Women in Love

'I think it would be too wearing, too exhausting. One would be shouted

down every time, and rushed into his way without any choice. He would

want to control you entirely. He cannot allow that there is any other

mind than his own. And then the real clumsiness of his mind is its lack

of self-criticism. No, I think it would be perfectly intolerable.' 'Yes,' assented Ursula vaguely. She only half agreed with Gudrun. 'The

nuisance is,' she said, 'that one would find almost any man intolerable

after a fortnight.' 'It's perfectly dreadful,' said Gudrun. 'But Birkin--he is too

positive. He couldn't bear it if you called your soul your own. Of him

that is strictly true.' 'Yes,' said Ursula. 'You must have HIS soul.' 'Exactly! And what can you conceive more deadly?' This was all so true,

that Ursula felt jarred to the bottom of her soul with ugly distaste.

She went on, with the discord jarring and jolting through her, in the

most barren of misery.

Then there started a revulsion from Gudrun. She finished life off so

thoroughly, she made things so ugly and so final. As a matter of fact,

even if it were as Gudrun said, about Birkin, other things were true as

well. But Gudrun would draw two lines under him and cross him out like

an account that is settled. There he was, summed up, paid for, settled,

done with. And it was such a lie. This finality of Gudrun's, this

dispatching of people and things in a sentence, it was all such a lie.

Ursula began to revolt from her sister.

One day as they were walking along the lane, they saw a robin sitting

on the top twig of a bush, singing shrilly. The sisters stood to look

at him. An ironical smile flickered on Gudrun's face.

'Doesn't he feel important?' smiled Gudrun.

'Doesn't he!' exclaimed Ursula, with a little ironical grimace. 'Isn't

he a little Lloyd George of the air!' 'Isn't he! Little Lloyd George of the air! That's just what they are,'

cried Gudrun in delight. Then for days, Ursula saw the persistent,

obtrusive birds as stout, short politicians lifting up their voices

from the platform, little men who must make themselves heard at any

cost.

But even from this there came the revulsion. Some yellowhammers

suddenly shot along the road in front of her. And they looked to her so

uncanny and inhuman, like flaring yellow barbs shooting through the air

on some weird, living errand, that she said to herself: 'After all, it

is impudence to call them little Lloyd Georges. They are really unknown

to us, they are the unknown forces. It is impudence to look at them as

if they were the same as human beings. They are of another world. How

stupid anthropomorphism is! Gudrun is really impudent, insolent, making

herself the measure of everything, making everything come down to human

standards. Rupert is quite right, human beings are boring, painting the

universe with their own image. The universe is non-human, thank God.'

It seemed to her irreverence, destructive of all true life, to make

little Lloyd Georges of the birds. It was such a lie towards the

robins, and such a defamation. Yet she had done it herself. But under

Gudrun's influence: so she exonerated herself.