-
Dubious
progress
in
D.
H.
Lawrence's
Bernard-Jean
Ramadier
1
Please
is
one
of
the
short
stories
in
the
collection
England
My
England
,
published
in
1922.
It
is
a
simple
anecdote
told
in
deceptively
simple
language;
a
young
inspector
of
the
tramway
system
seduces
all
the
conductresses
on
the
Midlands
line.
One
of
them,
Annie,
eventually
falls
for him on a special occasion, but she
wants more than a flirtation. As
she
becomes
more
and
more
possessive,
the
young
man
lets
her
down
and
picks
up
another girl: Annie then decides to take revenge.
As all the other
conductresses
more
or
less
consciously
bear
a
grudge
against
the
seducer,
they
set
a
trap
for
him;
one
evening
they
manage
to
attract
him
into
their
waiting-room at the depot where they
molest him. The girls' pretext for
harassing him is to make him choose one
of them for his wife: eventually
he
spitefully
chooses
Annie
who,
far
from
being
proud
and
contented,
falls
prey to conflicting
feelings. Freed at last, the inspector walks away
alone
in
the
night
while
the
girls
leave
the
depot
one
by
one
mute,
stupefied faces
1
?
2 Women's
struggle for their rights and a real social status
was
at times very violent; in August
an
(...)
2Yet, for
all its apparent simplicity, the plot is as
baffling for the
reader as their newly-
acquired identity is for the girls. There is more
than meets the eye in the story: it was
written during the First World
War
and
it
uses
the
moral
and
social
upheaval
brought
about
by
the
conflict,
insisting on the psychological
consequences of the change in women's
status resulting from employment and
following their fight to be given
social recognition and the
vote.
2
At the time, that new
social role of
women was regarded as a
form of progress by the male-dominated society
and
by
some
women,
as
Lawrence
makes
critically
clear.
The
girl
conductors
benefit from
their new
status in the
microcosm of the
tram system
before
becoming aware of their real
second-rate status when it comes to direct
human relationship. Living under the
delusion of being real actors
recognised
as
fully
responsible
human
beings,
they
are
brutally
shown
by
the
chief inspector's offhand attitude how wrong they
have been. Their
subsequent violent
reaction reveals their deep frustration and the
ambiguous
relationships
between
the
sexes,
marred
and
warped
by
progress.
3Like
the
girls,
the
miners
are
both
beneficiaries
and
victims
of
progress;
they form the
social background
of
the
story,
at the same
time
realistic
and
symbolical
as
the
introduction
of
the
short
story
shows.
The
miners'
economic
function
is
laden
with
an
implicit
symbolical
value;
extracting
coal
to
fuel
the
industry
is
like
raping
the
earth
by
plundering
its
riches,
which has far-
reaching consequences for human beings. German
mythology
provides a similar image of
agression when dwarves wrest gold from the
earth, turning the latter into a
wasteland where spirituality and
transcendentalism
are
dead.
In
< br>Please
,
the
incidental
effects
of progress on humanity are shown
through the Lawrentian central theme
of
the relationship between men and women. Here, the
weaker sex and the
stronger
sex
are
respectively
and
ironically
embodied
by
Annie
Stone
and
John Thomas Raynor.
4The
girl
conductors
are
young
hussies
(335)
who
bravely
face
the
dangers of the tram journeys and the male
passengers' advances; as
such,
they
belong
to
a
different
class
of
women
whose
job
is
exceptional:
themselves declare, with
pride, is entirely conducted by
girls
Such a positive and indirectly
self-congratulatory statement is
immediately tempered with the grimly
humorous description of the girls,
tranformed into hybrids:
In
their
ugly
blue
uniform,
skirts
up
to
their
knees,
shapeless
old
peaked
caps
on their heads, they have all the sang-froid of an
old
non-commissioned officer. (335)
?
3 In
the
description
of
Tavershall,
went
by
ugly,
ugly,
ugly
Lady Chatterley's
Love
(...)
5One of
Lawrence's key-words
—
ugly
3
—
is used here to
describe the
devalued
official
uniform
worn
by
the
girls,
just
as
the
word
is
repeated
to
stigmatise
the
industrial
landscape
crossed
by
the
tram
in
alliterative
phrases
(
ugly
villages,
little
ugly
place
of
industry,
334).
Resembling transvestites in their ugly
uniforms, the conductors retain
only
a
bawdy
sort
of
feminity
with
their
up
to
their
knees.
