Into the Valley of the Giants with Gilbert Noon

 

Georgia O'Keeffe: Black Hills with Cedar (1941)

Oil on canvas (16 x 30 in.)

 

 

Let us beware of thinking that the world is a living being, says Nietzsche [1]. And let us be doubly cautious about assigning it with a gender and speaking as if the body of the earth and the body of woman were one and the same thing. 

 

Having said that, I was guilty of doing precisely this in my misspent pagan youth. But now I don't much care for anthropomorphic metaphors of Mother Earth which stress her life-giving and nurturing aspects, particularly when tied to a spiritual ecofeminism and/or left-leaning green politics. 

 

I'm also no longer so keen on those attempts by ecosexuals and nature fetishists to think of the earth in erotic terms - as something one shouldn't merely worship and revere, but fuck [2]. Perhaps that's why the following paragraph from D. H. Lawrence's unfinished novel Mr Noon (1984) struck a chord:

 

"The valley began to depress him. The great slopes shelving upwards, far overhead: the sudden dark, hairy ravines in which he was trapped: all made him feel he was caught, shut in down below there. He felt tiny, like a dwarf among the great thighs and ravines of the mountains. There is a Baudelaire poem which tells of Nature, like a vast woman lying spread, and man, a tiny insect, creeping between her knees and under her thighs, fascinated. Gilbert felt a powerful revulsion against the great slopes and particularly against the tree-dark hairy ravines in which he was caught." [3] 

 

Some critics see this passage as evidence of Lawrence's misogyny, although I would argue that Gilbert Noon's reaction might better be described as gynophobic, rather than misogynistic; i.e., an irrational fear of (being engulfed within) the female body, rather than a learned dislike for and contempt of women per se.   

 

What it does tell us for sure is that, whatever other kinks Mr Noon may have, he's not a macrophile and doesn't - unlike Baudelaire - entertain sexual fantasies involving a giantess [4]; or, if unconsciously he does harbour such thoughts, then these clearly disturb him and he does what he can to repress them.     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book III, §109.  

[2] See: 'On Ecosexuality' (6 Nov 2016): click here.

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Mr Noon, ed. Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 251. 

      Gilbert Noon isn't the only Lawrence protagonist to resent being belittled by landscape; see my post on the case of Alexander Hepburn and his orophobia from Nov 2017: click here.

[4] I discuss macrophilia in a post dated 23 July 2019, entitled 'Bigging Up the Gibson Girl': click here. 

      The poem by Charles Baudelaire referred to is 'La Géante', in Les Fleurs du Mal (1857): click here.       

      Interestingly, although Baudelaire fantasises about living at the feet of a giantess, crawling on her enormous knees, enjoying her curves, and sleeping in the shade cast by her breasts, he doesn't actually speak of creeping between her knees and thighs - and so towards the hairy ravine of her cunt - as Lawrence (perhaps tellingly) misremembers. 

      However, it could be - as Lindeth Vasey suggests - that Lawrence is thinking of Tolstoi's description of a landowner's dream, involving a landscape that is transformed into the body of a giant woman: 'The old man dreamt that he was standing between the woman's legs, in front of him a deep, dark ravine, which sucked him in ...' See the explanatory note 251:37 on p. 328 of Mr Noon (CUP, 1984).       

 

Notes on an Edwardian Woman's Underwear (With Reference to the Case of Mrs Johanna Keighley)

'And, oh, quick if you please

Let every lady get on her chemise!'

 

 

I.

 

D. H. Lawrence's unfinished and, until 1984, unpublished comic novel, Mr Noon [a] is not my favourite by a long chalk, but it does contain some amusing scenes, including one in which the eponymous hero, Gilbert Noon, is disturbed - though not quite discovered - in flagrante with his married lover, Johanna, in his room at the Wolkenhof, a small and respectable family hotel, where she is well-known, located as it is in the town where her parents, the Baron and Baroness von Hebenitz, have their home.

 

The lovers have just agreed to stay together and decided that they must write and inform her husband of this. She was wearing "a lovely dress of dull reddish cashmere" [151], but this is soon discarded. For although he is clearly anxious about the shitstorm that lay ahead for them once their affair was made public, she can't help noticing the "sombre fire of passion in his eyes" [151] and that's her cue to get naked: "She could soon abandon herself to passion and delicious pleasure" [152] no matter what trouble was in store.

