Women in Love - The Formula to Understand all People

Lawrence has this irritating method of writing passages that are wonderfully constructed, sound neat and eloquent and give the impression of lexical density so that I come away feeling I have just read something quite insightful but for the life of me can't piece it together and extract that all-important meaning.  The following lines are a conversation between two characters and presents the argument that all people are fundamentally identical because they, we, are all governed by the same principles.  It even specifies 'two great ideas' but neglects to go any further.  I don't know whether I'm missing something or perhaps am meant to apply my own definitions to this framework of thought but feel obliged to record it as something to ponder over - any help welcome:

The motor-car ran on, the afternoon was soft and dim. She talked with lively interest, analysing people and their motives-Gudrun, Gerald. He answered vaguely. He was not very much interested any more in personalities and in people-people were all different, but they were all enclosed nowadays in a definite limitation, he said; there were only about two great ideas, two great streams of activity remaining, with various forms of reaction therefrom. The reactions were all varied in various people, but they followed a few great laws, and intrinsically there was no difference. They acted and reacted involuntarily according to a few great laws, and once the laws, the great principles, were known, people were no longer mystically interesting. They were all essentially alike, the differences were only variations on a theme. None of them transcended the given terms. 

Ursula did not agree-people were still an adventure to her-but-perhaps not as much as she tried to persuade herself. Perhaps there was something mechanical, now, in her interest. Perhaps also her interest was destructive, her analysing was a real tearing to pieces. There was an under-space in her where she did not care for people and their idiosyncracies, even to destroy them. -p.265

Women in Love - Deus Ex Machina

The following again is from Gerald Crich's stock of crystalised visions and presents a beautiful yet perhaps obtuse bit of prose communicating an extension to his beliefs around man's purpose in life, productivity and industry - read previous post first: Man's Purpose 

[Bear in mind, Gerald Crich is a colliery owner/ manager]

Immediately he SAW the firm, he realised what he could do. He had a
fight to fight with Matter, with the earth and the coal it enclosed.
This was the sole idea, to turn upon the inanimate matter of the
underground, and reduce it to his will. And for this fight with matter,
one must have perfect instruments in perfect organisation, a mechanism
so subtle and harmonious in its workings that it represents the single
mind of man, and by its relentless repetition of given movement, will
accomplish a purpose irresistibly, inhumanly. It was this inhuman
principle in the mechanism he wanted to construct that inspired Gerald
with an almost religious exaltation. He, the man, could interpose a
perfect, changeless, godlike medium between himself and the Matter he
had to subjugate. There were two opposites, his will and the resistant
Matter of the earth. And between these he could establish the very
expression of his will, the incarnation of his power, a great and
perfect machine, a system, an activity of pure order, pure mechanical
repetition, repetition ad infinitum, hence eternal and infinite. He
found his eternal and his infinite in the pure machine-principle of
perfect co-ordination into one pure, complex, infinitely repeated
motion, like the spinning of a wheel; but a productive spinning, as the
revolving of the universe may be called a productive spinning, a
productive repetition through eternity, to infinity. And this is the
Godmotion, this productive repetition ad infinitum. And Gerald was the
God of the machine, Deus ex Machina. And the whole productive will of
man was the Godhead.

He had his life-work now, to extend over the earth a great and perfect
system in which the will of man ran smooth and unthwarted, timeless, a
Godhead in process. -pp.197-98

Anyone working in consultancy, performance improvement, business effectiveness etc. should take heart and certainly commit this passage to memory as it will invariably provide greater credence to such work in effect imbuing it with a most profound and ultimately deified significance.

