D.H. Lawrence's narrators, sources of knowledge, and the problem of coherence

Criticism, Summer, 1995 by Michael Squires

A more pointed example of this kind of narratorial bonding occurs in the novel's second generation, when Anna and Will resist each other, she crying, he accusing:

"What are you crying for?" came the question again, in just

the same tone. And still there was silence, with only the sniff

of her tears.

His eyes glittered, and as if with malignant desire. She

shrank and became blind. She was like a bird being beaten

down. A sort of swoon of helplessness came over her. She

was of another order than he, she had no defence against

him. Against such an influence, she was only vulnerable, she

was given up. (143)

The sentence about Will's eyes holds special critical interest. Recast within Anna's focalization (as Lawrence might readily have done), the sentence would read: "To her his eyes glittered with malignant desire." The result? The rewritten sentence improves the passage's coherence since, as originally written, the words are the narrator's: it is he, not Anna, who interprets the glitter of Will's eyes,(24) which is viewed from outside Will's consciousness (hence as if with malignant desire). Since at this juncture the narrator does not offer certainty, he only records his own intuitive impression. Yet that impression, because it is followed by "She shrank and became blind," becomes implicitly part of Anna's focalization. Hence the incoherence. Gerald Prince says that "incoherent commentaries expressed by the narrating voice . . . cast doubt on the interpretive powers of the narrator."(25) A more useful way to view what Lawrence achieves is to see incoherence as part of the interpretation of the text--to see incoherence as a reflection of the idea that a character's conscience is trapped within a morally corrupt society. Ideologically, incoherence becomes the technical counterpart of entrapment.

Moreover, it is worth saying that the "as if" structure, by now a Lawrentian heuristic, becomes a central functioning unit of his imagination. It is a rhetorical device for regauging and reformulating what a character like Will expresses or what a character like Anna feels--not just more vividly, but in ways that offer clarification and illumination for the novel's readers. In passages of Free Indirect Style, each "as if" structure, simile, or metaphor generates a fresh layer of interpretive understanding--always at an angle to the character's focalization, forming usually a second-degree bond. For example, after Paul Morel looks into Miriam's eyes, these words follow: "He turned aside, as if pained" (210), where the "as if" changes the focalization from Paul to the narrator. And the sentence above, "She was like a bird being beaten down," which uses the narrator's simile, helps to form an interpretive layer that eventually opens a window onto the implied author's value system, which in Lawrence's fiction has often been difficult to assess. It is therefore too reductive to say about Lawrence's fiction that "the character and r;arrator together struggle for a language-in which to express their realisations."(26) Rarely do they struggle for, or in, the same language. A more precise and discriminating critical vocabulary is needed.