 

However, just as he is enjoying her, and she him, there comes a loud knock at the door: 

 

"Johanna, in the arms of Gilbert, gave an awful start. He sat up and listened, with visions of husbands, police, incensed official Barons and what-not coursing through his mind.

      'Bang-bang-bang!' came the double knock. Whoever it was, they would have heard the voices of the guilty pair. The door-handle gave a little squeak of protest as the unknown horror tried it from outside. Luckily the door was locked.

      'Bang-bang-bang!' came the officious knock. And still dead silence in the room, where the guilty pair lay on the bed with beating hearts. 

      'See who it is,' whispered Johanna, pushing him from her.

      And then he saw her, in puris naturalibus, flee swiftly, white and naked, behind a curtain which hung across a corner, huddling there with her feet, and the tip of her shoulder, and then, as she stooped, that exquisite finale of Salome showing round and white behind the curtain [...]

      He was in no better plight than she: not a rag, not a stitch on him, and there he stood in the middle of the room listening to that diabolical knocking and vacantly watching the come and go of the exquisite tailpiece to Johanna, as she stooped to unravel her stockings.

      And why, under such circumstances, should she be putting on her grey silk stockings, and routing for her garters with rosebuds on them. Why oh why, in the shipwreck of nudity, cling to the straw of a grey silk stocking." [152-53] [b]

Eventually, wrapped in his double-breasted brown overcoat, Gilbert answers the door and deals with the hotel manageress who is looking for Johanna, denying all knowledge of the latter's whereabouts. When he closes the door, Johanna springs out from behind the curtain "in her grey silk stockings, rose-bud garters, and chambric chemise" [154]. 

 

Still wrapped in his brown overcoat, even though painfully aware of his thin hairy legs sticking out, Gilbert watched as Johanna, in something of a panic, performs a form of reverse striptease, pulling on her "lacey-white knickers, her pretty, open work French stays, her grey silk petty and her reddish dress" [154]. 

 

Before he can even blink, she is tying her shoe-laces and then had "only to poke her hair more or less under the dusky-lustrous feather toque, and fling the lace scarf over her shoulders, and she was ready" [154] to leave - which she does, with a quick goodbye, but not even a peck on the cheek for her lover. 

  

 

II. 

 

What I love about this scene - apart from the farcical elements which demonstrate that Lawrence had more of a sense of humour than many critics like to acknowledge - is the amount of detail we are given concerning Johanna's clothing, particularly her undergarments [c].

 

For whilst it's true that Gilbert notices her nudity and seems particularly fascinated with her posterior - which he finds exquisite - mostly he seems intrigued by her grey silk stockings and rosebud garters, not to mention her lacey-white knickers. This confirms Angela Carter's claim in 'Lorenzo the Closet Queen' that Lawrence was obsessed with the lingerie of his heroines, which he catalogues with a loving and fetishistic eye for detail [d].   

And so, readers of Lawrence's work familiar with Gudrun's brightly coloured stockings and Lady Chatterley's sheer silk knickers, can, thanks to the above scene, also claim intimate knowledge of Johanna Keighley's underwear, which will doubtless provide some of them with the greatest joy of all [e]. 

It is, I think, something of a shame that most women today, in this age of comfort and convenience, seem to prefer wearing snug-fitting cotton briefs from M&S, or hideous thongs, when they (and their male lovers) could have so much more fun putting on and taking off layers of elaborate underwear - there's a reason that the Edwardian period is also known as La Belle Époque ...      

 

Notes

 

[a] D. H. Lawrence, Mr Noon, ed. Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1984).  

      As the editor says in his Introduction: "This volume of the Cambridge edition of D. H. Lawrence is of unique interest; it presents for the first time a substantially new, largely unpublished text. Part I of Mr Noon will be familiar to readers who have consulted the volume A Modern Lover, published in 1934, and to those who have read it as collected in Phoenix II, published in 1968; but, Part II, which is more than two times as long, has never before been published." [xix]

      The material I quote here is from Part II. Page references given in the post are to the CUP edition. 