But something that interests and maybe puzzles me is whether the passage fundamentally equates godliness to automation? hmmmmm...... Honestly, I don't have a clear idea of how to interpret this passage, but what I do know is that I like it and it sounds very interesting - as always, extremely keen to read any thoughts and comments

Women in Love - Something Beyond Love

Of the many plights in this novel, finding an escape from human constructs seems to be at the very heart. While listening to Radio 4, purely because music on the radio is so damn awful these days, I heard a discourse with JG BallJ.G.Ballardard in which he talked of the hollowness of human existence and how apparent it became to him that social conventions and everything we live by is artificial because at a moment's notice it can be brushed aside, for example during times of war. We are therefore compelled to really question what life has to offer us, he says, some turn to drugs others turn to something else which I forget, but ultimately these are false and temporary remedies which fail to really get to the heart of life. I now leave you with Rupert Birkin digging himself a nice hole to curl up inside by himself as he quite romantically seeks something beyond love - but it can't really be romantic now can it:

--if we are going to know each
other, we must pledge ourselves for ever. If we are going to make a
relationship, even of friendship, there must be something final and
infallible about it.'

There was a clang of mistrust and almost anger in his voice. She did
not answer. Her heart was too much contracted. She could not have
spoken.

Seeing she was not going to reply, he continued, almost bitterly,
giving himself away:

'I can't say it is love I have to offer--and it isn't love I want. It
is something much more impersonal and harder--and rarer.'

There was a silence, out of which she said:

'You mean you don't love me?'

She suffered furiously, saying that.

'Yes, if you like to put it like that. Though perhaps that isn't true.
I don't know. At any rate, I don't feel the emotion of love for
you--no, and I don't want to. Because it gives out in the last issues.'

'Love gives out in the last issues?' she asked, feeling numb to the
lips.

'Yes, it does. At the very last, one is alone, beyond the influence of
love. There is a real impersonal me, that is beyond love, beyond any
emotional relationship. So it is with you. But we want to delude
ourselves that love is the root. It isn't. It is only the branches. The
root is beyond love, a naked kind of isolation, an isolated me, that
does NOT meet and mingle, and never can.'

She watched him with wide, troubled eyes. His face was incandescent in
its abstract earnestness.

'And you mean you can't love?' she asked, in trepidation.

'Yes, if you like. I have loved. But there is a beyond, where there is
not love.'

She could not submit to this. She felt it swooning over her. But she
could not submit.

'But how do you know--if you have never REALLY loved?' she asked.

'It is true, what I say; there is a beyond, in you, in me, which is
further than love, beyond the scope, as stars are beyond the scope of
vision, some of them.'

'Then there is no love,' cried Ursula.

'Ultimately, no, there is something else. But, ultimately, there IS no
love.'

Ursula was given over to this statement for some moments. Then she half
rose from her chair, saying, in a final, repellent voice:

'Then let me go home--what am I doing here?'

'There is the door,' he said. 'You are a free agent.'

He was suspended finely and perfectly in this extremity. She hung
motionless for some seconds, then she sat down again.

'If there is no love, what is there?' she cried, almost jeering.

'Something,' he said, looking at her, battling with his soul, with all
his might.

'What?'

He was silent for a long time, unable to be in communication with her
while she was in this state of opposition.

'There is,' he said, in a voice of pure abstraction; 'a final me which
is stark and impersonal and beyond responsibility. So there is a final
you. And it is there I would want to meet you--not in the emotional,
loving plane--but there beyond, where there is no speech and no terms
of agreement. There we are two stark, unknown beings, two utterly
strange creatures, I would want to approach you, and you me. And there
could be no obligation, because there is no standard for action there,
because no understanding has been reaped from that plane. It is quite
inhuman,--so there can be no calling to book, in any form
whatsoever--because one is outside the pale of all that is accepted,
and nothing known applies. One can only follow the impulse, taking that
which lies in front, and responsible for nothing, asked for nothing,
giving nothing, only each taking according to the primal desire.'

Ursula listened to this speech, her mind dumb and almost senseless,
what he said was so unexpected and so untoward.

'It is just purely selfish,' she said.

'If it is pure, yes. But it isn't selfish at all. Because I don't KNOW
what I want of you. I deliver MYSELF over to the unknown, in coming to
you, I am without reserves or defences, stripped entirely, into the
unknown. Only there needs the pledge between us, that we will both cast
off everything, cast off ourselves even, and cease to be, so that that
which is perfectly ourselves can take place in us.'

She pondered along her own line of thought.

