Women in Love

'Mr Crich can't see you. He can't see you at this hour. Do you think he

is your property, that you can come whenever you like? You must go

away, there is nothing for you here.' The poor people rose in confusion. But Mr Crich, pale and black-bearded

and deprecating, came behind her, saying: 'Yes, I don't like you coming as late as this. I'll hear any of you in

the morning part of the day, but I can't really do with you after.

What's amiss then, Gittens. How is your Missis?' 'Why, she's sunk very low, Mester Crich, she's a'most gone, she is--' Sometimes, it seemed to Mrs Crich as if her husband were some subtle

funeral bird, feeding on the miseries of the people. It seemed to her

he was never satisfied unless there was some sordid tale being poured

out to him, which he drank in with a sort of mournful, sympathetic

satisfaction. He would have no RAISON D'ETRE if there were no

lugubrious miseries in the world, as an undertaker would have no

meaning if there were no funerals.

Mrs Crich recoiled back upon herself, she recoiled away from this world

of creeping democracy. A band of tight, baleful exclusion fastened

round her heart, her isolation was fierce and hard, her antagonism was

passive but terribly pure, like that of a hawk in a cage. As the years

went on, she lost more and more count of the world, she seemed rapt in

some glittering abstraction, almost purely unconscious. She would

wander about the house and about the surrounding country, staring

keenly and seeing nothing. She rarely spoke, she had no connection with

the world. And she did not even think. She was consumed in a fierce

tension of opposition, like the negative pole of a magnet.

And she bore many children. For, as time went on, she never opposed her

husband in word or deed. She took no notice of him, externally. She

submitted to him, let him take what he wanted and do as he wanted with

her. She was like a hawk that sullenly submits to everything. The

relation between her and her husband was wordless and unknown, but it

was deep, awful, a relation of utter inter-destruction. And he, who

triumphed in the world, he became more and more hollow in his vitality,

the vitality was bled from within him, as by some haemorrhage. She was

hulked like a hawk in a cage, but her heart was fierce and undiminished

within her, though her mind was destroyed.

So to the last he would go to her and hold her in his arms sometimes,

before his strength was all gone. The terrible white, destructive light

that burned in her eyes only excited and roused him. Till he was bled

to death, and then he dreaded her more than anything. But he always

said to himself, how happy he had been, how he had loved her with a

pure and consuming love ever since he had known her. And he thought of

her as pure, chaste; the white flame which was known to him alone, the

flame of her sex, was a white flower of snow to his mind. She was a

wonderful white snow-flower, which he had desired infinitely. And now

he was dying with all his ideas and interpretations intact. They would

only collapse when the breath left his body. Till then they would be

pure truths for him. Only death would show the perfect completeness of

the lie. Till death, she was his white snow-flower. He had subdued her,

and her subjugation was to him an infinite chastity in her, a virginity

which he could never break, and which dominated him as by a spell.