English 272D
Fall 1998
WollaegerModernity and the Ambiguous Function of Myth in
The Waste Land and Women in Love
 Cherie Uchtmann
Literature is often regarded as the most poignant reflection of a cultural moment. Certainly, this could be said of the work of both T.S. Eliot and D.H. Lawrence. Through their poetry and novels, Eliot and Lawrence clearly reflect the crisis of meaninglessness invading western culture in response to the events of the early twentieth century. In part, this crisis of meaninglessness arose from the evolving scientific verdict on reality and the traditional concepts of inherent meaning this verdict threatened to dissolve, especially in terms of traditional religious belief. Moreover, the horror and destruction of World War I transferred these suspicions of ultimate meaninglessness from the realm of mere speculative philosophy into the reality of tragic personal experience. Essentially, both the intellectual and the personal life of western culture became dominated in part by this timeless dialectic questioning the underlying meaning or meaninglessness of the universe and human experience. No wonder Lawrence’s novel Women in Love and EliotÂ’s poem The Waste Land are dominated as well by a doubleness of meaning versus meaninglessness, which is evident in both the structure and thematic fabric of these reflective works.
This doubleness of meaning versus meaninglessness is especially palpable in the ambiguous function of myth in both Women in Love and The Waste Land. Traditionally, myth has been viewed as a means for recognizing the essential realities common to human experience. Nonetheless, the speculation of meaninglessness in general also invaded theories of myth during the beginning of twentieth century. Certainly, myth continued to suggest meaning and order in the human experience. However, the question became whether myth functioned merely to produce an illusion of meaning and order for a world inherently void of it, or whether the validity of its traditional function as a means of recognizing a reality of meaning and order, however latent in this modern time, still prevailed.
Even in T.S. EliotÂ’s essay, "Ulysses, Order and Myth," this central doubleness surrounding the function of myth is clear. According to Eliot, James Joyce activates the power of myth in Ulysses by "manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity." While Eliot heralds this revolutionary use of the ancient epic the Odyssey as a frame for the novel Ulysses, it remains unclear whether Eliot perceives this use of myth as mere production of order or as real recognition. On the one hand, Eliot seems to assert that Joyce uses myth is to fabricate an important, yet ultimately contrived, impression of order. Eliot argues myth is "simply a way controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history" (Eliot 177). While myth can be successful in producing a compelling "shape and significance" for an anarchic world, EliotÂ’s words imply that such "shape and significance" is by nature absent from reality.
On the other hand, the opposing function of myth to recognize inherent order is evident elsewhere in EliotÂ’s essay. Specifically, Eliot uses a compelling analogy connecting the artist Joyce to the scientist Einstein. In doing so, Eliot links JoyceÂ’s "discovery" of the ordering function of myth to EinsteinÂ’s scientific discoveries of the physical laws governing matter and energy. Considering the hegemony of scientific theories of reality emerging in EliotÂ’s time, this analogy can not be dismissed lightly. Science was considered an objective tool for understanding the "true" nature of the universe by recognizing its laws, structure and order. By equating Joyce and myth to Einstein and science, this analogy implies that myth too illuminates dependable realities of the order and structure of the universe.
Eliot fuses the structural and thematic fabric of his poem TheWaste Land with this ambiguous doubleness of the function of myth as well. Once more, assuming myth to be the manipulation of a "continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity," Eliot employs myth throughout his poem, weaving in mythic allusions and manipulating the symbols and characters from numerous cultural mythologies. From allusions to the ancient texts of Dante and the Old Testament, to allusions to the anthropological discoveries of the rituals of ancient peoples by modern scholars, Eliot is successful is maintaining such a "continuous parallel." Moreover, he acknowledges the profound contribution to his poem of From Ritual to Romance, Jessie L. WestonÂ’s work exploring the development of the myth of the Holy Grail. However, though these mythic connections usher the voices and beliefs of antiquity into the modern waste land, they do little to relieve the painful confusion of reading the poem. In fact, contrary to the claim that Eliot makes concerning the power of myth in JoyceÂ’s Ulysses to produce a "shape and significance" for "contemporary history," EliotÂ’s mythic allusions seem only to enhance the sensation of fragmentation experienced by the reader.
