Jim Phelps
University of Zululand, South Africa
Gerald Crich and Repression
Gerald Crich most prominently embodies, both as an individual character and a representative phenomenon, the negative, destructive pole in the dualistic structure of Women in Love. There is an ambiguity, however, in the presentation of his character, and the actions that flow from it, which, if examined, reveals the complexity and roundedness of the critique of the social and economic conditions he personifies. In focusing too narrowly on his destructiveness, criticism has tended to overlook his positive potentiality, which is sympathetically portrayed. Without an adequate sense of what Gerald could have been, and why, and what the causes were in the defeat of his positive potential, not only has the tragic force of Gerald's downfall been underestimated, but the full impact of the novel has not been fully grasped. The paper, in exploring the way the novel shows how Gerald was repressed as a child, argues for new emphases in the interpretation of the novel and its critique of, and insight into, the complex nature of modernity.