D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love: Metonymic Chains of Desire

Abstract

In narrative, unconscious content is condensed as metaphor and displaced as metonymy, and then this metaphor and metonymy—substitution and combination, are the mechanisms through which desire operates. The symptom, in Lacan’s view, is a metaphor and desire is a metonymy. Birkin’s doctrine of “star-equilibrium”—the reciprocal fulfillment of two independent beings as stars, balancing each other—may be construed as a metaphoric spark of Birkin’s unconscious truth, in which marriage displaces his desire to elude the dreary, corrupted society. Birkin’s star-equilibrium is condensed as a metaphor in that it not only acts through the apocalyptic vision out of the ruins of mankind, but it also reflects his desire to escape the mother’s grip upon him in the Imaginary order. Women in Love shows how Rupert Birkin’s desire is continuously deferred in terms of Lacan’s concept of “metonymy.” His desire works out a self-deconstructing dynamic when it oscillates around the acceptance or rejection of his theory in his relationship with Ursula. In the case of Birkin, as he hankers for male relationships as a complement to his marriage, his desire for star-polarity relationships is an ongoing, never finalized process. Thus, Birkin’s forever deferred satisfaction of desire—his failure to achieve a heterosexual commitment for homosexual love—is unconsciously tied to a desire for the impossible union with the mother as the lost object. As a result, Women in Love illustrates Lacanian principles, the specific laws of desire—metaphor and metonymy.