 

[b] The answer, of course, is because - like the Brangwen sisters - Johanna regards her stockings as precious; more so even than jewels. See note [e] below.

 

[c] I'm sure there will be readers not only unfamiliar with the actual items of undergarment worn by an Edwardian woman such as Johanna Keighley, but ignorant even with one or two of the terms used by Lawrence in the passage quoted from Mr Noon. For example, some might be asking: What's a chemise? The answer to this and other related questions can be found in the second part of an illustrated online essay on ladies' clothing fashions in 1908 by Gail Brinson Ivey: click here.        

      See also the post entitled 'Dressing The 1900s Woman - Edwardian Lingerie' (6 Feb 2020) on the excellent blog Sew Historically: click here.

 

[d] Angela Carter's essay 'Lorenzo the Closet Queen' can be found in Nothing Sacred, (Virago, 1992). I discuss this essay in a 2013 post which can be found here. 

 

[e] In Women in Love, Gudrun presents her sister with "three pairs of the coloured stockings for which she was notorious". As one might imagine, Ursula is rapturous to receive such a beautiful gift: "'One gets the greatest joy of all out of really lovely stockings'". 

      See D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 436. And see also my 2013 post discussing this scene, in which I examine why it is that - surprisingly - Lawrence condemns George Bernard Shaw as a crude and vulgar thinker for pointing out that it is often clothes that arouse our desire, not bare flesh: click here. 

 

Notes on 'The Ladybird' (Pt. 2)

If I were a little ladybird

And had four little wings

I'd fly to thee -

 

 

This post is a continuation of Notes on 'The Ladybird' (Pt.1): click here. 

 

 

V. 

 

And speaking of secret knowledge ... The Count, it turns out, subscribes to occultism and is a member of a secret society. One of his beliefs concerns the true (invisible) nature of fire and the blackness of the sun. As I have discussed this in a previous post, I won't go into details here [g]. 

 

Essentially, the Count's point is that, like fire, true love isn't white and ideal; it may look that way on the surface, but underneath it's dark; "a throbbing together in darkness" [180]. Daphne is unconvinced. Nevertheless, she could see the darkness in his eyes and perceived the "invisible, cat-like fire stirring deep inside them [...] coming towards her" [181]. And so she turns and hurries away. 

 

During the summer, she rather forgets about Count Dionys and remembers she has a husband; one who was shortly to return. Nevertheless, the Count's words have penetrated her unconscious: "So it was that in her own way she thought often enough of the Count's world inside-out." [181] And so it was she shivered when thinking of Basil, whose love had made her nerve-worn. 

 

She determined not to think of the Count and the secret love he offered: he was not merely an "impudent little fellow" [182], but a madman. Better off with Basil; "an adorable, tall, well-bred Englishman" [182] with a penchant for silk underwear. He might get on her nerves, but better that than the Count and his foreign unreality. 

 

"But still she used the Count's thimble." [183] Until, that is, she loses it (down the back of the sofa, as we shall see).

 

 

VI. 

 

In late Autumn, Daphne decides to visit the Count once more. She finds him collecting chestnuts and thinking to himself that "'the same power which put up the mountains could pull them down again'" [186], a thought that makes him happy. In other words, the Count has found his god at last: and he's a god of destruction who tears down the world of man as well as the mountains. 

 

Daphne thinks him foolish as well as perverse. He calls her a plucked white lily and tells her that he cares only about her invisible root - that's what he wishes to discover, though not with kisses, but with the hammer that beats in his heart. She again bids him farewell and takes her leave. "And henceforth she thought only of her husband, of Basil. She made the Count die out of her." [189] 

 

But when Basil returns to England and she hears his terribly cultured voice - "like cold blue steel" [190] - on the telephone, her heart "contracted with fear" [189] (which is never a great sign). When he arrives home, within moments he is on his knees and kissing her feet in amorous worship. Again, I have commented elsewhere on this scene, so won't discuss it here in any detail [h]. 

