Symbols/ symbolism in D. H. Lawrence's "Women in Love"

 

Symbolism is an important characteristic of Lawrence's fiction and Women in Love is no exception. In Women in Love not only most of the characters have a symbolic significance but the important incidents and important physical objects also. Actually, symbolism is the key to Lawrence’s technique. He uses a lot of symbols in Women Love to present his ideas and thoughts.

Birkin and Ursula symbolize the life creative forces, while Gerald and Gudrun represent the death destructive force. Both Birkin and Ursula symbolize the revitalization and vivification forces in life. Even though they are likened to “flowers of dissolution”, they show great ability and openness to growth and their relationship is free from sadomasochistic effects. Hermione represents the power of the intellect over emotion. She intellectualizes everything including even sex and therefore comes to grief. Loerke is used as the symbol of dissolution and degeneracy which Gudrun also shares. He also symbolizes sexual perversion and corruption; Birkin describes him as a man who “lives like a rat in the river of Corruption”. He likes only young girls below twenty years old.

The characters in the novel are symbols for the various class of society such as the working class, the Bohemian artists and the nobility. They are based on real persons, and many contemporaries saw the book almost as a roman a clef. Birkin is the spokesman of Lawrence. He embodies the Lawrencian concept of heroism. He represents the person who keeps himself in a balanced situation of mind/ soul and body in spite of the prevailing decadence around him. Ursula is like Lawrence’s wife, Frieda Weekley. Hermione Roddice has resemblance with Lady Ottoline Monell; Loerke has some resemblance to Mark Gertler; Sir Joshua Mattheson with Bertrand Russell; Philip Heseltine, who had a mistress known as Puma and whose subsequent wife was named Minnie, provided a model for Halliday, whose mistress was named Pussum (later changed to Minette). Gudrun derived partly from the short story writer, Katherine Mansfield. Gerald Rich owed much to John Middleton Murry, as well as to Major Barber, who was a mine owner, killed his brother by accident and whose physical appearance resembles the description of Gerald.

Then there are the animal scenes in the novel that can undoubtedly be called symbolic in their significance. There is, for instance, Gerald's coercive handing of his mare at a railway crossing. This scene surely shows the energy of will in Gerald as something cruel and ruthless, but it is also a symbolic representation of the outrage Gerald commits against the lives of the miners. Gudrun's encounter with the wild bullocks shows in a symbolic manner the violence that lies hidden within her. Immediately afterwards, she strikes Gerald on the face with the back of her hand. The struggle with the rabbit scene shows Gerald and Gudrun in a state of sadistic cruelty, which is at the same time masochistic. Both Gerald and Gudrun experience a malicious pleasure in the subjugation of the rabbit. The episode of the cats is intended as a symbolic action to develop the relationship of Birkin and Ursula. The incident serves as an endorsement of the positive values, which Birkin wants Ursula to establish in their relationship.

F. R. Leavis opines that the symbols in Women in Love can be categorized into two groups: images indicating life, vitality, hopefulness and prosperity; and images suggesting coldness, hopelessness, decadence and death. Images that accompany Birkin and Ursula are linked with the first group of images. The couple tries their best to escape the black ugly misery world and react against the mechanical civilization. They usually go to the places full of flowers, trees and grass which suggest nature and life. Primrose, hyacinths, fir-trees, thickets of hazel, tufts of heather, all these are likely to be associated with life, vitality and hopefulness. Their relationship has a quality of comforting and soothing warmth and a hopeful promise.

Images associated with Gerald and Gudrun are quite different from the former pair and represent the second group of images. Whenever Gerald and Gudrun appear on the scene, the atmosphere becomes cold, tense and ghastly. The cold, grey, remote, still water, the grey, visionary figures; Gerald’s father’s agony and suffering death; the deep snow-covered valley walled up by the steep precipice; the half-buried Crucifix and the cold stiff Gerald frozen to death, all of those images set up pictures of hopelessness and death. With a little carefulness, we can find that all these images appear at the time when their love affair begins, then comes to the turning point and final endings.