The Goddess, the Whore, and the Policewoman (Notes on D. H. Lawrence's Apocalypse)

Hans Burgkmair the Elder's depiction of Babylon the Great;
Mother of Prostitutes and Earthly Abominations, etc.
One of a series of woodcuts for Martin Luther's translation of the New Testament (1523)

Coloured and uploaded to Wikipedia by Shakko (2008)

According to D. H. Lawrence, if the ancient Jews hated pagan gods on the one hand, then, on the other, they "more than hated the great pagan goddesses" [120]. Which is why the author of the Book of Revelation found it tricky trying to reconcile the overtly pagan figure of the woman clothed with the sun with his own religious misogyny.

This wonder-woman, writes Lawrence, "was too splendidly suggestive of the great goddess of the east, the Great Mother" [120], for John of Patmos. So, whilst he reluctantly allows her into the Bible, he makes sure she is soon chased off into the wilderness by a dragon and presents us with the alternative figure of the Scarlet Woman, whom we are encouraged to curse and call vile names, rather than revere. 

As Lawrence notes, this marks a real turning point in the text:

"There is a great change. We leave the old cosmic and elemental world, and come to the late Jewish world of angels like policemen and postmen. It is a world essentialy uninteresting, save for the great vision of the Scarlet Woman, which [...] is, of course, the reversal of the great woman clothed in the sun". [120]

He continues:

"Only the great whore of Babylon rises rather splendid, sitting in her purple and scarlet upon her scarlet beast. She is the Magna Mater in malefic aspect, clothed in the colours of the angry sun, and throned upon the great red dragon of the angry cosmic power. Splendid she sits, and splendid is her Babylon." [121]

Alas, the exiling of the goddess, with her feet upon the moon and crowned with the stars of heaven, and her replacement with the Scarlet Woman - magnificent as she may be holding her golden cup filled with the wine of sensual pleasure - has had negative consequences for us all - but particularly women.  

For women are not only obliged to deal with the virgin/whore dichotomy that these myths help to entrench within our thinking, but they are also the ones who remain most bitterly trapped, according to Lawrence, in the folds of the Christian Logos:

"Today, the best part of womanhood is wrapped tight and tense in the folds of the Logos, she is bodiless, abstract, and driven by a self-determination terrible to behold. A strange 'spritual' creature is woman today, driven on and on by the evil demon of the old Logos, never for a moment allowed to escape ..." [126]

Worse, she has lost her nakedness and is condemned to wear a police-woman's uniform: "Let her dress up fluffy as she likes, or white and virginal, still underneath it all you can see the stiff folds of the modern police-woman's uniform ..."* [127]

I'm not sure if that's true, or fair, or even if I quite know what Lawrence is driving at here, but on that note I'll say evening all and close the post ...

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1980). All page numbers given in the text refer to this edition. 

* Of course, some readers might find that thought to their liking: click here for a post on the fetishistic appeal of women in uniforms

Eric Gill: On Trousers and the Most Precious Ornament

D. H. Lawrence wasn't the only weirdy beardy Englishman writing in the interwar period to be concerned with the question of masculinity and men's fashion, with a particular interest in trousers and the male member.

The artist, typographer, and sexual deviant, Eric Gill, also wrote on the vital role played by clothing within society and that most precious ornament, the penis, and I would like to discuss his thinking on these things as set out in an essay from 1937 which exposes a phallocentric sexual politics that makes Lawrence's look relatively limp in comparison.

Like Lawrence, of whose work he was a passionate admirer, Gill hated commercial and industrial civilisation. For whilst it encouraged women to "flaunt their sexual attractiveness on all occasions" and display the shapeliness of their legs and breasts with pride, it forced men to dress in a manner that suppressed their maleness of body and obscured their animal nature.

The protuberance by which a man's sex might be identified, is, says Gill, carefully and shamefully tucked between his legs and modern men are taught to regard the penis as merely a ridiculous-looking organ of drainage; "no longer the virile member and man's most precious ornament, but the comic member, a thing for girls to giggle about ..."   

The mighty phallus has been deflated and dishonoured. And not just in the West, but wherever machine civilisation has triumphed, with disastrous consequences for both sexes. For in a world in which men lose physical exuberance and assurance, women quickly lose all natural modesty. They start to parade around like shameless prostitutes in a desperate attempt to arouse the half-impotent male.

The only hope, says Gill, lies with those men who still retain something of the Old Adam about them; men who, like Oliver Mellors, despise commerce and industrialism; men who care about more about making love and waging war, than making money; men who refuse to commute to the office on the Tube each day in clothes that restrict their maleness and crush their balls.

For Gill, if modern man is to be emancipated and remasculated, then he must throw off his trousers and refuse to wear "cheap ready-made coats and collars and ties". Instead, he should don a dignified long robe, like an Arab; or a kilt, like a proud Scotsman, sans pants, allowing his penis its natural freedom of movement and chirpiness: I'm out there Jerry and I'm loving every minute of it!

Not - we should note in closing - that Gill wants men to make a spectacle of themselves and expose their nakedness; indeed, the last thing he wants is for men to become sexual exhibitionists flaunting their masculinity like modern women flaunt their femininity by wearing short skirts and make-up. He just wants us all to admit that the question of clothing - like that of the human soul - is of great importance and deserves the most serious consideration ...

Notes 

Those interested in reading Gill's 1937 essay can do so by clicking here. 

The Seinfeld episode in which Kramer discovers the joys of going commando is Season 6 / Episode 4: 'The Chinese Woman'.