 

Needless to say, Daphne is a little frightened - almost horrified - but she was also "thrilled deep down to her soul" [193] and a little giddy with the sense of her own pale power: "She really felt she could glow white and fill the universe [...]" [193] 

 

While Daphne is semi-enjoying her new goddess status, Basil plonks himself on the sofa and pushes his hands "between the deep upholstery of the back and the seat" [193]. And lo and behold, he pulls out a plum - or, rather, Daphne's lost thimble, which seems to fascinate him almost as much as it does her. He questions her about it and is told the tale of Count Dionys. 

 

Then Basil returns to worshipping his wife - this time admiring her sacred white hands and wonderful Prosperine fingers [i], begging her to accept the sacrifice of himself (which sounds suspiciously like a euphemism and it's probably la petite mort that he desires, rather than actual death) [j]. 

 

Placed back on a pedestal and subject to Basil's adoration-lust, Daphne is soon feeling ill again. For alas, she was not the goddess he thought her. And of course she starts to dream about Count Dionys and "to yearn wistfully for him" [196]. So she decides, shortly before Christmas, to go visit him again - though this time accompanied by Basil. 

 

 

VII. 

 

Perhaps wishing to seem mysterious and full of the darkness that Count Dionys so loves, Daphne wears black furs and a black lace veil for her visit. She is worried, however, that he will still find her too modern in her beauty and effective loveliness. 

 

Uncertain whether the Count is mocking her with his compliments and flattering remarks, Daphne is sure of one thing - he doesn't like Basil: "Nay more, she could feel that the presence of her tall, gaunt, idealistic husband was hateful to the little swarthy man" [199], despite his polite manner. 

 

Strangely, however, Basil is fascinated by the Count. And before long Daphne is ignored by both men, as they exchange their philosophies of life: "She might just as well have been an ugly little nobody, for all the notice that was taken of her." [200] Nevertheless, she follows the argument between Basil and the Count - sympathetic to the latter, but agreeing with the former, whose words she believed to be true. 

 

In brief: Basil argues for love and the Count says there is something else; something unnameable beyond love (we know, of course, as readers of Lawrence, what this is: it's power and the so-called sacred responsibility of power as exercised by natural aristocrats). 

 

Daphne is not impressed by the Count's arguments, even though Basil finds what the latter says terribly amusing. And curiously enough, "it was now Basil who was attracted by the Count, and Daphne who was repelled" [204]. But if she now almost hates the Count, her grudge against her "white-faced, spiritually intense husband was sharp as vinegar" [205]. In all honesty, she feels let down by the pair of them - men!

 

What next? A gay romance? A queer threesome? No - that's not quite Lawrence's style. But Basil does invite the Count to stay with him and Daphne, at his in-laws mansion, for a fortnight before being shipped back to Austria. Of course, this was rather naively inviting trouble ... 

 

 

VIII. 

 

Whilst staying at her parents place, the house in which she was born, Daphne thinks with fondness of the working-people and regrets the fact that, ultimately, her consciousness "seemed to make a great gulf between her and the lower classes" [211]. She accepted this as a form of fate - even as her doom: "She could never meet in real contact anyone but a super-conscious finished being like herself: or like her husband [...]" [211] 

 

That said, there was the Count: he had something that was hot and invisible; "a dark flame of life that might warm the cold white fire of her own blood" [211]. However, whilst he stays at her home, she mostly avoids contact with him. In fact, all three - Daphne, Basil, and their queer guest - avoided one another as much as possible. And the days slipped by ... 

 

At night, when alone in his room and alone in his soul, the Count likes to sing "the old songs of his childhood" [212], in a small, high-pitched voice: "It was a curious noise: the sound of a man who is alone in his own blood: almost the sound of a man who is going to be executed." [212] 

 

One night, Daphne hears this strange "bat-like sound of the Count's singing to himself" [212]. And, even though unable to understand a word, the crooning made her forget everything. And so, after that first night, she listens out for the sound of his voice. Indeed, it became "almost an obsession with her" [212]; she had to hear him - and she had to respond to this call from the beyond that promised to transport her out of herself and out of her world. 

 

When the singing stopped, Daphne went to sleep; "a queer, light, bewitched sleep" [213]. This enchantment continues into the daytime: "She felt strange and light, as if pressure had been removed from around her [...] her feet felt so light, and her breathing delicate and exquisite" [213]. 