They
are
the drivers' fit counterparts; the latter are
service:
cripples
and
hunchbacks
(334)
who
compensate
for
their
physical
deficiencies by
taking foolish risks while others, effeminate,
forward in terror.
deep
imbalance, a defect reinforced by the chaotic
rhythm of the syntax
in the long
opening paragraphs of the short story. They lack
the
which
characterizes
the
girls,
as
if
they
might
just
as
well
swap jobs
with them. A parallel can be drawn between the
drivers' loss
of manhood and the
conductresses' loss of womanhood. Lawrence makes
it
clear that the price to pay for
social progress is the loss of gender
differentiation:
the
girls
assume
a
new
authority,
which
turns
them
into
sham soldiers
(
sailor-like behaviour:
this
roving
life
aboard
the
car
gives
them
a
sailor's
dash
and
recklessness.
What matter
how they behave when the ship is in port? Tomorrow
they will
be aboard again. (336)
6Annie Stone is one of them and her
name, which is evocative of a hard,
mineral substance, is in keeping with
her inflexible, adamant way of
asserting her brand new soldier-like
authority. Lawrence ironically
insists
on
the
girl's
commitment
to
her
job
through
tapinosis,
referring
to
the
Greek
battle
of
the
gates
step
of
that
tram-car
is
her
Thermopylae.
between men and
women, the young inspector John Thomas Raynor is
introduced
as
a
central
device
to
the
meaningful
melodrama
that
gradually
develops.
conquests make him an object for
scandal; always on the lookout for
conductors
(
old
flock,
340).
This
vocabulary
aims
at
revealing
his
simplistic approach to his relationship
with his subordinates; he is
reduced to
a shallow figure of a man, meant to embody a male-
dominated
system that gives women the
outward attributes of authority within the
limits of the tram car and under man's
supervision. Annie's personality
is
more complex; she has two faces, a superficial one
on board the tram
and
a
deep,
instinctive
one
outside
the
system.
Impervious
to
one
another
in the first half of the short story,
the two identities then begin to
overlap.
As
a
conductor
she
takes
her
job
seriously,
which
increases
her
natural
shrewishness
and
consequently
she
first
adopts
the
same
attitude
with John Thomas Raynor as with the
other male passengers:
was something of
a Tartar, and her sharp tongue had kept John
Thomas at
arm's
length
for
many
months
(336),
before
allowing
a
gradual
complicity,
both intimate and distant to develop
between them:
In
this
subtle
antagonism
they
knew
each
other
like
old
friends,
they
were
as shrewd with one
another almost as man and wife. (337)
?
4 See
the
use
of
336
and
341,
which
echoes
p. 335
7Each
of
them
knows
the
rules
of
the
game
and
plays
them
on
board
the
tram
within the frame of a relationship
superficially liberalised by their
respective functions and their young
age
4
; however, Annie's
feminine
instincts and impulse are
still there, to be given full play on a fit
occasion.
?
5 Italics mine.
8There is a
drastic change of attitude between Annie-the-
conductor and
the girl who has a night
off and goes alone to the November fun fair.
Despite
the
decline
in
brilliance
and
luxury,
(337)
many
people
are
there
for entertainment, and the general illusory,
transient atmosphere
of the event is
indicated by the expression
substitutes
hostility is
suggested by the expressions
and
drizzling
darkness
(338)
introducing
and
closing
the
fun
fair
scene, the place, for
all its shabbiness, is a fit place for a love
encounter; furthermore,
fun.
rules
which
at
the
fun
fair
define
the
status
of
men
and
women;
the
latter
resume their
traditional passive attitude, whereas men assert
their
long-established economic
superiority. Annie is no longer the woman in
charge;
she
has
left
her
uniform
to
don
her
best
clothes,
more
appropriate
in this place where it is advisable to
observe a ritualistic form of
behaviour
to
be
in
right
style
(337),
which
is
in
fact
an
intimation
of
submissiveness.
The
new
quality
of
the
relationship
between
Annie
and
John Thomas is emphasized by the
repetition of
roundabouts
were
veering
round
5
, and the fair, despite its sham,
allows a re-enactment of
the
real positions
of men and
women in society:
John
Thomas made her stay on for the next
round
. And therefore she
could
hardly for shame repulse him when
he put his arm
round
her and
drew her
a little nearer to him, in a
very warm and cuddly manner. (337)
?
6 J.
Chevalier
et
A.
Gheerbrant,
Dictionnaire
des
symboles,
Paris:
Laffont, 1995, p.
962.
9John Thomas's permissive
attitude, accepted by Annie as a matter of
course,
is
an
implicit
denial
of
the
reality
of
the
social
progress
giving
women authority and autonomy. The
conformist rules at the Statutes Fair
are those of the society of that time:
men pay for women, thus resuming
in
civil activities the domination temporarily handed
over to women in
the tram service. In
their
Dictionnaire des
symboles
, Chevalier and
Gheerbrandt see the conductor as a
figure of the impersonal self, both
a
judge and a sanction whose function evokes
strictness and clockwork
precision,
while the ticket suggests a give and take
deal.