This unrelenting anarchy in the presence of myth reveals the same ambiguous function of myth described in EliotÂ’s Ulysses essay. On the one hand, EliotÂ’s thematic and structural incorporation of mythic elements combined with his profound dependence on WestonÂ’s archival work suggests myth is a means to recognize the order and meaning of human experience that is presently eclipsed by the events of the early twentieth century. Simultaneously, the overwhelming confusion that dominates the readerÂ’s experience forms an ironical jab at this view of myth. In contrast, the prevailing confusion exposes the impotence of myth to produce even a weak semblance of meaning and order in a world where it has truly disappeared.
The Waste LandÂ’s numerous allusions to DanteÂ’s Inferno provide such examples of the failure of this mythic parallel to produce an experience of order and meaning. In the section The Burial of the Dead the poet creates a parallel between the daily bustle of London as a people trample across London Bridge and the Limbo scene from CantoÂ’s III and IV of the Inferno. The poet describes that a "crowd flows over London Bridge" underneath the grimy pestilence of the "brown fog of a winter dawn" ( I. v. 60-63). He then connects this modern day scene with DanteÂ’s fiery description of Hell. "I had not thought death had undone do many" (I. v. 63) exclaim the poets of the modern and ancient texts in unison.
Due to its subtlety, however, this connection to Dante is only apprehensible through the notes accompanying EliotÂ’s text. Instead of relieving the readerÂ’s confusion, this inaccessibility of the allusions throughout The Waste Land only enhances the experience of chaos advanced by the poem. Certainly, only the elites of western society enjoyed the comprehensive classical education necessary to identify such allusions independent of the notes. Especially because The Waste Land endeavors to embody the fragmented experience of the average Londoner, these myth allusions seem pretentious and inappropriate. I suggest even the poemÂ’s central characters, such as "Stetson," the working-class veteran, and the lonely, broken-spirited typist would not be able to apprehend these esoteric allusions. Furthermore, EliotÂ’s own notes explaining this section of the Inferno is not translated from the original Latin. Therefore, even though the average reader becomes aware that a connection to the Inferno exists, the illuminating nature of this connection remains cloaked in Latin script. On the surface at least, these mythic allusions completely fail to lend "shape and significance" to the apparent futility of the modern experience.
Critical works are often necessary to come to a fuller understanding of the enigmatic mythic allusions that pervade EliotÂ’s poem, such as these allusions to DanteÂ’s Inferno. Scholar Cleanth Brooks provides great insight into these mythic elements in his essay, "The Waste Land: Critique of the Myth." Brooks suggests that the ambiguity of this link to Dante as well as the other mythic connections saturating The Waste Land is extremely intentional. In their structural incoherence as well as their thematic content, these ambiguous mythic allusions exemplify EliotÂ’s central goal to recreate the paradox of "death in life." According to Brooks, the poet exposes how disintegrating faith in the meaning of life in modern times has provoked this descent into meaninglessness. This sensation of meaninglessness creates the "sterility and unreality of the modern waste land" (Brooks143). Thus the malady of meaninglessness which is "death in life" describes the hopeless fragmentation of the lives of modern man and women.
As Brooks suggests, once translated, the illusions to DanteÂ’s Inferno support his claim that Eliot is honing an image of the death-like existence of a life without meaning. Brooks points out that the Third and Fourth Canto describe those who lived a "blind life" without faith in anything that extended beyond material existence. Dante describes these inhabitants of his Limbo as "those wretches who never were alive" (Brooks 144). In other words, Dante and Eliot alike are implying that devoid of a conviction of ultimate meaning, a life of vitality is impossible. Instead, life decays into an incoherent trap of cold fragmentation.
