Abstract
This paper offers a Derridian reading of D.H. Lawrence’s novel Women in Love, with excerpts from the novel’s prequel The Rainbow. Through Derrida’s ideas of difference and the imaginary origin, I explore the relationship between female reproductive potential and representation as means to a female sexual power, which Lawrence’s men attempt to destroy and subvert. By attacking realms of representation, like art, the novel’s male characters seek to dominate female reproductive power to assert patriarchal visions of modernity and modernism. These violent sexual dichotomies are found in the male characters’ relations to modern capitalism/colonialism and the modernist artistic project to “make it new.” Their masculine worldviews are perpetuated by consuming the death of representation, but they can never destroy the feminine cycle of reproductive potential and life.Copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (linked here). By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are available for wide dissemination at no cost to readers, with proper attribution (acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal), in educational and other non-commercial settings. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository, in a journal or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal. However, for undergraduates authoring a manuscript under the guidance of a faculty member or research mentor, we strongly encourage the student to discuss with the faculty mentor and the Editor if prior publication in the Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal will constrain future publication efforts in professional journals. To this end, all authors must submit a signed mentor consent form at the time of submission..