The Blind Man

1. The Blind Man ~ by D. H. Lawrence And A Post/Structuralism: A Brief Conclusion

2. Deconstruction: Q & A • The Blind Man: • General Introd. & Starting Questions • 3 Levels of Reading • Level 1: Human Relations in the Modern World; • Level 2: Symbolic Reading based on Lawrence’s philosphy; • Level 3: Deconstructive Reading

3. Deconstruction • Why is language polysemous? • In deconstructing a text, is it ok to reverse the sets of binaries? • How do we radically contextualize a text (open it to multiple readings)? • What is Transcendental Signified?

4. “The Blind Man”: General Introduction A. structure of the text1. Beginning: pp 96-98middle“So Bertie was coming. . . “ Flashbacks: the background of the story (husband-wife, Bertie-Isabel, Bertie-Maurice, husband-wife) 2. The Present time a. Isabel’s trip for Mauricepp. 98- b. Maurice in his own room. pp. 100- c. Bertie’s arrival Isabel d. tea and conversation pp. 102- e. Bertie’s trip for Mauricep. 104; - Bertie was forced to touched Maurice. f. Isabel was watching the two men. 106

5. “The Blind Man” Leading Questions • Characters: Isabel, Bertie and Maurice. The story starts with Isabel’s listening for two sounds and ends with her receiving the two men, seeing one fulfilled and one defeated. How are Bertie and Maurice set against each other? What role does Isabel play in between the two men? • Spaces and the two trips to the farm: The spaces in the story are also set in contrast to each other. How is the farm different from the house? How are Isabel’s and Bertie’s trip to the farm different from and similar to each other?

6. Leading Questions • The ending: What does the men’s touching each other mean? • Images and Symbolic meanings of the scar, light and darkness, cat, touch, flower bowl, etc. • What do you think about the presentations of the farmers and the animals?

7. Three Levels of the story

8. Level I: A Structuralist Reading of (Lawrence’s social criticism) Human Relationship and Encounters

9. Characters: Isabel vs. Maurice The interaction between Isabel and Maurice – contradictions in Isabel: • Enjoys the intimacy; (97) • Maurice’s blindness has made Isabel feel burdened. (p. 96)  Isabel needs help, an outlet. • Isabel invited friends to helpMaurice connect with the outside world, but to no avail. • Pregnancy: Isabel worries about Maurice’s response, but also she does not want to care, being pre-occupied by her pregnancy.

10. contradiction Simple negation Characters: Isabel vs. Maurice Pre-supposition Complicated by the pregnancy Depression

11. contradiction Simple negation Characters: Isabel vs. Maurice Pre-supposition (Isabel+baby) Maternity Complicated by their intellectual intimacy

12. Characters: Bertie vs. Maurice • P. 97 • Bertie—a successful lawyer • Maurice—a social exile, blind

13. contradiction Simple negation Characters: Isabel vs. Maurice Stopped by Isabel Pre-supposition Complicated by Maurice’s need

14. Human Encounters in the Modern World: not just personality conflicts • Isabel and Maurice –post-trauma syndrome (depression), isolation and intimacy; p. 96 • Bertie’s fear of intimacy (96) • What constitute human being besides, sight, thought and action? “There is something else. . .“ (103) • Bertie’s lies p. 105

15. Binary Relationships Reversed Somehow civilized but also has the ability to get in touch with wild life, blood consciousness. Isabel (a media, a glue, and a judge) Isabel In between They are intimate. The couple used to be happy. An affinity Dominated They have a crisis. Dominated Helps Helps Dominated Bertie Civilized Maurice Fulfilled Primitive Beaten Beaten Invites/Bonds with/Dominates Fulfilled Blood consciousness over Intellect consciousness

16. Level II: A Symbolic Reading of (Lawrence’s philosophy) Blood Consciousness vs. Mental Consciousness

17. Lawrence’s philosophy • “The brain is. . . the terminal instrument of the dynamic consciousness. It transmutes what is a certain flux into a certain fixed cypher. . . The mind is the instrument of instruments; it is not a creative reality.” Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious 247 • “For the blood is the substance of the soul, and of the deepest consciousness. It is by blood that we are: and it is by the heart and liver that we live and move and have our being, are one and undivided. (Apropos 111) • “The blood also thinks, inside a man, darkly and ponderously. . .

18. Lawrence’s philosophy (2) • modern–“We always want a ‘conclusion,’ an end.” • Primitive–having mythical and symbolic consciousness. • “To them a thought was a complete state of feeling awareness, a cumulative feeling, a deepening thing, in which feeling deepened into feeling in consciousness till there was a sense of fullness. (Apocalypse 80)

19. Priest of Love • His early writings – 1. Autobiographical; 2. With a sense of mission to address people’s deepest needs • His Letters: • e. g. 1913, "I think, do you know, I have inside me a sort of answer to the want of today: to the real, deep want of the English people" (Letters I: 511). • "I do write because I want folk - English folk - to alter, and have moresense" (Letters I: 544). (source: http://mss.library.nottingham.ac.uk/dhlbiog-chp4.html )

20. From Priest of Love to an Exile (2) • Exiled after his elopement with Frieda, a German woman. • Several factors: • his books’ being banned, • Frieda’s German identity during the time of war • his dissatisfaction with Western civilization.

21. Priest of Love: “My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit and a bridle.” (source: http://www.cyber-nation.com/victory/quotations/authors/quotes_lawrence_dh.html )

22. His Critique of Western Civilization • Industrialized  too intellectual and dehumanized; • Promotes a new awareness of self and connection with Nature.  1. Balance between Blood and Mental consciousness; 2. Primitive Man; 3. Balance between man and woman by developing “pure” same-sex blood relationship.