Clearly the ravages of meaninglessness on the wholeness of human experience is a major theme of EliotÂ’s poem. The Waste Land is replete with fragmented images of fragmented people whose life has been reduced to a paradox of "living death" because of lack of faith in a "shape or significance" to the panorama of "futility and anarchy" which engulfs them. However, "death in life" is not the only paradox that Eliot explores through his use of myth. In contrast, as Brooks suggests, the mythic paradox of "life though death" holds immense implications for The Waste Land as well (Brooks 138). Filled with echos of Jessie WestonÂ’s book, Brooks explains that "Life devoid of meaning is death; sacrifice, even the sacrificial death, may be life-giving, an awakening to life" (Brooks 138). Though an in-depth discussion of the details of this paradox through The Waste Land is beyond the scope of this paper, its prevalence does bear major significance on this discussion of the function of the myth. In fact, the cycle of birth, death and rebirth that this paradox represents has been a trope of the human experience across cultures and ages. Moreover, its continuous development from ancient times through the medieval period is the principle theme of Jessie L. WestonÂ’s From Ritual to Romance. In fact, the function of myth to recognize real order and structure even amidst calamity is clear when the waste land Eliot so poetically creates is understood within the mythic cycle of death and rebirth suggested by Weston.
The deep influence of WestonÂ’s work throughout The Waste Land is undeniable. Eliot even draws The Waste LandÂ’s title from the time of agricultural and social barrenness mourned so completely by mythic traditions of the nature cults that Weston had studied. Furthermore, he even qualifies his accompanying notes by with an open acknowledgement of the poemÂ’s dependence on WestonÂ’s discoveries for its "plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism" as well (Eliot 47). Eliot describes that he is so "deeply indebted" to WestonÂ’s work that her book will explain "the difficulties of the poem much better than my notes can do" (47). Following the poetÂ’s instructions, I turn now to a brief discussion of the mythic cycles described by WestonÂ’s work. Her work, From Ritual to Romance, reveals that cultures across time and place have put ultimate faith in the paradox of "life through death" which might be the final hope Eliot is suggesting for the modern waste land as well.
Certainly WestonÂ’s book is ultimately a mythic enterprise. Citing EliotÂ’s own definition, it creates parallel after parallel between antiquity and contemporaneity. WestonÂ’s central purpose is to retrace the development of the medieval Grail legends from their roots in ancient Nature cults. Ultimately, she argues that the ritual ceremonies of these Nature cults were rooted in the cycles of birth, death, and rebirth they recognized as the reality of the creation that surrounded them. These cults believed that the sterility of their land and people, symbolized by the barrenness winter, was amendable through the symbolic death of their "Dying God." However, as Weston furtively argues, "it was not the tragic death (of their gods) which is of importance for these cults, but their subsequent restoration to life" (Weston 9). This restoration of the "Dying God" in his return to life brought the complete restoration of the fertility and prosperity of the land and people as well. In short, the paradox of "life through death" determined the central element of the ritual life of these ancient ritual cults, and its power was grounded in their conviction of the realness of this cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, which they witnessed through the cycles of nature around them.
Through title, plan, and symbolism, Eliot clearly yokes his poem to WestonÂ’s work and the pervasive power of the paradox of "life through death" from ancient to medieval times. Drawing from the poet's own indication, it is possible to even suggest this connection between the modern waste land and the waste land within ancient ritual cycles is his most important employment of myth. With this in mind, the entire poem takes on new meaning. Truly, the barrenness and pestilence that pervades modern life becomes a clear reflection of the "wasteland" experienced by these ancient cultures as well. Just as in the wastelands of antiquity, the impotence of humans and nature both to create and sustain meaningful life pervades modernity as well. Returning to EliotÂ’s text, the barrenness and decay wrought by disintegrating faith have marred even the "winter dawn" which is now swallowed in poisonous "brown fog" (I v.60-61). However, for these ancient cultures, the decay of their land was not the final word. Instead, adhering to the cycles and forces of the creation on which they depended, restoration or "life through death" surely brought relief . The question becomes if this paradox of "life through death" still bears real implications for the predicament of modernity. If Eliot is employing myth to recognize inherent order and cycles of reality, then perhaps the possibility for "life through death" and its prophecy of restoration is the redemptive destiny of the modern waste land as well.
