“당신의 선한 천사와 씨름하기”: 『연애하는 여인들』의 버킨-제럴드 관계에 대하여

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the relationship between Birkin and Gerald rendered in Women in Love. Gerald’s response to Birkin in “Gladiatorial” that “you came here to wrestle with your good angel” raises intriguing questions about the nature of the relationship between the two men in the novel. Seemingly, the association of the statement with Shakespeare’s Sonnet makes readers suspect of the latent homosexuality between the two characters, but the obvious biblical connotation—Jacob’s wrestling with an angel during his journey back to Canaan—also deserves special attention as a cultural reference. The subject of homosexuality in the wrestling scene has widely been discussed by many Lawrence scholars, but this paper concentrates on the socio-cultural aspect of their relationship. Admitting the relationship between Birkin and Gerald is depicted rather ambiguous and very hard to define, it is noteworthy that by exploring their relationship along with that of Ursula and Birkin Lawrence proposed to furnish an alternative to the otherwise terminal condition of the modern world. Having lost all the historical continuity found in The Rainbow, the unconventional protagonists in its sequel have to find a new way to establish a radically different order between people for themselves. They find the spirit of the worlds around them going irrevocably chaotic, where “love”, as Thomas Crich’s egalitarian Christianity and Ursula’s somewhat claustrophobic passion illustrate, cannot work as the principle keeping people together any longer. Birkin’s hankering after a further relationship with Gerald should be understood in this context; “another kind of love” he wishes to establish with Gerald, which is nearly impossible to find in today’s Westernized cultures, can be the clue to a new society. If Gerald, “the good angel”, had changed his way of life through the experience of wrestling, it would have implied a tremendous change for our “father-less” civilization.