“Blutbrüderschaft” and “Urning”

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  • 「血の盟約」と「ウルニング」
  • Germanic Homosexual Emancipation in <i>Women in Love</i>
  • -『恋する女たち』におけるドイツ同性愛解放運動

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This essay studies the critical reception of Lawrence's representation, in Women in Love, of two different homoerotic relationships. The one between Birkin and Gerald is thought by some to suggest an “eternal conjunction” through a chivalric pledge of “Blutbrüderschaft.” The other between Loerke and Leitner is seen as degenerate and sodomitical. The relationship between the two Britons has been variously considered to be so physical as to degrade the novel, or so sublimated as to desexualize it. Edward Carpenter's view of “love” and “friendship” among “Urnings” permits us to interpret this relationship as an attempt at a German Romantic “friendship” which is sensual as well as spiritual. The negative characterization of the two Germans who fail to embody this ideal, and their exclusion, by its proponents, from the “eternal conjunction [blood brotherhood], ” is characteristic of the episteme influenced by the “medicalization of homosexuality” both in Germany and England at that time. A post-structuralist reading of the text opens the door to a non-judgemental, value-neutral view of these relationships. It leads us to conclude that they represent ambivalent attitudes towards homoeroticism, which were held in the early twentieth century. These are, in part, constructed using the discourse surrounding Germanic homosexual emancipation.

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