“Cross[ing] over the Gulf to Her”: “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” as Lawrence’s Metaphysics of Love
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This essay examines D. H. Lawrence’s redaction of the Christian view of regeneration and redemption in his short story, “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter,” by examining his ideas in relation to those of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche who raised most fundamental questions about Christianity and strived to explore alternative philosophical premises. Focusing specifically on the moment of Jack Ferguson’s “cross[ing] over the gulf to her[Mabel]” (441), this essay contends that it is Lawrence’s conception of love between a man and a woman as the most important means of human redemption that makes certain aspects of the Christian notion of salvation particularly useful to him. Specifically, whereas the concept of a leap of faith is quite irrelevant in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Lawrence presents in “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” a terrifying leap of faith between a man and a woman toward each other as a model of salvation. In verbally acknowledging the fact that he loves Mabel, Ferguson does something quite parallel to “a leap of faith” in Christianity which requires not only the resolution on the part of a human being but also the intervention of some supernatural power. The object to which Ferguson commits himself despite the fear of self-erasure, however, is not a Christian deity but the mesmerizing attraction of Mabel stemming from her craving for life, and thereby Lawrence enacts his belief that “Adam was the first Christ: not the Word made Flesh, but the Flesh made Word” (96).
Abstract
This essay examines D. H. Lawrence’s redaction of the Christian view of regeneration and redemption in his short story, “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter,” by examining his ideas in relation to those of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche who raised most fundamental questions about Christianity and strived to explore alternative philosophical premises. Focusing specifically on the moment of Jack Ferguson’s “cross[ing] over the gulf to her[Mabel]” (441), this essay contends that it is Lawrence’s conception of love between a man and a woman as the most important means of human redemption that makes certain aspects of the Christian notion of salvation particularly useful to him. Specifically, whereas the concept of a leap of faith is quite irrelevant in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Lawrence presents in “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” a terrifying leap of faith between a man and a woman toward each other as a model of salvation. In verbally acknowledging the fact that he loves Mabel, Ferguson does something quite parallel to “a leap of faith” in Christianity which requires not only the resolution on the part of a human being but also the intervention of some supernatural power. The object to which Ferguson commits himself despite the fear of self-erasure, however, is not a Christian deity but the mesmerizing attraction of Mabel stemming from her craving for life, and thereby Lawrence enacts his belief that “Adam was the first Christ: not the Word made Flesh, but the Flesh made Word” (96).
참고문헌 (16)
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