Don't Let D. H. Lawrence Rub You Up the Wrong Way

D. H. Lawrence beach towel by Asok Mukhopadhyay

fineartamerica.com

If there is one modern author guaranteed to rub a lot of readers up the wrong way, it's Mr. D. H. Lawrence; the man who puts the friction in fiction. But, amusingly, he also takes every opportunity to do the same with his own characters as well, as illustrated in the following three scenes, drawn from  across the body of his work ...


I. Cyril and George in The White Peacock

In this, Lawrence's first novel, there's a famous pond swimming scene involving Cyril Beardsall and his friend George Saxton. The latter, who is already half-undressed by the water's edge, invites Cyril to fetch a towel and to join him. Eager to comply, Cyril does as he was instructed and then quickly strips off.

They plunge into the icy water and enjoy the "vigorous poetry of action" [222], Cyril pursuing George and eventually catching hold of him. Having being caught, George surrenders and floats on his back besides his friend, looking up and laughing, "and his white breasts and belly emerged like cool buds of a firm fleshed water flower" [see note 222:19 on p. 386].   

When they exit the pond, the two young men admire one another's nakedness and indulge in a bit of frottage:

"We stood and looked at each other as we rubbed ourselves dry. He was well proportioned, and naturally of handsome physique, heavily limbed. [...]
      As I watched him, he stood in white relief against the mass of green. He polished his arm, holding it out straight and solid; he rubbed his hair into curls, while I watched the deep muscles of his shoulders, and the bands stand out in his neck as he held it firm. [...]
      He saw I had forgotten to continue my rubbing, and laughing he took hold of me and began to rub me briskly, as if I were a child, or rather, a woman he loved and did not fear. I left myself quite limply in his hands, and, to get a better grip of me, he put his arm round me and pressed me aainst him, and the sweetness of the touch of our naked bodies one against the other was superb. It satisfied in some measure the vague, indecipherable yearning of my soul; and it was the same with him. When he had rubbed me all warm, he let me go, and we looked at each other with eyes of still laughter, and our love was perfect for a moment, more perfect than any love I have known since, either for man or woman." [222-23]


II. Jack and Mabel in The Horse-Dealer's Daughter

Our second scene is taken from one of Lawrence's best-known short stories and also involves a natural pond, two wet bodies, lots of rubbing, and the fetishistic presence of a towel ...

Mabel Pervin is a disturbed (and disturbing) 27-year-old woman with the face of a bulldog and a profound desire to join her dead mother. One afternoon, as dusk was beginning to fall and having attended her mother's grave, Mabel walks to a nearby pond. Unbeknown to her, however, she is being watched by a young doctor, named Jack Fergusson:

"There she stood on the bank for a moment. She never raised her head. Then she waded slowly into the water.
      He stood motionless as the small black figure walked slowly and deliberately towards the centre of the pond, gradually moving deeper into the motionless water, and still moving forward as the water got up to her breast. Then he could see her no more in the dusk of the dead afternoon." [145]

Instinctively, Jack runs to help; that is, to fish her out, not to gently hold Mabel under and thereby assist with the suicide. Rather bravely, considering he couldn't swim and already had a bad cold, he ventures slowly into the pond: "The cold water rose over his thighs, over his loins, upon his abdomen. The lower part of his body was all sunk in the hideous cold element." [145]

After one horrible moment when Jack loses his balance and goes under the water himself, he is able to grasp hold of Mabel's clothing and pull her out of the clutches of the pond. She is close to death, but he manages to resuscitate her. Then, wiping her face, he wraps her in his overoat and carries her home, laying her down on the hearthrug in front of the fire. She was breathing and semi-conscious, but not yet fully in the world.

Fetching some blankets from upstairs, Jack warms them before the fire: "Then he removed her saturated, earthy-smelling clothing, rubbed her dry with a towel, and wrapped her naked in the blankets." [146] It's at this point that the tale takes a typically queer Lawrentian turn. For Mabel takes his actions as a sign that he loves her:

"She shuffled forward on her knees, and put her arms round him, round his legs, as he stood there, pressing her breasts against his knees and thighs, clutching him with strange, convulsive certainty, pressing his thighs against her, drawing him to her face, her throat, as she looked up at him with flaring, humble eyes of transfiguration, triumphant in first possession.
      'You love me,' she murmured, in strange transport, yearning and triumphant and confident. 'You love me. I know you love me, I know.'
      And she was passionately kissing his knees, through the wet clothing, passionately and indiscriminately kissing his knees, his legs, as if unaware of everything." [148]

Readers who are interested in knowing how this tale concludes can click here. The point is: be careful whom you choose to save and rub dry as such acts of intimacy can sometimes be misinterpreted (however innocent your intentions and even if you're a doctor upholding the Hippocratic Oath). 


