Object-Oriented Ontology and the Joy of Washing Up (With Reference to the Work of D. H. Lawrence)

Einai gar kei entautha theous

One of the reasons that D. H. Lawrence continues to fascinate is because his work is an attempt to construct a queer form of philosophical realism that is very much object-oriented. Even when, as a novelist, he writes of human subjects, he clearly cares more about their impersonal and, indeed, inhuman elements and how they interact within an ontological network made up of all kinds of other things; be they dead or alive, actual or virtual. For Lawrence, art is primarily an attempt to help us understand how all things – including ourselves – exist within this dynamic network of relations.

Human being, we might say, has its belonging in this network and although Lawrence often suggests that the most important of all relations is that between man and woman, there is of course no such hierarchy in reality. All things may not be equal, but they are all equally things and all relations are established, developed and dissolved on a flat ontological playing field. For a man to be rich in world requires more than the love of a good woman. He has to have also a quick relationship to "snow, bed-bugs, sunshine, the phallus, trains, silk-hats, cats, sorrow, people, food, diphtheria, fuchsias, stars, ideas, God, tooth-paste, lightning, and toilet-paper" [SoTH 183].

Thus it is that so many of Lawrence’s characters only really blossom when they enter into strange and startling new relationships with nonhuman objects; objects which, for Lawrence, even if composed of inert matter as opposed to living tissue, nevertheless exist "in some subtle and complicated tension of vibration which makes them sensitive to external influence and causes them to have an influence on other external objects" [SCAL 77].

This is true irrespective of actual physical contact, although Lawrence encourages his readers to establish joyful small contacts with objects, even offering a philosophical justification for doing the washing up:

"If I wash the dishes I learn a quick, light touch of china and earthenware, the feel of it, the weight and roll and poise of it, the peculiar hotness, the quickness or slowness of its surface. I am at the middle of an infinite complexity of motions and adjustments and quick, apprehensive contacts ... the primal consciousness is alert in me ... which is a pure satisfaction." [RDP 151]

When Lawrence advocates climbing down Pisgah, this is an important aspect of what he means; discovering the sacred in daily life. It's not a new idea, obviously. Even Heraclitus standing before his kitchen stove was keen to impress upon visitors that the gods were present everywhere and in all activities. But it remains an important idea that counters all forms of ascetic idealism that advocate separation from the world of things and devotion to a spiritual life of prayer and meditation.   

Critics have often accused Lawrence of contemptuously dismissing modern life as inauthentic. However, in order to make this charge stick they have to glide over passages such as the above which demonstrate that he was eager to relate his ontological vision to everyday existence and those things that lie closest to hand (such as a bowl of soapy water). 

For Lawrence, no chore was too humble that it didn't warrant being done well and he happily absorbed himself in cooking, cleaning, chopping wood, and milking the cow, whilst his wife lay in bed smoking cigarettes. Indeed, far from washing the dishes, Frieda was prone to breaking them over Lawrence's head - though I suppose this too is a way of demonstrating that matter actually exists and that violence can also give pleasure ...      

Notes:

D. H. Lawrence, 'The Novel', in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985). 

In the first version of ‘Morality and the Novel’, Lawrence offers a different – no less surprising – list of things with which it is crucial to have relations. This includes "children, creatures, cities, skies, trees, flowers, mud, microbes, motor-cars, guns, [and] sewers". See Appendix III of the above text, p. 242.

D. H. Lawrence, 'Edgar Allen Poe' (Final Version, 1923), in Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003). 

D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988). 

Corpus Delicti (With Reference to the Case of D. H. Lawrence)

Death is always an inconvenience. Not so much for the deceased; for trust me, corpses don't care. But for those who are left with the problem of disposal; be these grieving relatives, or fastidious killers hoping to cover up all traces of their victim and their crime.  

Fortunately, there are several long-accepted methods of disposal; including the top two, burial and burning. But even these ancient methods present problems. In the case of cremation, for example, there's the question of what to do with the ashes; stick 'em in a ghastly urn and put granny on the mantelpiece, or scatter them to the four winds and risk the unpleasant humiliation of having them blow back in one's face. 

The English novelist D. H. Lawrence was famously first buried in Vence, where he died in 1930, and then, five years later, exhumed and cremated on Frieda's orders by her Italian lover and third husband to be, Angelo Ravagli. 

As to what happened to Lawrence's ashes, this has become subject to confusion and controversy. Ravagli was supposed to transport them to the ranch in New Mexico, where a suitable shrine had been built. Frieda had even provided a lovely little vase. But it seems likely that Ravagli simply threw them away (possibly into the harbour at Marseilles) and then filled the urn with a handful of dust upon his return to America. 

Frieda never knew. As far as she was concerned, she'd brought Lawrence back to the place they'd been happiest and sealed his fate by mixing his ashes into a concrete block in order to prevent anyone from stealing them and, symbolically, to prevent him from wandering in death without her. 

Lawrence's biographer, John Worthen, suggests that Ravagli did Lawrence a favour by rescuing him from his wife's posthumous plans: 

"Lawrence may finally have managed to evade her ... and to finish his career solitary, free, unhoused, with no lid sealing him down or block containing him: scattered, perhaps into the estranging sea he had so often contemplated."

John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider, (Allen Lane / Penguin Books, 2005), p. 418. 

On Gender-Based Violence (With Reference to the Case of Lawrence, Bibbles and Frieda)

viopet.org

According to Dr Núria Querol, International Coordinator of animal protection society VioPet, domestic animals are as likely to be subjected to gender violence as women and if you want to understand more about the physical and psychological abuse of the latter, then you would do well to examine the mistreatment of the former at the hands of sexually aggressive men.

