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D.H. Lawrence - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Ursula really desires the harmony between the mind and the body
    - - Becomes teacher to become free (financially etc)...but ironically, this means she must follow the demands of the system
      - There is a bitter animosity from Lawrence about Ursula becoming a teacher and the invasion of the 'mysteriously man's world' - he keeps reminding the reader that it is neither natural nor necessary
      - Lawrence draws on his personal experience of being a teacher
      - Initially optimistic as a 'new woman' in a 'man's world' but then the unheroic realities take hold of her
      - Lawrence's theory of education in general agreement with Mr Harby's - rule the students through sheer willpower
    - - Skrebensky is a 'weak man' who submits to a more stronger willed woman
      - Skrebensky fails as a lover to Ursula - she expects a sexual union that will set flowing the passionate springs of vitality within her
      - Urusla uses her relationship with Anton and the sex to establish her separateness and her individuality
      - Skrebensky struggles to find harmony between the mind and the body
      - Skrebensky brings deadness to Ursula - she leaves him because he could NOT RECOGNISE her search for inner fulfillment. But when she leaves him it also shows 'how monstrous the new woman can be'
      - Skrebensky is suspect for his rootlike, conventionality and even for his blundering faith in democracy and progress, two ideas Lawrence particularly despises.
      - In the final scene with Ursula and hte horses we may read these horses as symbolic of Skrebensky, who is repeatedly referred to as 'horsey' - her escape form them marks the final moment of her rejection of him and the life he offers
      - Like Ursula and Skrebensky's relationship, if only one partner has an inner purpose, the result is some form of master-servant subordination
    - - Ursula's wisdom is taken away in WIL to some extent- shows Lawrence's increasing antagonism towards women
      - WIL presents us with a new man who arrived in time to give Ursula her comeuppance and demote her back to wifely subjection - Lawrence saw this as a highly important mission
    - - Ursula realises that even though she may some rights to access public spaces and have some economic independence THIS IS NOT SUFFICIENT to address the conceptual difficulties that the gender differences create
      - As Ursula reaches adulthood she begins the struggle against her mother for her own voice
      - The only one who possesses, by the end, an individuated consciousness
      - Ursula has mind of her own and is ultimately an independent soul
      - Lawrence dealt with the new woman head on in the character of Ursula - she is to fulfil the ambitions of her ancestors. She does reach the promised land of the Brangwen women; transcending their confining traditional world she goes to WORK and then to UNIVERSITY
      - Arrives in the 'modern world' but finds not what the earlier Brangwen women wished for
      - Ursula is NOT LIKE HER PREDECESSORS who were rooted in the past and the traditional life of farm wife and mother - she is Lawrence's contemporary - probably of his own age and generation
      - Ursula's fate becomes increasingly dominated by a struggle to realise her essential self in the face of the ashen corruption of the contemporary world
    - - Both have to give themselves to each other, body and soul - if this giving is accomplished, they have to remain forever faithful to each other
      - The Birkin-Ursula couple is the new pair of the world
      - Ursula accepts Birkin as her husband and leader
      - We are told over and over again that marriage is to bring Ursula a new life, yet nothing materialises, and she comes more and more her husband's creature, accepting his instruction
      - According to Lawrentian formula, Ursula is presented as an incomplete creature, half-asleep in the tedium of her spinster schoolmistress life. Birkin will awake her - the male gives birth to the female
      - Ursula is saved by becoming Birkin's wife and echo
      - They struggle into a relationship of some kind of fulfilment
      - Ursula's resistance to Birkin's proposal of marriage becomes a resistance to Birkin with the marriage
    - - The driving force between Ursula's efforts is the feminist movement, at its height during the years of The Rainbow, and a great force in Lawrence's time.
    - - Ursula is a threat to Lawrence - the ambivalence of his attitude toward her is combination of sympathy and dislike - even fear