Give Her a Pattern

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Give Her a Pattern by D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

The real trouble about women is that they must always go on to adaptthemselves to men’s theories of women, as they always have done.When a woman is thoroughly herself, she is being what her type of man wants her to be. When a woman is hysterical it’s because shedoesn’t quite know what to be, which pattern to follow, which man’spicture of woman to live up to.

For, of course, just as there are many men in the world, there aremany masculine theories of what women should be. But men run totype, and it is the type, not the individual, that produces the theory, or“ideal” of woman. Those very grasping gentry, the Romans, produceda theory or ideal of the matron, which fitted in very nicely with theRoman property lust. “Caesar’s wife should be above suspicion.”–SoCaesar’s wife kindly proceeded to be above it, no matter how far belowit the Caesar fell. Later gentlemen like Nero produced the “fast” theoryof woman, and later ladies were fast enough for everybody. Dantearrived with a chaste and untouched Beatrice, and chaste anduntouched Beatrices began to march self-importantly through thecenturies. The Renaissance discovered the learned woman, andlearned women buzzed mildly into verse and prose. Dickens inventedthe child-wife, so child-wives have swarmed ever since. He also fishedout his version of the chaste Beatrice, a chaste but marriageableAgnes. George Eliot imitated this pattern, and it became confirmed.

The noble woman, the pure spouse, the devoted mother took the field,and was simply worked to death. Our own poor mothers were this sort.So we younger men, having been a bit frightened of our noblemothers, tended to revert to the child-wife. We weren’t very inventive.Only the child-wife must be a boyish little thing–that was the newtouch we added. Because young men are definitely frightened of thereal female. She’s too risky a quantity. She is too untidy, like David’sDora. No, let her be a boyish little thing, it’s safer. So a boyish littlething she is.

There are, of course, other types. Capable men produce the capable

woman ideal. Doctors produce the capable nurse. Business menproduce the capable secretary. And so you get all sorts. You canproduce the masculine sense of honour (whatever that highlymysterious quantity may be) in women, if you want to.

There is, also, the eternal secret ideal of men–the prostitute. Lots of women live up to this idea: just because men want them to.



And so, poor woman, destiny makes away with her. It isn’t that shehasn’t got a mind–she has. She’s got everything that man has. Theonly difference is that she asks for a pattern. Give me a pattern tofollow! That will always be woman’s cry. Unless of course she hasalready chosen her pattern quite young, then she will declare she is

herself absolutely, and no man’s idea of women has any influence overher.

Now the real tragedy is not that women ask and must ask for a patternof womanhood. The tragedy is not, even, that men give them suchabominable patterns, child-wives, little-boy-baby-face girls, perfectsecretaries, noble spouses, self-sacrificing mothers, pure women whobring forth children in virgin coldness, prostitutes who just makethemselves low, to please the men; all the atrocious patterns of womanhood that men have supplied to woman; patterns all pervertedfrom any real natural fullness of a human being. Man is willing to

accept woman as an equal, as a man in skirts, as an angel, a devil, ababy-face, a machine, an instrument, a bosom, a womb, a pair of legs,a servant, an encyclopedia, an ideal or an obscenity; the one thing hewon’t accept her as is a human being, a real human being of thefeminine sex.

And, of course, women love living up to strange patterns, weirdpatterns–the more uncanny the better. What could be more uncannythan the present pattern of the Eton-boy girl with flower-like artificialcomplexion? It is just weird. And for its very weirdness women likeliving up to it. What can be more gruesome than the little-boy-baby-face pattern? Yet the girls take it on with avidity.

But even that isn’t the real root of the tragedy. The absurdity, andoften, as in the Dante-Beatrice business, the inhuman nastiness of thepattern–for Beatrice had to go on being chaste and untouched all herlife, according to Dante’s pattern, while Dante had a cozy wife and kidsat home–even that isn’t the worst of it. The worst of it is, as soon as awoman has really lived up to the man’s pattern, the man dislikes herfor it. There is intense secret dislike for the Eton-young-man girl,among the boys, now that she is actually produced. Of course, she’svery nice to show in public, absolutely the thing. But the very youngmen who have brought about her production detest her in private andin their private hearts are appalled by her.

When it comes to marrying, the pattern goes all to pieces. The boymarries the Eton-boy girl, and instantly he hates the type . Instantly hismind begins to play hysterically with all the other types, nobleAgneses, chaste Beatrices, clinging Doras and lurid filles de joie . He isin a wild welter of confusion. Whatever pattern the poor woman tries to



live up to, he’ll want another. And that’s the condition of modernmarriage.

