Gender Oppositions:
The Oedipus Complex in Women in Love and To the Lighthouse
This paper was written as an assignment for MODERN BRITISH NOVEL ENGL 431, Dr. Craig Barrow, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, 7 Dec. 1987.
A novel titled Women in Love hardly surprises us beginning with a conversation between two sisters regarding the relative merits of marriage. What is surprising is the closing conversation of the novel between Rupert and Ursula Birkin
"Did you need Gerald?" she asked one evening.
"Yes . . . . Having you, I can live all my life without anybody else, any other sheer intimacy. But to make it complete, really happy, I wanted eternal union with a man too: another kind of love," he said.
"I don't believe it. . . . It's an obstinancy, a theory, a perversity."
". . . . I don't believe that," he answered." (Lawrence 472-473)
This dichotomy of values between the feminist issues raised in the novel with regard to the women and the ambiguity of the role Birkin plays in these gender oppositions, while it focuses attention on feminist concerns, finally reinscribes the patriarchal value system.
Lawrence's vivid portrayals of female subjugation serve as a primary theme structuring the novel. Repeatedly women react angrily to the "bullying" of men [Gudrun's anger at the 'necessity' for marriage (Lawrence 3-4); Ursula's anger as Gerald mistreats his mare (Lawrence 103,104); her reaction to the tom, Mino, as it cuffs a stray female (Lawrence 141); Ursula's relation to her father regarding her marriage (Lawrence 253-254, 356-358] while envying their freedom [Gudrun watching Gerald swim (Lawrence 39-40); her "anguish of consciousness" following intercourse while Gerald sleeps "perfected, in another world" (Lawrence 339)]. Male dominance takes the form of "cruelty" [Gerald towards Minette (Lawrence 57)], "pity" [Mr. and Mrs. Crich (Lawrence 206+)], "denial" [Mr. Brangwen towards Ursula (Lawrence 358)] and degradation [Loerke and Gudrun (Lawrence 418+)]. Scenes become symbols of the struggle for power and control [Diana and the wine (Lawrence 21-22); Gerald and the mare (Lawrence102-106); Mino (Lawrence140-142); Gudrun's dance before the bulls (Lawrence158-163); Diana's drowning (Lawrence171-182); Bismarck (Lawrence 229-236); Gudrun's snow vision (Lawrence 391,411)]. Marriage is viewed as the "end of experience" (Lawrence 1) culminating in Ursula's and Gudrun's sense of the futility of not only their parents' marriage but marriage in the "commonplace" "ordinary" home (Lawrence 365-366). Ursula's impending marriage to Birkin is seen as the exception because, as Gudrun says, Birkin's a "special case" (Lawrence 366).
What becomes apparent is that Birkin's "specialness" lies in his identification with a feminine posture. In his relationship with Hermione, he is her "little boy" (Lawrence 80), "possessed" by her (Lawrence 16,17), resisting her "bullying will" (Lawrence 35). Following her attack, Birkin runs naked, rejoicing in his "madness" as a kind of freedom, identifying himself with nature in opposition to the world of men, nature becoming his "marriage place" (Lawrence 101). He seeks "the great dark knowledge" of sensuality that lies in the blood, not in the head (Lawrence 101), hating sex which he sees as "clutching," another way of possessing, rather than fulfillment (Lawrence 191,192). Madness (Greene 121,122), identification with nature (Greene 9,10), viewing passion as corrupting and degrading (Greene 157,158) are all typically feminine reactions to the patriarchal system.
While it would be tempting to see Birkin's identification with feminine roles, and his need for relationship to Gerald as an attempt at Jungian "wholeness" through a balancing of the "anima" and "animus" (Greene 123) or even as an attempt at reaching a kind of Derridian sexual plurality replacing binary oppositions with a "multiplicity of sexually marked voices" (Greene 75,76), it is much more likely that Birkin suffers from a failure to individualize himself from his mother (Greene 70), to grow beyond the pre-oedipal stage. What is missing from the novel which would clarify this issue is Birkin's relationship with his parents, a telltale omission when it is realized that parental relationships are established with each of the other major characters.
Significantly, and in contrast to the other major characters, Birkin is almost always identified in the novel by his last name. For Lacan, the Name-of-the - Father "is the fact of the attribution of paternity by law, by language" (Greene 71). As Mrs. Crich says to Birkin, "What has Mr. So-and-so to do with his own name?--and what have I to do with either him or his name?" (Lawrence 18). Instead of offering any kind of escape from the patriarchal order, Birkin becomes an emblem of it. The ambiguity at the novel's close is the ambiguity of the Birkins' marriage, and the doubt whether it is any more successful than those "commonplace" "ordinary" marriages (Lawrence 366) already rejected by Gudrun and Ursula.