 

One night, the Count doesn't sing and Daphne is terrified lest the spell be broken and she is thrown back into her old life. She waits like one doomed throughout the following day. Happily, that night the singing resumes - and Daphne can resist no longer; she goes to his room, answering his peculiar call.

 

Whilst sitting outside his room and trying to find the courage to enter, a new song begins; the most terrible song of all, a kind of inhuman serenade: "It began with a rather dreary, slow, horrible sound, like death." [214] Still, this does the trick and Daphne knocks desperately on his door and pushes her way past the astonished figure of the Count when he answers, into the darkness of his room. 

 

There's an awkward silence as they sit together in the dark. If she remained more or less spellbound, he was genuinely a little embarrassed by her presence in his room and unsure what to do: 

 

"Then suddenly, without knowing, he went across in the dark [...] And he sat beside her on the couch. But he did not touch her. Neither did she move. The darkness flowed about them thick like blood, and time seemed dissolved in it. They sat with the small, invisible distance between them, motionless, speechless, thoughtless." [215] 

 

Lawrence continues, in his own unique manner: 

 

"Then suddenly he felt her fingertips touch on his arm, and a flame went over him that left him no more a man. He was something seated in flame [...] like an Egyptian king-god [...]" [216] 

 

Daphne slides to the floor and presses her face against his feet, her hair against ankles, and there she clung, crying, whilst he sat erect and motionless. Unable to offer her much of a future in this world, he promises that she will be his in the next life: 

 

"'In the dark you are mine. And when you die you are mine. But in the day, you are not mine, because I have no power in the day. In the night, in the dark, and in death, you are mine. [...] So don't forget - you are the night-wife of the ladybird [...]" [216-17] 

 

Is that really likely to satisfy a woman? I mean, it's nice to know you have someone waiting who wants you in the afterlife for all eternity. But that doesn't pay the bills and mostly it just seems an elaborate way for him to take his leave of her whilst, at the same time, making her feel - as Madonna would say - like a virgin / touched for the very first time [k]. 

 

 

IX.

 

After this, Daphne's face takes on a delicate stillness and purity, which even Basil notices. And this new innocence negates his ecstatic desire for her: "She was so still, like a virgin girl. And it was this quiet, intact quality of virginity in her which puzzled him most, puzzled his emotions and his ideas. He became suddenly ashamed to make love to her." [217-18] 

 

They decide to live more as brother and sister than man and wife from this point on. This suits Daphne, who has decided she belongs to the Count, but it also suits Basil: "The excitement of desire had left him, and now he seemed to see clear and feel true for the first time in his life." [218] 

 

The Count leaves, but not without giving another esoteric pep talk to Daphne: 

 

"'Don't forget me. Always remember me. I leave my soul in your hands and your womb. Nothing can ever separate us, unless we betray one another. [...] And never fail to believe in me. Because even on the other side of death I shall be watching for you. I shall be king in Hades when I am dead. And you will be at my side [...] since you are the wife of the ladybird." [220] 

 

One can't help wondering how many other women the Count has said this to ...? It seems a well-rehearsed speech to me.

 

And one can't help thinking that it's the kind of poisonous sweet nonsense which male cult leaders whisper into the ears of their female followers; one could easily imagine Charles Manson, for example, saying this to one of his devoted hippie girls. No wonder when he abandons Daphne, the Count laughs to himself. 

 

 

Notes

 

[g] Readers who are interested should see 'On the Scintillation of Being' (9 Jan 2018): click here. 

 

[h] Readers who are interested should see 'On the Transsexual Consummation of Foot Fetishism' (25 July 2013): click here. 

 

[i] For my thoughts on hand partialism, see the post of 27 Dec 2012: click here. 

 

[j] In many ways, Basil is similar to the character of Everard in Lawrence's novel Mr Noon: both men have a sensual nature which they disguise with their idealism; both like to kiss the feet of the woman they adore as a white goddess; and both are prepared to sacrifice themselves, if only they might receive their gratification first. See Mr Noon, ed. Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 191-92.

 

[k] Madonna, 'Like a Virgin', single release (31 Oct 1984) from the album of the same title (Sire Records, 1984), written by Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg. Click here to watch the official video, dir. Mary Lambert, on YouTube.