23. Duality of human consciousness: Mind vs. Blood • “The mind and the spiritual consciousness of man simply hates the dark potency of blood-acts: hates the genuine dark sensual orgasms, which do, for the time being, actually obliterate the mind and the spiritual consciousness, plunge them in a suffocating flood of darkness. . . . Blood-consciousness overwhelms, obliterates, and annuls mind-consciousness.”(Lawrence “Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter”Studies in Classic American Literature )

24. “The Blind Man” • Maurice’s existence: filled with blood consciousness. E.g. his appearance (97); his motion in his bedroom (101); his feeling the table (102) and smelling the bowl of violets (102). • Bertie: “…when there is no thought and no action, there is nothing.” (103) • Isabel: blindness as deprivation, but “something [is] there.” (103)

25. Imageries • Visual Images – Maurice’s blindness; Isabel, watching all the time (e.g. 100 “she longed to see him”; he listened …[seemingly] to his fate” • Auditory, Olfactory & Tactile Images • Isabel was listening for two sounds—Maurice & Bertie; (e.g. I at the barn) - Isabel’s voice soft and musical, when calling for Maurice; - She listened intensely…she heard a small noise in the distance….a man’s voice speaking a brief word.” • “She saw nothing, and the sound of his voice seemed to touchher.” • Isabel smelled of wild life. • Maurice – his voice (suggests the stable); smelled of his wife, Isabel. It changed his bearings (100)

26. Tactile Images • “give me your arm, dear,…pressed his arm to her,…she longed to see him…she could feel the strong contact his feet with the earth,…as if he rose out of the earth.” • [Maurice] “touching her cheeks delicately….. the touch had and hypnotizing effect (100) • Bertie couldn't have physical contact. “Do you mind if I touch you?”

27. Symbolic Meanings in Spatial Arrangements Outside Inside Home • Isabel was waiting at home. • Isabel and Maurice came back home. • Isabel and Maurice was waiting at home. • I, M, and B were having dinner at home. • Maurice came back home with Bertie. • I, M, andB was at home. • Maurice was outside. • Isabel went out to find Maurice. • Maurice went out. • Bertie went out to find Maurice.

28. Spatial Arrangements Outside  the farmers’ house  the barn Home Isabel Maurice Maurice Barn Bertie Isabel Bertie Maurice

29. The Space of the farm house & the Barn • image of the Wernhams or farm people’s living, p. 98 – the scent, eating; • The barn – pp. 99; • the horses; • Darkness, strange whirl of violent life; p. 104 • Sweet roots; • Cat

30. Level III: A Deconstructive Reading of (Lawrence’s ideologies) His views of a).the primitive man, b) homosexuals c) women

31. Level III: A Deconstructive Reading of Possible Ways: • Challenge the unexamined assumptions; • Discover the binaries and their hierarchical structures •  Lawrence’s ideologies; his views of a).the primitive man, b) homosexuals c) women

32. the unexamined assumptions • Appearance and Mind/Body division; • Intimacy  ‘a ready woman in possession,’ why not Maurice? • Pregnancy  indifference and lethargy • Isabel’s voice – musical, like bell ringing (101)

33. I.The primitive man vs. the intellectual man • Maurice: symbolic meanings associated with him– the cat (409, 413) and his touch (405, 407) • Touches of the flower bowl 409- 410 • The final “touches”–to know each other • Is Maurice really a primitive man? How about the treament of the farmer’s family?

34. I.The primitive man vs. the intellectual man • A. Maurice and Bertie’s Differences        1. Occupation        2. Appearance: M p. 406; B 409        3. Characteristics: M p. 407; B 410B. Maurice: Blood ConsciousnessC. animal life vs. intellectual life; darkness vs. light The stable p. 405 -- farmer’s house 404-- Isabel’s house 406

35. Ideologies (1): “primitive man” • Lawrence’s contradictory ideology of the working class and primitive man. Sympathetic with the workers, Fascinated by primitive culture Uses them to express his belief in blood consciousness without really understanding them. In between working-class and middle-class ideologies; Does not agree with worker’s strikes.

36. II.Ideologies (2): Homosexuality • A. Maurice and Berties’s relationship • symbols of sexuality: e.g. stable, shaking hands, pulping sweet roots, the stroking of the gray cat • Lawrence’s disagreement with homosexuality

37. II.D.H Lawrence's misogyny presented on Isabel • stereotype of women's pregenancy • the scene of the reflection in a mirror • a sense of possession -- burden

38. Dualism in Lawrence • Dark/light; blood/mind; animal/insect; • Moisture/dry; sensuality/intellect; • Sun/moon; man/woman; male autonomy/community

39. Terry Eagleton’s Views: Lawrence’s contradictions about organicism • “What Lawrence’s work dramatises, in fact, is a contradiction within the Romantic humanist tradition itself, between its corporate and individualist components. . . . [Lawrence’s] social organicism decisively rejects the atomistic, mechanistic ideologies of industrial capitalism, yet at the same time subsumes the values of bourgeois liberal tradition: sympathy, intimacy, compassion, the centrality of the ‘personal’ (p 158)

40. Lawrence’s Views: organicism (2) • These contradictions come to a crisis in Lawrence with the First World War, the most traumatic event of his life. The war signifies the definitive collapse of the liberal humanist heritage, with its benevolistic idealism and ‘personal’ values, clearing the way for the ‘dark gods’ of discipline, action, hierarchy, individual separateness, mystical impersonality—in short, for a social order which rejects the ‘female’ principle of compassion and sexual intimacy for the ‘male’ principle of power. (158)