Certainly, considering that inversions of symbol and meaning form the central poetic elements of EliotÂ’s work, clear resolution of the doubleness of the function of myth throughout The Waste Land remains impossible (Brooks 167). On the one hand, the reader feels that the mythic allusions make a grand mockery of the desperate hope of modernity for an objective meaning and order. In converse, the mythic allusions seem to recognize a larger meaning and order beneath the chaos of modernity than perhaps only the clear eyes of the poet can glimpse. These allusions imply that the fragmentation of meaning and order of both the poem and modern experience represent a phase in a paradoxical cycle of life, death and the promise of rebirth. In this way, the mending of the painful fragments of modernity is contingent on the subjugation of meaninglessness and a restoration of "faith" in a meaning and order that can weather the realities of modern life.
While Eliot offers no explicit reconciliation for this dialectic of the function of myth, some of his contemporaries discerned a clearer solution. Nicholas Berdyaev, a Russian critic and philosopher, is one example. In his radical contemplation "Myth as Memory," Berdyaev takes for granted the function of myth to recognize real truths of the human experience and objective reality. However, Berdyaev extols the real power of myth, which he claims is to enliven the consciousness of a man and thereby reveal the secrets of the order and meaning of reality layered into manÂ’s spirit. In this way, myth is directed internally, to "bring to life" the deep secrets of time and history "buried in the depths of the human spirit."
Berdyaev explains that every man is a "sort of microcosm" containing a "world in its own right" (Berdyaev 670) But this is not a merely subjective world, rather it is a world that reflects the reality of the external world and reveals the "historical destiny" of all of humanity. Myth facilitates the recognition of this world by stimulating and extending the limits of manÂ’s consciousness. Exposure to the mythic stories of cultures and ages past brings to life the "whole world of reality and all the great historical epochs" which "coexist" in every manÂ’s inner nature. However, this is not just the reality of history past; Berdyaev suggests that manÂ’s inner nature contains the reality of history future as well. Ultimately, he believes that the "historical myths" which are "preserved in popular memory" are a means to recognize the "historical destiny" of humanity as a whole (671). Close to the end of his essay, Berdyaev argues that these ultimate realities of the world and human experience can truly only be known through myth. In short, not only does he obviously believe in the reality of a "concrete destiny" and order of history, he believes that these "mysteries of the divine as well as of the human and world life" are apprehensible only through "concrete mythology" (671).
BerdyaevÂ’s view may seem esoteric and improbable in his conviction of the power of myth. However, its parallel to the function of myth in D.H. LawrenceÂ’s Women in Love cannot be ignored. Similarly to The Waste land, Women in Love often appears to be a stark reflection of the meaninglessness and futility of modernity. Futility is glimpsed especially in the life and death of Gerald Crich, while suspicions of delusion and meaninglessness swarm around the almost maniacal convictions of Rupert Birkin. However, amidst the "anarchy and futility" of LawrenceÂ’s novel, a doubleness of the function of myth abides as well. In fact, BirkinÂ’s mythic experience at the structural and thematic turning point of the novel reveals a "historical destiny" for the novel as a whole. Nonetheless, after this recognition the novel continues to be ravaged by increasing death and futility. Only in the end is the jarringly prophetic nature of BirkinÂ’s mythic experience actualized in GeraldÂ’s "death by perfect cold." In hindsight then, the futility of Women in Love represents the novelÂ’s structural adherence to the destiny of "cold dissolution" which Birkin had perceived. In this way, LawrenceÂ’s use of myth to recognize the future reality of his narrative restores the meaning and order exactly through the elements of "cold dissolution" that make the novel appear void of both.