Indeed, refusing to make any distinction between human and non-human animals, Dr Querol argues that women and pets are equally victims of precisely the same kind of brutality; both, if you like, are subordinated as bitches and expected to tremble at the sound of their master's voice or raised hand. More often than not, if a man beats his dog - or worse - then he'll also be prone to hitting his wife or girlfriend. 

This is illustrated by the disturbing case of the writer D. H. Lawrence and his little black snub-nosed dog, Bibbles. 

In 1922-23, Lawrence and his wife, Frieda, were living on a ranch in New Mexico and had recently acquired a puppy of whom he was extremely fond. However, as one commentator notes, fond or not, Lawrence insisted on being the dog's absolute master and this occasionally resulted in violence. One incident, witnessed by two young Danish artists staying as guests of the Lawrences, is particularly disturbing ...

After going off with a handsome Airedale for a short romantic liaison (she was on heat), Bibbles discovered just how furious with rage and jealousy her master could become. Regarding her indiscriminate loving as an act of personal disloyalty - if not, indeed, rather weirdly, infidelity - Lawrence chased Bibbles out of the house and savagely "kicked her through the snowdrift into which she had blundered".

Then, catching hold of her by the scruff of the neck, he picked the poor creature up and threw her as far as he could. Only an intervention by one of the Danes prevented him from continuing the assault. John Worthen is not alone amongst Lawrence scholars in wondering how someone "so sane, sensible, caring and loving ... and who hated bullying", could mistreat a dog so viciously.   

Whilst recognising the fact that Bibbles was female surely mattered, Worthen says nothing more on why this should be so significant. Instead - controversially I think - he suggests it was because Lawrence "loved the dog too much" that he temporarily "lost himself in need and rage".

Presumably, it was because Lawrence loved Frieda too much that he often hit her as well. Not that Worthen believes we should be overly concerned about this, because, as he points out, the domestic violence between them "was something they had managed to incorporate into their marriage" and Frieda "was never frightened of him for more than a few seconds at a time".

We are encouraged thus to turn a blind eye to Lawrence's violence (as we are to other unpleasant and problematic aspects of his character and writing); to convince ourselves that animal cruelty and wife beating is somehow acceptable if carried out by a man of genius and great sensitivity in the name of love or phallic tenderness.   

Or if, as in this case, the incident inspires a memorable poem; art serving to justify the violence and redeem the suffering caused. 

       
See: John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider, (Penguin / Allen Lane, 2005), pp. 282-85.

And see also 'Bibbles', in Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923), which can be found in the Cambridge edition of the poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (CUP, 2013) - or read by clicking here (in a censored form - the word bitch being repeatedly - and ridiculously - replaced with a row of asterisks).   

Flappers

The playful flapper here we see, 

the fairest of the fair.

One of the reasons that I still very much love the flappers is because they continue to piss off puritans of all stripes who, as the critic H. L. Mencken put it so wonderfully, are those persons forever gripped by the terrible fear that someone, somewhere may be happier or having more fun than they are.

Unfortunately, this seems to include followers of D. H. Lawrence, one of whom wrote in response to a question I asked about the latter’s antipathy to the young women of the Jazz Age, that flappers were almost as bad as bunny girls. When pressed to explain this rather surprising comparison, this former editor of the D. H. Lawrence Society Newsletter sent the following text:

"Flappers are ridiculous and degrading. Lawrence hated them as he (rightly) hated the vulgar songs of Bessie Smith. Who wouldn’t look on flappers as anything but women exploiting their sexuality and being exploited? Essentially, it’s the absurd falsity of them that is so objectionable. They have been industrialised; mass produced – it’s repulsive! And all that phony joie de vivre is equally nauseating; I don’t for a second believe in their kind of good time. I won’t even mention their physical appearance – the boyishness that Lawrence commented on and so despised."

Where does one begin with this astonishing attempt to channel the spirit of Lawrence at its most malevolently misogynistic?

Well, firstly, it’s true that Lawrence on one occasion became so incensed with Frieda repeatedly playing a recording by the great American blues singer Bessie Smith, that he smashed the gramophone record over her head in an act often portrayed by commentators as violent domestic comedy, but which might better be construed as humourless domestic violence.

I also have to admit that the writer of the above pretty much manages to summarise the main reasons for Lawrence’s antipathy towards the flappers: their independence, their hedonism, their promiscuity, their artificiality and their superficiality (in dress, manner, and behaviour).

I think the really crucial point, however, is the one he leaves to last and wishes not to mention - but nevertheless can’t help mentioning: what Lawrence most dislikes about the flappers is their physical appearance. And by this we refer not so much to the short skirts they liked to wear (though doubtless Lawrence objected to these too), but to the actual bodies of the flappers, in shape, in size, and in their somewhat androgynous character.

In brief, the flappers, with their bobbed hair, flattened chests, narrow hips, and pert little bottoms, weren’t womanly enough for Lawrence, who, as is evident from his choice of wife, his descriptions of Constance Chatterley, and his paintings, clearly had a penchant for plump, curvaceous, fleshy females.

His attempt to body shame the flappers - something that, shockingly, is still being carried on by some of his followers even today - is rooted therefore not only in his puritanism and problematic gender politics, but also in his own sexual preference for BBW.

Ultimately, the slim and sophisticated figure of the flapper left him limp - and Lawrence resented them for it.