1. ~ by D. H. Lawrence And A Post/Structuralism: A Brief Conclusion
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 text 1. Beginning: pp middle“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 Maurice pp. 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 Maurice p. 104; - Bertie was forced to touched Maurice.
f. Isabel was watching the two men

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
2. (Lawrence’s philosophy)
Blood Consciousness vs. Mental Consciousness
1. (Lawrence’s social criticism)
Human Relationship and Encounters
3. (Lawrence’s ideologies)
His views of a).the primitive man,
b) homosexuals c) women

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 help Maurice 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. Characters: Isabel vs. Maurice
contradiction
Pre-supposition
Quiet, Dark Physical Intimacy
Noisy Company & Society
Farm work and writing
Depression, burden, alienation
Simple negation
Complicated by the pregnancy
Depression

11. Characters: Isabel vs. Maurice
contradiction
Pre-supposition
(Isabel+baby) Maternity
Male destructive depression (Maurice)
Intellectual Friendship
(Bertie)
Emotional intimacy with another man
(Isabel+baby) Maternity
Simple negation
Complicated by their intellectual intimacy

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

13. Characters: Isabel vs. Maurice
Stopped by Isabel
contradiction
Pre-supposition
Intellectual Work, urban, Scotch
Physical Work, provincial English
Quick thinking
Sensitive feeling
Simple negation
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
Invites/Bonds with/Dominates
Beaten
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 more　sense" (Letters I: 544). 　(source: )

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: )

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 “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 touch her.”
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, and B was at home.
Maurice was outside.
Isabel went out to find Maurice.
Maurice went out.
Bertie went out to find Maurice.

28. Spatial Arrangements Home Outside  the farmers’ house  the barn
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
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 410 B. Maurice: Blood Consciousness C. animal life vs. intellectual life; darkness vs. light
The stable p farmer’s house 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)