BirkinÂ’s mythic experience is stimulated by his vivid recollection of the African statuette stashed in his memory. Certainly, Eliot's definition of myth as "manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity" (177) describes LawrenceÂ’s manipulation of the present with antiquity within the African statuette. Birkin perceives the African statuette as a timeless figure of antiquity who has "thousands of years of purely sensual, purely unspiritual knowledge behind her" (253). Though she represents not only a long vanished epoch, but also an alien culture, Birkin identifies her as "one of his soulÂ’s intimates." Through this identification, Birkin implicates himself in a mythic connection between his place in "contemporaneity" and the "antiquity" which the statuette palpably makes known.
As Berdyaev might describe, BirkinÂ’s mythic connection with the African statuette, "bring(s) to life some deep stratum buried in the depths" of BirkinÂ’s spirit (Berdyaev 671). As if encountering a hidden knowledge just beneath the liminality of his consciousness, Birkin experiences sudden insight into "thousands of years" of historical tradition. Birkin recognizes that "thousands of years ago that which was imminent in himself must have taken place in these Africans" (253). Mythically, the African statuette evokes from him the realization that he and the African cultures she represents are one in the "death-break" which they share with all of humanity. Birkin recognizes this "death-break" was a divorce from the "goodness" and "holiness" that originally pervaded creation and the human experience. Suddenly Birkin perceives that it is exactly this "death break" of the past that condemns humanity to live "purely within the world of corruption and cold dissolution." This is the world thrashing in meaninglessness in which Birkin and his fellow characters find themselves (253); the modern world mirrored so thoroughly in the fragmented images of hopelessness and despair of The Waste Land.
BirkinÂ’s mythic connection with the African statuette does not end with the mere "recognition" of this "death break." Rather, from this epiphany, Birkin glimpses what can be described as BerdyaevÂ’s conceptualization of the accessible "historical destiny" of all of humanity. Specifically, Birkin identifies three "ways" in which this "historical destiny" is being fulfilled. First he recognizes the "awful African process," which is to be fulfilled in "sun-destruction." Secondly, perceives the way of "the white races." In contrast to the "burning death-abstraction of the Sahara," this line of historical destiny is to be fulfilled in a "mystery of ice-destructive knowledge" (253). Certainly, whether through the African or the arctic way, BirkinÂ’s epiphany suggests that destruction and annihilation are the inevitable destiny of humanity decreed by the death break long ago. History was heading for the cold dissolution of all meaning in the complete death of an already corrupted civilization.
At this point, BirkinÂ’s mythic reverie is invaded by a distinct vision of the specific destiny of Gerald Crich. Gerald is the prototype of the "strange white wonderful demons from the north." In fact, Birkin wonders if Gerald is not some "universal omen" representing in some way all of humanity (253). Just as inversion of symbols and meaning is evident in EliotÂ’s work, this same poetic tool is employed by Lawrence to enhance the strangeness and ambiguity that dominates his novel. This doubleness is evident even in this short description of GeraldÂ’s being. Truly, the quality of "wonderful" and its fairytale connotations is slammed against the nightmarish and decidedly evil connotations of word "demon."
BirkinÂ’s ultimate question is whether Gerald, as a prototype, as an "omen" far beyond BirkinÂ’s own comprehension, will also undergo a destiny of "cold dissolution." Is Gerald also "fated" to be "fulfilled in the destructive frost mystery"? Birkin has recognized that "death by perfect cold" is the symbolic end of the "process of frost knowledge." Is this not only the fate of the "white race" which Gerald represents, but the symbolic fate of Gerald as well? It is not until the end of the novel that the physical fulfillment of GeraldÂ’s "death by perfect cold" confirms the prophetic character of BirkinÂ’s mythic vision. I will return to this mythic climax of Women in Love its implications as to LawrenceÂ’s view of myth and meaning later in this paper.
