Women in Love

'They are not roused to consciousness,' he said. 'Consciousness comes

to them, willy-nilly.' 'But do you think they are better for having it quickened, stimulated?

Isn't it better that they should remain unconscious of the hazel, isn't

it better that they should see as a whole, without all this pulling to

pieces, all this knowledge?' 'Would you rather, for yourself, know or not know, that the little red

flowers are there, putting out for the pollen?' he asked harshly. His

voice was brutal, scornful, cruel.

Hermione remained with her face lifted up, abstracted. He hung silent

in irritation.

'I don't know,' she replied, balancing mildly. 'I don't know.' 'But knowing is everything to you, it is all your life,' he broke out.

She slowly looked at him.

'Is it?' she said.

'To know, that is your all, that is your life--you have only this, this

knowledge,' he cried. 'There is only one tree, there is only one fruit,

in your mouth.' Again she was some time silent.

'Is there?' she said at last, with the same untouched calm. And then in

a tone of whimsical inquisitiveness: 'What fruit, Rupert?' 'The eternal apple,' he replied in exasperation, hating his own

metaphors.

'Yes,' she said. There was a look of exhaustion about her. For some

moments there was silence. Then, pulling herself together with a

convulsed movement, Hermione resumed, in a sing-song, casual voice: 'But leaving me apart, Rupert; do you think the children are better,

richer, happier, for all this knowledge; do you really think they are?

Or is it better to leave them untouched, spontaneous. Hadn't they

better be animals, simple animals, crude, violent, ANYTHING, rather

than this self-consciousness, this incapacity to be spontaneous.' They thought she had finished. But with a queer rumbling in her throat

she resumed, 'Hadn't they better be anything than grow up crippled,

crippled in their souls, crippled in their feelings--so thrown back--so

turned back on themselves--incapable--' Hermione clenched her fist like

one in a trance--'of any spontaneous action, always deliberate, always

burdened with choice, never carried away.' Again they thought she had finished. But just as he was going to reply,

she resumed her queer rhapsody--'never carried away, out of themselves,

always conscious, always self-conscious, always aware of themselves.

Isn't ANYTHING better than this? Better be animals, mere animals with

no mind at all, than this, this NOTHINGNESS--' 'But do you think it is knowledge that makes us unliving and

selfconscious?' he asked irritably.

She opened her eyes and looked at him slowly.

'Yes,' she said. She paused, watching him all the while, her eyes

vague. Then she wiped her fingers across her brow, with a vague

weariness. It irritated him bitterly. 'It is the mind,' she said, 'and

that is death.' She raised her eyes slowly to him: 'Isn't the mind--'

she said, with the convulsed movement of her body, 'isn't it our death?

Doesn't it destroy all our spontaneity, all our instincts? Are not the

young people growing up today, really dead before they have a chance to

live?' 'Not because they have too much mind, but too little,' he said

brutally.