Women in Love

What was it, after all, that a woman wanted? Was it mere social effect,

fulfilment of ambition in the social world, in the community of

mankind? Was it even a union in love and goodness? Did she want

'goodness'? Who but a fool would accept this of Gudrun? This was but

the street view of her wants. Cross the threshold, and you found her

completely, completely cynical about the social world and its

advantages. Once inside the house of her soul and there was a pungent

atmosphere of corrosion, an inflamed darkness of sensation, and a

vivid, subtle, critical consciousness, that saw the world distorted,

horrific.

What then, what next? Was it sheer blind force of passion that would

satisfy her now? Not this, but the subtle thrills of extreme sensation

in reduction. It was an unbroken will reacting against her unbroken

will in a myriad subtle thrills of reduction, the last subtle

activities of analysis and breaking down, carried out in the darkness

of her, whilst the outside form, the individual, was utterly unchanged,

even sentimental in its poses.

But between two particular people, any two people on earth, the range

of pure sensational experience is limited. The climax of sensual

reaction, once reached in any direction, is reached finally, there is

no going on. There is only repetition possible, or the going apart of

the two protagonists, or the subjugating of the one will to the other,

or death.

Gerald had penetrated all the outer places of Gudrun's soul. He was to

her the most crucial instance of the existing world, the NE PLUS ULTRA

of the world of man as it existed for her. In him she knew the world,

and had done with it. Knowing him finally she was the Alexander seeking

new worlds. But there WERE no new worlds, there were no more MEN, there

were only creatures, little, ultimate CREATURES like Loerke. The world

was finished now, for her. There was only the inner, individual

darkness, sensation within the ego, the obscene religious mystery of

ultimate reduction, the mystic frictional activities of diabolic

reducing down, disintegrating the vital organic body of life.

All this Gudrun knew in her subconsciousness, not in her mind. She knew

her next step-she knew what she should move on to, when she left

Gerald. She was afraid of Gerald, that he might kill her. But she did

not intend to be killed. A fine thread still united her to him. It

should not be HER death which broke it. She had further to go, a

further, slow exquisite experience to reap, unthinkable subtleties of

sensation to know, before she was finished.