Page 144 - women-in-love

sciousness. The flavour of her slang was piquant to him.
Whether he would or not, she signified the real world to
him. He wanted to come up to her standards, fulfil her ex-
pectations. He knew that her criterion was the only one that
mattered. The others were all outsiders, instinctively, what-
ever they might be socially. And Gerald could not help it,
he was bound to strive to come up to her criterion, fulfil her
idea of a man and a human-being.
After lunch, when all the others had withdrawn, Her-
mione and Gerald and Birkin lingered, finishing their talk.
There had been some discussion, on the whole quite in-
tellectual and artificial, about a new state, a new world of
man. Supposing this old social state WERE broken and de-
stroyed, then, out of the chaos, what then?
The great social idea, said Sir Joshua, was the SOCIAL
equality of man. No, said Gerald, the idea was, that every
man was fit for his own little bit of a task—let him do that,
and then please himself. The unifying principle was the
work in hand. Only work, the business of production, held
men together. It was mechanical, but then society WAS a
mechanism. Apart from work they were isolated, free to do
as they liked.
‘Oh!’ cried Gudrun. ‘Then we shan’t have names any
more—we shall be like the Germans, nothing but Herr
Obermeister and Herr Untermeister. I can imagine it—‘I
am Mrs Colliery-Manager Crich—I am Mrs Member-of-
Parliament Roddice. I am Miss Art-Teacher Brangwen.’
Very pretty that.’
‘Things would work very much better, Miss Art-Teacher

144 Women in Love