6
In that
symbolical
reading,
the
title
Please
announces
the
girls'
deep
desire
for
real
reciprocity
in
their
relationship
with
men;
in
the
reality
of
their daily routine aboard the tram, because they
embody regulation,
the conductors'
consideration. As a conductor, you are
handed the ticket whereas as a
merry-
go-round rider you have to hand over the ticket or
token. On the
Dragons, Annie is
completely passive because she has no direct part
in
the exchange; her partner pays for
the round and hands the ticket over,
thus
buying
the
girl's
complaisance:
Thomas
paid
each
time,
so
she
could but be
complaisant.
?
7
L'Eau et les rêves,
Paris: José Corti, 1974, p.
159.
10In this budding
affair, both of them find what they were looking
for
in an egocentric way; their
flirtation does not imply love as hinted by
the use of
the contacts
remain shallow and go no further than kisses on
the lips,
that
.
7
Their
attraction
for
one
another
is
genuine
and
uncomplicated
at
first:
liked
John
Thomas
a
good
deal.
She
felt
so
rich
and
warm
in
herself
whenever
he was near
soft,
melting
way
in
which
she
could
flow
into
a
fellow,
as
if
she
melted
into
his
very
bones,
was
something
rare
and
good,
(339)
but
that
sensual
convergence,
which
seems
to
announce
a
future
harmonious
development,
is
only momentary. John
Thomas and Annie, although momentarily brought
together,
remain
poles
apart;
their
affair
is
doomed
as
their
symbolical
positions
on
the
wooden
horses
makes
clear.
That
merry-go-round
(open
and
lit, contrary to the
dragons and the cinema) is a mechanistic
representation of the world and
society; on it each one instinctively
finds
his
or
her
place:
sat
sideways,
towards
him,
on
the
inner
horse
circular
movement
(
comes
again
twice),
but
while
Annie
sits
near
the
centre,
John
Thomas
chooses
a
horse
on
the
outer
edge
of
the
platform,
to perform
eccentric antics on it:
Round
they
spun
and
heaved,
in
the
light.
And
round
he
swung
on
his
wooden
steed,
flinging one leg across her mount, and perilously
tipping up and
down, across the space,
half lying back, laughing at her. (338)
11Spatial position and behaviour are
directly linked: Annie's quiet
side-
saddle riding contrasts sharply with the man's
eccentricity. The
girl is concerned
about her appearance, (
one
side
hat-pins for her, thus re-enacting
primitive man's gift-giving to his
female companion. This is only,
however, superficial behaviour, for he
intends
to
preserve
his
marginality.
He
does
not
want
to
enter
the
circle
of a complete
sentimental relationship, characterised by
possession and
mechanical circularity:
all-round
individual to her
8
Cf
.
Lady
Chatterley's Lover
,
op.
cit.
, ch. XIV, p. 219.
?
9
Women in Love
,
op. cit.
, chapitre III, p.
46.
?
12The
lovers are not mere anecdotal characters: they are
given
significance by Lawrence's irony
and use of onomastics. Like Annie, the
inspector's
function
and
name
mark
him
out;
he
has
authority
over
the
girl
conductors, he has
neither a
cripple nor a hunchback, unlike the drivers, which
makes him
desirable.
As
for
his
name
—
John
Thomas
Raynor
—
the
reader's
attention
is attracted by
the
first part
of
it with reference to
Lady
Chatterley's
Lover
,
8
where the
same
used by
Mellors to designate
his
penis. Fully exploited in the novel,
the sexual connotation of the name
is
used here to suggest that the young inspector is
only a regressed
predecessor of the
game-keeper and his natural, blooming phallus,
which
is confirmed by the author's
spelling out that the young man is
called John Thomas, except sometimes,
in malice, Coddy
explicit
nickname
given
to
the
ladykiller
is
a
diminishing
alteration
of
Yet,
John
Thomas
wants
to
keep
his
status
of
object
of
desire
and
as
Annie
becomes more and more
possessive, he shies away from further involvment
in
a
love
story;
after
the
parallelism
of
the
first
feelings
(
liked
John Thomas,
did
not
want
a
mere
nocturnal
presence,
Thomas
intended
to
remain
a nocturnal
presence
sexual gratification to reach a
complete relationship reconciling the
diurnal and nocturnal phases of human
personality:
consider him a person,
a man; she
wanted to take
an intelligent interest
in
him, and to have an intelligent
response.
terminology, Annie is then
developing her
conscious
ego,
and
by
developing
the
latter,
she
causes
her
instinct
for
possession to grow:
desire
is
similar
to
that
of
Hermione
in
Women
in
Love
,
as
Birkin
has
it:
want
to
clutch
things
and
have
them
in
your
power
9
and
it
is
linked
with the repetition
of the name of the fair in which the norm refused
by
John
Thomas
is
inscribed;
Statutes
connotes
law,
regulation,
code,
and more precisely
marriage, which remains unspoken up to the
dialogue
between the man, Annie, and
Muriel Baggaley:
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