III. Joe and Yvette in The Virgin and the Gipsy

Finally, we come to our third scene: a terrible flood at the vicarage that drowns the repulsive figure of Granny, but merely soaks to the skin the virginal Yvette and her saviour, the gipsy Joe Boswell ...

"The first wave was washing her feet from under her [...] She was barely conscious: as if the flood was in her soul. [...] Yvette felt herself gone in an agonising mill-race of icy water, whirled, with only the fearful grip of the gipsy's hand on her wrist." [69-70]

Somehow, miraculously, they get from the garden to the house; the water still heaving around their legs. Yvette manages to climb the stairs; "like a wet, shuddering cat" [70] and only when on the relative safety of the landing does she become aware once more of the sodden gipsy coughing his guts out.

They seek additional safety from the rising waters in one of the bedrooms. Worried that she'll die of the cold he orders her to take her clothes off and get into the bed. Yvette is clearly unconvinced of the necessity of this and says she prefers to stay sitting on one of the chairs. But the gipsy is insistent: "'No!' he cried. 'No! Take your things off and I rub you with this towel.'" [72]

(As readers will have gathered by now, in the Lawrentian universe there's always plenty of dry towels at hand.)

Then the gipsy decides to strip and rub himself dry also:

"Coughing, shuddering violently, he pulled up his jersey hem and wrestled with all his shuddering, cold-racked might, to get off his wet, tight jersey.
      'Help me!' he cried, his face muffled.
      She seized the edge of the jersey, obediently, and pulled with all her might. The garment cam over his head, and he stood in his braces.
      'Take your things off! Rub with this towel!' he commanded ferociously [...]
      And like a thing obsessed, he pushed himself out of his trousers, and got out of his wet, clinging shirt, emerging slim and livid, shuddering in every fibre with cold and shock.
      He seized a towel, and began quickly to rub his body [...] Yvette dimly saw it was wise. She tried to get out of her dress. He pulled the horrible wet death-grippin thing off her [...]
      Yvette, naked, shuddering so much that she was sick, was trying to wipe herself dry. [...]
      With his towel he began to rub her, himself shaking all over, but holding her gripped by the shoulder, and slowly, numbedly rubbing her tender body, even trying to rub up into some dryness the pitiful hair of her small head.
      Suddenly he left off.
      'Better lie in bed,' he commanded, 'I want to rub myself.'" [72-3]
      
  By now, his towel is wet and bloody, so he borrows hers. Then, at her request - "'Warm me!' she moaned, with chattering teeth" [74] - he climbs into bed with her and holds her naked body tight against his own: "The vice-like grip of his arms round her seemed to her the only stable point in her consciousness." [74] This, eventually, calms them both down "and gradually the sickening violence of the shuddering, caused by shock, abated, in his body first, then in hers, and the warmth revived between them" [74].

Do they have sexual intercourse? Who can say: though they do both pass away into what might very well be a post-coital sleep (or what Lady Chatterley's lover, Oliver Mellors, describes as the peace that comes of fucking).

When she wakes up, he has gone, leaving behind him nothing but a filthy blood-stained towel and "a great sodden place on the carpet" [76] where his wet clothes had been lying. She's a little disappointed at first, but wise enough to realise it was for the best.  


Afterword

Frottage - for readers who don't know - is not some kind of fancy French cheese (though it is derived from a French verb, frotter).

It is, rather, a term used within the fetishistic world of paraphilia to describe the act of rubbing any part of the body against the body parts of another and may be performed either naked or clothed, wet or dry. Individuals may engage in frottage either as foreplay in anticipation of penetrative sex, or as a form of sensual pleasure in and of itself. When frottage involves direct genital stimulation, it is sometimes referred to as GG rubbing.

Readers should also note that non-consensual rubbing up against strangers (such as on a crowded tube train) is frowned upon within the frottage community and they use the term frotteurism to distinguish this illicit pleasure from their own erotic activities.   

Finally, towel fetish is a genuine fetish, though not very common. In the above scenes, towels clearly play a significant role in the action and it wouldn't be outrageous to suggest that the self-confessed priest of love had a thing for absorbent fabrics used to dry naked wet bodies.     

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, The White Peacock, ed. Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1983).

D. H. Lawrence, 'The Horse-Dealer's Daughter', in England, My England and Other Stories, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1990).

D. H. Lawrence, The Virgin and the Gipsy, in The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories, ed. Michael Herbert, Bethan Jones and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

All page references given in the post refer to these editions.

