The Rainbow

We do not worship power, in our enlightened souls. Power is

degenerated to money and Napoleonic stupidity.

Ursula could not help dreaming of Moloch. Her God was not

mild and gentle, neither Lamb nor Dove. He was the lion and the

eagle. Not because the lion and the eagle had power, but because

they were proud and strong; they were themselves, they were not

passive subjects of some shepherd, or pets of some loving woman,

or sacrifices of some priest. She was weary to death of mild,

passive lambs and monotonous doves. If the lamb might lie down

with the lion, it would be a great honour to the lamb, but the

lion's powerful heart would suffer no diminishing. She loved the

dignity and self-possession of lions.

She did not see how lambs could love. Lambs could only be

loved. They could only be afraid, and tremblingly submit to

fear, and become sacrificial; or they could submit to love, and

become beloveds. In both they were passive. Raging, destructive

lovers, seeking the moment when fear is greatest, and triumph is

greatest, the fear not greater than the triumph, the triumph not

greater than the fear, these were no lambs nor doves. She

stretched her own limbs like a lion or a wild horse, her heart

was relentless in its desires. It would suffer a thousand

deaths, but it would still be a lion's heart when it rose from

death, a fiercer lion she would be, a surer, knowing herself

different from and separate from the great, conflicting universe

that was not herself.

Winifred Inger was also interested in the Women's

Movement.

"The men will do no more,--they have lost the capacity

for doing," said the elder girl. "They fuss and talk, but they

are really inane. They make everything fit into an old, inert

idea. Love is a dead idea to them. They don't come to one and

love one, they come to an idea, and they say 'You are my idea,'

so they embrace themselves. As if I were any man's idea! As if I

exist because a man has an idea of me! As if I will be betrayed

by him, lend him my body as an instrument for his idea, to be a

mere apparatus of his dead theory. But they are too fussy to be

able to act; they are all impotent, they can't take a

woman. They come to their own idea every time, and take that.

They are like serpents trying to swallow themselves because they

are hungry."

Ursula was introduced by her friend to various women and men,

educated, unsatisfied people, who still moved within the smug

provincial society as if they were nearly as tame as their

outward behaviour showed, but who were inwardly raging and

mad.

It was a strange world the girl was swept into, like a chaos,

like the end of the world. She was too young to understand it

all. Yet the inoculation passed into her, through her love for

her mistress.