Wearied by the inevitable destruction in "cold dissolution" suggested by these two routes, BirkinÂ’s mythic moment seems to dissolve. As the narrator describes, Birkin could not maintain the intensity of this encounter, and "suddenly his strange, strained attention gave way, he could not attend to these mysteries anymore" (254). Only after abandoning this mythic mode of recognition does Birkin contrive a third route of historical destiny: "There was another way, the way of freedom" (254). This third route is the way of "Paradisal entry into pure, single being." However, in BirkinÂ’s conception this means of salvation into a "pure single being" can only be achieved through marriage and entrance into "definite communion." Birkin clings to this strange hope of salvation with all of his being. Urgently, he decides to "run" to Ursula and ask her to marry him "at once," for she must be his partner in this communion. Ultimately, Birkin conceives that marriage with Ursula "was the way, the remaining way" (254). It was his only hope in avoiding the "universal dissolution" toward which the other routes were destined.
More than a compelling materialization of BerdyaevÂ’s theory of myth and historical destiny, BirkinÂ’s mythic encounter is incredibly significant in the larger structure of the novel. First of all, the route of Paradisal entry through a relationship with Ursula becomes BirkinÂ’s ultimate focus. This unshakable commitment to actualize his strange vision proves Birkin is convinced these "historical destinies" expose the real structure of the world. Furthermore, BirkinÂ’s epiphany also marks the central thematic and structural turning point not only for his own life, but also for LawrenceÂ’s novel as a whole. In fact, (as discussed in class) its chapter Moony is the literal midpoint of Women in Love. Furthermore, it gives way to important transformations in the relationships of both the couples of Birkin and Ursula, and Gerald and Gudrun as well. Both in the intensity BirkinÂ’s experience as it stands alone, and in its implications for the development of the novel as a whole, Lawrence injects BirkinÂ’s mythic encounter with incredible significance.
Due to this pervasive significance, it is tempting to view this scene as a refined distillation of LawrenceÂ’s own views concerning the power and function of myth. BirkinÂ’s mythic encounter appears to result in recognition of the meaning, cause, and destiny of the "cold dissolution" in which Birkin feels caught. Moreover, Lawrence seems to suggest that despite the violence, inept relationships, and death that abound in his novel, there is at least an underlying structure that a "concrete mythology" has revealed. However, to use EliotÂ’s terms, the "anarchy and futility" which pervade other aspects of the novel cast severe doubt as to the validity of such an assumption. Though it is through myth that Birkin recognizes an ultimate order which compels his actions and decisions as a character, the prevailing anarchy and purposelessness of the novel as a whole reveals the ambiguous doubleness of LawrenceÂ’s own use of myth.
In many ways, the events of Women in Love actually seem to dispel any hope of order and meaning in the human experience. From the accidental murder of GeraldÂ’s brother prior to the beginning of the novel, to the ironic drowning of GeraldÂ’s sister during her familyÂ’s party, the theme of senseless death casts a shadow over LawrenceÂ’s entire work. More than anything, GeraldÂ’s vicious and ultimately vain fight against death seems the epitome of "futility" and representative of the inevitable meaninglessness of modern life as well.
GeraldÂ’s determination to triumph over death truly becomes the propulsion of his life. Lawrence describes GeraldÂ’s compulsive stance in denial of his mortality. As the narrator depicts, "Come what might, he (Gerald) would not bow down or submit or acknowledge a master" in death (322). Yet through this "ghastly wrestling" against the "death in his own soul," GeraldÂ’s life slips deeper into meaninglessness and violent mechanization. Somehow aware of his inevitable "collapse inwards upon the great dark void that circled his soul," Gerald turns to a relationship with Gudrun for "reinforcement." He turns toward their sexual relationship in attempt to assert his vitality and power and shrug off the demon of death that haunted him. Despite the temporary salvation he achieves through Gudrun, however, GeraldÂ’s staunch resistance against death ultimately collapses in futility. GeraldÂ’s disturbing death amid the snow and ice of a windswept slope forms the culmination of the novel.