She Was Only a Horse-Dealer's Daughter

Girl on horseback by Israeli artist Taly Levi 

tal-stoobik.com

Sullen-looking and bulldog-faced Mabel Pervin, 27, would have been good-looking were it not for the impassive fixity of her features - which is as backhanded a compliment as you could ever wish to hear. Still, it's not a narrator's job to flatter those of whom he speaks, nor to mislead readers, and even her brother, Fred Henry, describes her as "'The sulkiest bitch that ever trod!'" [141] 

He, along with his sister and two brothers, have been evicted from their home. Which isn't very nice. But that's what happens when you allow things to go to the dogs and nothing remains but huge debts and the threat of repossession.

But whereas the Pervin brothers have decided pretty much what they'll do and where they'll go, Mabel refuses to reveal her intentions. Indeed, when asked to disclose her plans, her face merely darkens and she retreats ever-further into silence like an immutable object. This, understandably, exasperates Fred Henry.

Prior to the reversal of fortunes following the death of their father, the Pervin household had been full of servants and the stables full of horses. Mabel had run things efficiently for ten years and no matter how brutal and coarse the circumstances, she always had the financial means to do so and this had given her confidence:   

"The men might be foul-mouthed, the women in the kitchen might have bad reputations, her brothers might have illegitimate children. But so long as there was money, the girl felt herself established, and brutally proud, reserved." [142]

She had no female friends or company after her sister left: but Mabel didn't mind. All was tolerable until her father died. Only then did the shit hit the fan and she had suffered badly during the prolonged period of poverty, attempting in vain to keep the home together for her useless, lazy brothers.

"Now, for Mabel, the end had come. Still she would not cast about her. She would follow her own way just the same. She would always hold the keys of her own situation. Mindless and persistent, she endured from day to day. Why should she think? Why should she answer anybody? [...] She thought of nobody, not even herself. Mindless and persistent, she seemed in a sort of ecstasy to be coming nearer to her fulfilment, her own glorification, approaching her dead mother [...]" [143] and making a festive return to the actual (i.e., the inanimate world of matter).     

In preparaton for this, she goes to the churchyard in order to attend to her mother's grave:

"Carefully she clipped the grass from the grave, and arranged the pink-white, small chrysanthemums in the tin cross. When this was done, she took an empty jar from a neighbouring grave, brought water, and carefully, most scrupulously sponged the marble headstone and the coping-stone.
      It gave her sincere satisfaction to do this. She felt in immediate contact with the world of her mother. She took minute pain, went through the work in a state bordering on pure happiness, as if in performing this task she came into a subtle, intimate connection with her mother. For the life she followed here in the world was far less real than the world of death she inherited from her mother." [143]

I think that's a rather lovely passage; one with a great truth to it. For some people, death is more real than the epiphenomenal dream of life and they really only come into their own (or blossom into being, as Lawence might say) posthumously. To try to dissuade such persons from suicide as a practice of joy, is not only futile, but cruel. Everything should be done to make their passage into death as smooth and as stylish as possible.

I don't know if the young doctor Jack Fergusson understood this, but he did find Mabel's physical intensity and remoteness fascinating: "Some mystical element was touched in him." [144] For Jack, her boat is less canine and more portentous: "It was portentous, her face. It seemed to mesmerise him. There was a heavy power in her eyes which laid hold of his whole being [...]" [144] 

Later that afternoon, as dusk was beginning to fall, Jack sees Mabel walking to the pond nearby her house:

"There she stood on the bank for a moment. She never raised her head. Then she waded slowly into the water.
      He stood motionless as the small black figure walked slowly and deliberately towards the centre of the pond, gradually moving deeper into the motionless water, and still moving forward as the water got up to her breast. Then he could see her no more in the dusk of the dead afternoon." [145]

Instinctively, Jack runs to help; that is, to fish her out, not to gently hold Mabel under and thereby assist with the suicide. Rather bravely, considering he couldn't swim and already had a bad cold, he ventures slowly into the pond: "The cold water rose over his thighs, over his loins, upon his abdomen. The lower part of his body was all sunk in the hideous cold element." [145]

In four simple but beautifully written passages, Lawrence describes the rescue of Mabel Pervin:

"He crouched a little, spreading his hands under the water and moving them round, trying to feel for her. The dead cold pond swayed upon his chest. He moved again, a little deeper, and again, with his hands underneath, he felt all around under the water. And he touched her clothing. But it evaded his fingers. He made a desperate effort to grasp it.
      And so doing he lost his balance and went under, horribly, suffocating in the foul earthy water, struggling madly for a few moments. At last, after what seemed an eternity, he got his footing, rose again into the air and looked around. He gasped, and knew he was in the world. Then he looked at the water. She had risen near him. He grasped her clothing, and drawing her nearer, turned to take his way to land again.
      He went very slowly, carefully, absorbed in the slow progress. He rose higher, climbing out of the pond. The water was now only about his legs; he was thankful, full of relief to be out of the clutches of the pond. He lifted her and staggered on to the bank, out of the horror of wet, grey clay.
      He laid her down on the bank. She was quite unconscious and running with water. He made the water come from her mouth, he worked to restore her. He did not have to work very long before he could feel the breathing begin again in her, she was breathing naturally. He worked a little longer. He could feel her live beneath his hands, she was coming back. He wiped her face, wrapped her in his overcoat, looked round into the dim, dark-grey world, then lifted her and staggered down the bank and across the fields." [146]