'But it is because you love me, that you want me?' she persisted.

'No it isn't. It is because I believe in you--if I DO believe in you.'

'Aren't you sure?' she laughed, suddenly hurt.

He was looking at her steadfastly, scarcely heeding what she said.

'Yes, I must believe in you, or else I shouldn't be here saying this,'
he replied. 'But that is all the proof I have. I don't feel any very
strong belief at this particular moment.'

She disliked him for this sudden relapse into weariness and
faithlessness.

'But don't you think me good-looking?' she persisted, in a mocking
voice.

He looked at her, to see if he felt that she was good-looking.

'I don't FEEL that you're good-looking,' he said.

'Not even attractive?' she mocked, bitingly.

He knitted his brows in sudden exasperation.

'Don't you see that it's not a question of visual appreciation in the
least,' he cried. 'I don't WANT to see you. I've seen plenty of women,
I'm sick and weary of seeing them. I want a woman I don't see.'

'I'm sorry I can't oblige you by being invisible,' she laughed.

'Yes,' he said, 'you are invisible to me, if you don't force me to be
visually aware of you. But I don't want to see you or hear you.'

'What did you ask me to tea for, then?' she mocked.

But he would take no notice of her. He was talking to himself.

'I want to find you, where you don't know your own existence, the you
that your common self denies utterly. But I don't want your good looks,
and I don't want your womanly feelings, and I don't want your thoughts
nor opinions nor your ideas--they are all bagatelles to me.'

'You are very conceited, Monsieur,' she mocked. 'How do you know what
my womanly feelings are, or my thoughts or my ideas? You don't even
know what I think of you now.'

'Nor do I care in the slightest.'

'I think you are very silly. I think you want to tell me you love me,
and you go all this way round to do it.'

'All right,' he said, looking up with sudden exasperation. 'Now go away
then, and leave me alone. I don't want any more of your meretricious
persiflage.'

'Is it really persiflage?' she mocked, her face really relaxing into
laughter. She interpreted it, that he had made a deep confession of
love to her. But he was so absurd in his words, also.

They were silent for many minutes, she was pleased and elated like a
child. His concentration broke, he began to look at her simply and
naturally.

'What I want is a strange conjunction with you--' he said quietly; 'not
meeting and mingling--you are quite right--but an equilibrium, a pure
balance of two single beings--as the stars balance each other.'

She looked at him. He was very earnest, and earnestness was always
rather ridiculous, commonplace, to her. It made her feel unfree and
uncomfortable. Yet she liked him so much. But why drag in the stars.

'Isn't this rather sudden?' she mocked.

He began to laugh.

'Best to read the terms of the contract, before we sign,' he said.

A young grey cat that had been sleeping on the sofa jumped down and
stretched, rising on its long legs, and arching its slim back. Then it
sat considering for a moment, erect and kingly. And then, like a dart,
it had shot out of the room, through the open window-doors, and into
the garden. -pp.123-24

I have certainly shared Birkin's plight in escaping cliche, since the damn thing lingers behind every thought threatening its sincerity. Know what I mean?

Women in Love - Rotten to the Core

'The whole idea is dead. Humanity itself is dry-rotten, really. There are myriads of human beings hanging on the bush—and they look very nice and rosy, your healthy young men and women. But they are apples of Sodom, as a matter of fact, Dead Sea Fruit, gall-apples. It isn't true that they have any significance—their insides are full of bitter, corrupt ash.'

'But there ARE good people,' protested Ursula.

'Good enough for the life of today. But mankind is a dead tree, covered with fine brilliant galls of people.'

...

'Why, why are people all balls of bitter dust? Because they won't fall off the tree when they're ripe. They hang on to their old positions when the position is over-past, till they become infested with little worms and dry-rot.' -p.107

Sodom |ˈsädəm|
a town in ancient Palestine, probably south of the Dead Sea. According to Gen. 19:24 it was destroyed by fire from heaven, together with Gomorrah, for the wickedness of its inhabitants.
• [as n. ] ( a Sodom) a wicked or depraved place.