While traditionally critics of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse have focused on Mrs. Ramsey as a kind of perfect mother [The Oxford Companion to English Literature refers to her as "maternal, managing, gracious," and "much-admired" (Drabble 990)] and more recently feminists have focused on the "vision" Lily Briscoe finally realizes in her painting, what appears as central to the novel's structure is Mr. Ramsey and James's trip to the lighthouse (basically, the novel consists of two settings: the deferral of this proposed trip across the bay to the lighthouse with the surrounding circumstances and the ultimate realization of the trip after a short summary of the ten or eleven years separating the two events). The trip becomes the symbol-structure for the resolution of James's oedipal conflict and, as a result, subverts the roles of the women in the novel in their relationship to that resolution.
James's reaction to his father's prediction of foul weather highlights his resentment of his father and closeness to his mother by his desire to murder his father and his belief that his mother was "ten thousand times better in every way than he [his father] was" (Woolf 10). James hates his father, both for what he is and because he "disturbed the perfect simplicity and good sense of his relations with his mother" (Woolf 58).
Tansley's repeated and insistent agreements with Mr. Ramsey irritate Mrs. Ramsey in a way in which she will not allow herself to feel towards her husband (Woolf 12,26). Tansley admires Ramsey and has his same "astonishing lack of consideration for other people's feelings" (Woolf 16, 51) suggesting that part of the ambiguous feelings Mrs. Ramsey feels for him is due to his standing in as a son to Mr. Ramsey, a revelation of what James might become. Significantly, she wishes James would never grow older because "he will never be so happy again" (Woolf 89-90).
Mrs. Ramsey's wish for silence, both in resisting her role as one who serves (Greene 21) the patriarchal system (Woolf 92+) and in refusing to verbalize (Green 96) her love for her husband (Woolf 186) suggests a feminist subversion of the gender hierarchy (Greene 21). Lily Briscoe's interest in abstract art (Woolf 81-83) and her disinterest in marriage (Woolf 29) also suggest a resistance to the devaluation of women in patriarchal society to that of a sign (Greene 60-61,64) like the hen Mr. Ramsey sees before deciding to marry (Woolf 34-35).
However, the abrupt dismissal of Mrs. Ramsey in the summary between the two main divisions of the novel [her death is recorded parenthetically in a subordinant clause (Woolf 194)] weakens this stance. Further, Cam, standing in for her mother with James in her position as companion in resistance to their father, recognizes James's need for praise from their father and his pleasure on finally recieving it (Woolf 306). The trip serves both as resolution of James's oedipal conflict and, for Mr. Ramsey, reconciliation with Mrs. Ramsey, as, revitalized, he is followed onto the island by his son and daughter (Woolf 308).
Lily Briscoe's vision at the close of the novel with its line at the center of the painting (Woolf 309- 310) coupled with her earlier painful memory of Mrs. Ramsey (Woolf 266-270) suggest a bonding between them similiar to the mother-daughter bond with its "resentment, nostalgia and . . . desire for a restorative fusion" (Greene 87). This bonding and her "vision" might be interpreted as a realization of Judith Gardiner's concept of "mind mother" in which Lily both empathizes with and is individuated from Mrs. Ramsey (Greene 138-139). However, if it is, it must be interpreted in the framework of that final scene, where Lily not only identifies with Mrs. Ramsey but with Mr. Carmichael, who silent throughout the novel, now echoes her thoughts, "They will have landed" (Woolf 309).
"(L)ookin like an old pagan god, shaggy, with weeds in his hair and the trident . . . in his hand" (Woolf 309), Carmichael is seen as Poseidon, god of the sea. But Poseidon was a fertility god, who had "sexual adventures with both men and women" (Stapleton 182). His appearance at this juncture of the novel, and the earlier references to his dislike for Mrs. Ramsey (Woolf 63-64) suggest a connivance in bringing James and his father together, that with the incipient phallic symbolism of the lighthouse,Note serves to overthrow feminine resistance to the male hierarchy, reinforcing the emergence of James into the male adult world.
Drabble, Margaret, ed. "To the Lighthouse." The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 5th ed. 1 vol. New York: Oxford UP, 1985.
"Freud, Sigmund." The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. 1972.
"Germanic Religion and Mythology." Encyclopaedia Britannica: Macropaedia. 1976.Note
Greene, Gayle and Coppelia Kahn, ed. Making a Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism. New York: Methuen, 1985.
Lawrence, D.H. Women in Love. New York: Penguin, 1983.
Stapleton, Michael. The Illustrated Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology. New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1978.
Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1955.