Jack carries Mabel home and lays her down on the hearthrug, in front of the fire burning in the grate. She was breathing and semi-conscious, but not yet fully in the world. Fetching some blankets from upstairs, Jack warms them before the fire: "Then he removed her saturated, earthy-smelling clothing, rubbed her dry with a towel, and wrapped her naked in the blankets." [146]

Regaining her senses, Mabel asks the young doctor what she did - and if it signifies she has gone out of her mind. He tells her what happened and reassures her it was but a moment of folly and not a sign of incipient insanity. All the time he is a little afraid of her and the strange power she seems to possess (over him).

It's here that the tale takes a typically queer Lawrentian turn. For when Mabel realises that she is naked beneath the blankets and that he undressed her, she takes this as a sign that he loves her:    

"She shuffled forward on her knees, and put her arms round him, round his legs, as he stood there, pressing her breasts against his knees and thighs, clutching him with strange, convulsive certainty, pressing his thighs against her, drawing him to her face, her throat, as she looked up at him with flaring, humble eyes of transfiguration, triumphant in first possession.
      'You love me,' she murmured, in strange transport, yearning and triumphant and confident. 'You love me. I know you love me, I know.'
      And she was passionately kissing his knees, through the wet clothing, passionately and indiscriminately kissing his knees, his legs, as if unaware of everything." [148]

The problem is, Jack isn't sure about this at all:

"He looked down at the tangled wet hair, the wild, bare, animal shoulders. He was amazed, bewildered, and afraid. He had never thought of loving her. He had never wanted to love her. When he rescued her and restored her, he was a doctor, and she was a patient. He had had no single personal thought of her. Nay, this introduction of the personal element was very distasteful to him, a violation of his professional honour. It was horrible to have her there embracing his knees. It was horrible. He revolted from it, violently. And yet - and yet - he had not the power to break away." [148]

In other words, it's all a bit awkward. One begins to think maybe Mabel is a little crazy and one wonders whether some part of him secretly wishes he'd left her to drown ... 

"She looked at him again, with the same supplication of powerful love, and that same transcendent, frightening light of triumph. In view of the delicate flame which seemed to come from her face like a light, he was powerless. And yet he had never intended to love her. He had never intended. And something stubborn in him could not give way." [148-49]

Of course, we all know as readers where this is going and what will happen: that Jack will give way and yield to her love, whatever his intentions and whether this fills him with a certain dread or not.

Almost, one is tempted to imagine that rather than having saved her, she has succeeded in pulling him beneath the water - as Diana Crich succeeded in killing young Dr. Brindell, her arms held choking tight round his neck - and this entire scene is the fantasy of a drowning man: "Her hands were drawing him, drawing him down to her. He was afraid, even a little horrified." [149]

However, as textually there is little reason to think this, let us assume, rather, that Mabel is simply some kind of witch, whose bare arms, small breasts, and soft white feet exert a powerful erotic spell that renders poor Jack as helpless (and as enchanted) as a moth before a candle: "A flame seemed to burn the hand that grasped her soft shoulder [...][149]

Eventually, with an inward groan, he accepts his fate: and her eyes fill with tears of joy (and triumph):

"He could not bear to look at her any more. He dropped on his knees and caught her head with his arm and pressed her face against his throat. She was very still. His heart, which seemed to have broken, was burning with a kind of agony in his breast. And he felt her slow, hot tears wetting his throat." [149]

Paralysed by his own desire, Jack is made to confess his love for her in a soft, low, vibrating voice that didn't seem to belong to him: the terrible intonation of his desire frightening her "almost more than her horror lest he should not want her" [152].  

That, in a nutshell, is the tale of the horse-dealer's daughter and of the young doctor who wanted to save her life. Although he had never intended to love her: "He had crossed over the gulf to her, and all that he had left behind [of his old self and old life] had shrivelled and become void." [150]

So, in a sense, Jack did die after all ...

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'The Horse-Dealer's Daughter', England, My England and Other Stories, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 137-152. All page references given refer to this edition. The story can also be read online by clicking here, courtesy of Project Gutenberg.  

Note: the other drowning scene to which I refer, involving Diana Crich and a young doctor attempting to save her, is in chapter XIV (Water-Party) of D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love. 

Musical bonus: Ute Lemper, 'Little Water Song', from the album Punishing Kiss, (Decca Records, 2000), written by Nick Cave and Bruno Pisek. Click here. 

This post is dedicated to meine zwei liebsten deutschen frauen.