Eerily, just as Birkin predicted, Gerald death is literally "death by perfect cold" (254). In his description of GeraldÂ’s dead body, Lawrence seems to make the meaninglessness of his humanity almost palpable through the sterile and inhuman frigidness of GeraldÂ’s flesh. Gerald is "dead like clay, like bluish, corruptible ice" (480). On his face is a "last terrible look of cold, mute Matter" (480). In death, GeraldÂ’s entire personhood is exposed as nothing more than an "inert mass" of mere matter. Lifeless, meaningless, inhuman matter is the dominating theme of these harrowing descriptions. If GeraldÂ’s death is taken as the "omen" which Birkin recognized it to be in his mythic encounter, the implication of this "death by perfect cold" becomes even more harrowing. This "dissolution" of Gerald the "universal omen" implies that the entire human experience is nothing more than the meaningless animation of "cold, mute, material." Truly, if the only reality is "cold, mute material," void of inherent meaning, then even the most compelling myth can be nothing more than a desperate attempt to produce order and value in vain defense against overpowering meaninglessness which will swallow it all up.
Assuming for a moment that this material, meaningless reality of the universe is Lawrence’s underlying belief, the nature of Birkin’s mythic realization is totally transformed. Rather than an invaluable vision of universal truth and meaning, Birkin’s vision becomes the embodiment of a desperate attempt to produce order and meaning within a meaningless void. Furthermore, if the order Birkin recognized in the routes of "historical destiny" is but fabricated illusion, than his way of "Paradisal entry" is a futile delusion as well. In short, if the world Lawrence has created in his novel is truly meaningless, Birkin is little more than as absurd and naïve character, deluded by his own production of meaning in a world of cold "mute" matter.
Though on one level GeraldÂ’s death can be viewed as this testimony to ultimate meaninglessness, GeraldÂ’s death, in light of its literal fulfillment of BirkinÂ’s mythic vision, actually testifies to a pervasive order and meaning underlying Women in Love as a whole. Of course, it is ironic that order and meaning of the novel is revealed through the moment of encompassing futility: the "death by perfect cold" of Gerald the dehumanized "industrial magnate," a man who had devoted his entire existence to staving off encroaching mortality. However, returning to BirkinÂ’s moment of epiphany, the full meaning of GeraldÂ’s death amidst in that "hollow basin of snow" at the close of the novel is made clear (474). More literally than Birkin possibly could have imagined, Gerald was indeed "fated to pass away in thisÂ…one process of frost-knowledge" and suffer "death by perfect cold" (254). Truly, GeraldÂ’s final death is the perfect materialization of BirkinÂ’s mythic glimpse of GeraldÂ’s fate. In this way, the realness of BirkinÂ’s powerful mythic experience in all its implications could not be more secure.
In the resonance of the structure of GeraldÂ’s death with BirkinÂ’s recognition of the structure of GeraldÂ’s peculiar "historical destiny," Gerald literally becomes the "omen" of far more than "the universal dissolution into the whiteness and snow." In fact, Gerald serves as a "universal omen" whose death gives revelation to structure propelling LawrenceÂ’s entire novel. In an ultimate irony, this order and structure is the pathway of "universal dissolution" of which every senseless death, broken relationship, dehumanized coal worker, and routinized human interaction that pervades the novel is a part. Thus, the underlying structure and order of LawrenceÂ’s work is actually the inescapable "long process" of "cold dissolution" which Gerald symbolically completed for the entire novel through his "death by perfect cold."
