substituting the oral exchange of blood for the genital exchange of semen.
The female vampires who swarm Jonathan Harker in Dracula’s castle are seductive sexual temptresses, like those “low” Victorian women, who the respectable Harker resists.
Lucy, Dracula’s first victim in London, is portrayed as a more refined and proper temptress who strings several suitors along before choosing one. Dracula attacks her in her sleepwalking state, a symbolic rape, functioning as a displacement of Lucy’s own repressed desire, which can only be expressed while she is an unconscious victim.
The more responsible and capable Mina, while vulnerable to Dracula’s power, is more resistant, suggesting either a weaker sexual desire or a stronger conscious control or both. Ironically, the more traditional woman character is portrayed as more sexually receptive, more akin to the “low” woman, than is the “new woman.”
In any case, woman’s sexuality is thus able to be openly represented but only through indirect means, which displaces it to the monster outside instead of the desire within, thus reassuring us of women’s innocence. Significantly, both women spend much of their time in the novel in a less than conscious state, Lucy asleep and Mina under hypnosis.
The vampire can be traced back to the “incubus” figure in ancient mythology, a supernatural being that rapes women in their sleep. The female “succubus” similarly seduces men as they sleep. These mythical creatures provide an explanation for sex dreams and/or orgasms during sleep, an explanation that conveniently removes responsibility from the sleeper. Perhaps our anxiety over human sexuality is universal.
Then again, perhaps it is both universal and specific to our own historical time and place. Why the upsurge in popularity of the vampire figure during the 1980’s? Could it have had anything to do with the AIDS crisis and increased anxiety over contact with bodily fluids? Why the recent popularity of the Twilight series among teenagers? Again, could it have anything to do with the post-sixties reaction to sexual promiscuity and the rise of abstinence-based sex education programs? The vampire boyfriend who loves you so much he won’t bite your neck is a substitute for the real life boyfriend who loves you so much he won’t ask you for sex.
In all its many variations the vampire seems to speak to our human fear of ourselves.
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