Furthermore, GeraldÂ’s life and death recognize much more than the order and meaning stirring far below the apparent anarchy of Women in Love. In fact, Gerald is a mythic force who makes possible the recognition of a function of myth Lawrence employs throughout Women in Love. Through the strict alignment maintained between the "historical destiny" Birkin perceived and the narrative destiny of the novel as a whole, it is clear that in the conclusion of Women in Love the doubleness of the function of myth achieves a temporary resolution. In brilliant irony, Lawrence actually uses the anarchy and futility of his novel, culminating finally in GeraldÂ’s death, as the mythically recognized "shape and significance" by which the novel is bound. In this way, Gerald himself becomes LawrenceÂ’s ultimate mythic force, allowing his readership to recognize the deep weight myth carries as a means to recognize and reveal powerful realities throughout LawrenceÂ’s work.
Finally, through the free indirect discourse Lawrence employs during BirkinÂ’s mythic encounter, Lawrence actually expands the frontiers of the reality Birkin perceives beyond this strange yet powerful novel. "There is a long way we can travel, after the death-break," speaks the narrative voice of Lawrence, "after that point where the soul in intense suffering breaks, breaks away from its organic hold like a leaf that falls " (253). With this startling shift from an omniscient narrator to the voice of the collective pronoun "we," I argue that Lawrence is implicating all of humanity within BirkinÂ’s mythic recognition of a collective human history. Lawrence himself repeats the "truth" of BirkinÂ’s mythic epiphany, proclaiming that this "fall from the connection of life and hope" is a truth extending far beyond the pages of his novel. In fact, Lawrence seems to suggest that this "death break" not only festers within the characters of Women in Love, but within all of humanity as well. Though this shift in narrative voice, Lawrence uses myth to transcends the world of literature in its recognition of the "truth" of reality.
In this way, LawrenceÂ’s final use of myth to offer an explanation and therefore coherence to the modern "waste land" imbues his entire novel with a kind of mythic significance. Returning once more to T.S. Eliot's famous words, through this connection between the "cold dissolution" that underlies his novel and the fragmentation of modern experience, Lawrence "manipulates" a "continuous parallel" between his own novel and the world of modernity in which he lived. Through his suggestion that anarchy and futility form their own ironic "shape and significance," Lawrence attempts to explain the "immense panorama of futility and anarchy" that characterizes both his powerful novel and troubled, searching epoch of modernity as well.
Certainly the use of "anarchy and futility" as evidence of some higher meaning and order somehow offends our sensibility. Yet, in both The Waste Land and Women in Love, myth recognized such "anarchy and futility" as evidence of a higher order. Of course, the order suggested by these modern works differs greatly from one another. While The Waste Land implies a mythic cycle of death heading for rebirth, Women in Love is much less hopeful, suggesting an inevitable linear destiny of "cold dissolution." Nonetheless, it can be persuasively argued that both of these interpretations of futility and anarchy fail to qualify as real order within any reasonable worldview. In this way, the doubleness of myth both as a weak attempt to produce even the most illogical sense of order versus myth as a means of recognizing real truth persists.
Ultimately, this simultaneous doubleness of the function of myth gives way to ambiguity. However, it is exactly this ambiguity that truly marks both The Waste Land and Women in Love as such poignant reflections of the cultural moment from which they emerge. Brooks makes this same argument as he attempts to reveal the larger meaning of the ambiguity of simultaneous "parallelisms and contrasts" pervading The Waste Land. Brooks writes that this "complication" of symbols "makes, of course, for ambiguity, but the ambiguity, in part, resides in the poetÂ’s fidelity to the complexity of experience" (Brooks 167). Truly, the cultural crisis engulfing modern literature was one of the ambiguities of the source of meaning and order in the grandest sense. Philosophers, scholars, artists, scientists and lay people alike oscillated between faith in real meaning and order versus despair as scientific discovery and tragic personal experience threatened to undermine such a faith. In this way, the ambiguous and ever oscillating function of myth in the work of modern artists D.H. Lawrence and T.S. Eliot reveals their true "fidelity" to the "complexity of experience" of modern times. In the end, the ambiguity of the function of myth does not undermine the integrity of their art, but rather proves it through such honest reflection of one of the central cultural crises of western experience.