Modern woman isn’t really a fool. But modern man is. That seems tome the only plain way of putting it. The modern man is a fool, and the

modern young man a prize fool. He makes a greater mess of hiswomen than men have ever made. Because he absolutely doesn’tknow what he wants her to be. We shall see the changes in thewoman-pattern follow one another fast and furious now, because theyoung men hysterically don’t know what they want. Two years hencewomen may be in crinolines–there was a pattern for you!–or a beadflap, like naked negresses in mid-Africa–or they may be wearing brassarmour, or the uniform of the Horse Guards. They may be anything.Because the young men are off their heads, and don’t know what theywant.

The women aren’t fools, but they must live up to some pattern orother. They know the men are the fools. They don’t really respect thepattern. Yet a pattern they must have, or they can’t exist.

Women are not fools. They have their own logic, even if it’s not themasculine sort. Women have the logic of emotion, men have the logicof reason. The two are complementary and mostly in opposition. Butthe woman’s logic of emotion is no less real and inexorable than theman’s logic of reason. It only works differently.

And the woman never really loses it. She may spend years living up toa masculine pattern. But in the end, the strange and terrible logic of emotion will work out the smashing of that pattern, if it has not beenemotionally satisfactory. This is the partial explanation of theastonishing changes in women. For years they go on being chasteBeatrices or child-wives. Then on a sudden–bash! The chaste Beatricebecomes something quite different, the child-wife becomes a roaringlioness! The pattern didn’t suffice, emotionally.

Whereas men are fools. They are based on a logic of reason or aresupposed to be. And then they go and behave, especially with regardto women, in a more-than-feminine unreasonableness. They spendyears training up the little-boy-baby-face type, till they’ve got herperfect. Then the moment they marry her, they want something else.Oh, beware, young women, of the young men who adore you! Themoment they’ve got you they’ll want something utterly different. Themoment they marry the little-boy-baby face, instantly they begin topine for the noble Agnes, pure and majestic, or the infinite mother withdeep bosom of consolation, or the perfect business woman, or the lurid



prostitute on black silk sheets: or, most idiotic of all, a combination of all the lot of them at once. And that is the logic of reason! When itcomes to women, modern men are idiots. They don’t know what theywant, and so they never want, permanently, what they get. They wantcream cake that is at the same time ham and eggs and at the same

time porridge. They are fools. If only women weren’t bound by fate toplay up to them!

For the fact of life is that women must play up to man’s pattern. Andshe only gives her best to a man when he gives her a satisfactorypattern to play up to. But today, with a stock of ready-made, worn-outidiotic patterns to live up to, what can women give to men but thetrashy side of their emotions? What could a woman possibly give to aman who wanted her to be a boy-baby face? What could she possiblygive him but the dribblings of an idiot?–And, because women aren’tfools, and aren’t fooled even for very long at a time, she gives him

some nasty cruel digs with her claws, and makes him cry for motherdear!–abruptly changing his pattern.

Bah! men are fools. If they want anything from women, let them give women a decent,satisfying idea of womanhood–not these trick patterns of washed-out idiots.

BIOGRAPHY OF THIS ESSAY

On 6 December 1928 Nancy Pearn forwarded to Lawrence a cuttingsent by the editor of the Daily Express – ‘on AND WE MARRY THESEWOMEN! from one of the American magazines’; it was accompanied byan enquiry from the editor: ‘whether you [DHL] are willing to write aspecial article conveying some of these comments in a manner to suityourself ’. A few days later, on 12 December, Nancy Pearnacknowledged the arrival of Lawrence’s article initially entitled ‘Ohthese Women!’ Subsequently, on the typescript presumably sent tohim from Curtis Brown’s ofce, Lawrence altered the title to: ‘Give Hera Pattern’.

First to publish the article was the AmericanVanityFairinMay 1929,withthe title: ‘Woman in Man’s Image Concerning the Modern Male’sMotives in Creating a Satisfactory Role for Womankind’. Under the title‘WOMEN’, the Daily Express printed it on 19 June, two days after thepaper had called attention to the exhibition of Lawrence’s paintings inthe Warren Gallery with the observation that his technique was‘repellent enough, but the subjects of some of [the paintings] willcompel most spectators to recoil with horror.’



The article was accompanied by a photograph of the author whenyoung, and headlined:Excuse D. H. LAWRENCE, but he wishes to writeabout WOMEN – Once More

Mr. D. H. Lawrence the famous novelist, is ‘in the news’ this week in

connection with a much-discussed West End exhibition of paintings byhim. The exhibition marks his rst public appearance as an artist, buthis novels have often evoked storms of criticism and comment.Notcontent with that disingenuous introduction, the editor saw t to breakinto Lawrence’s text two lines before Lawrence’s use of ‘Because’ witha brief homily (typographically boxed) on that word, headed ‘HOW IS

YOUR ENGLISH?: The word BECAUSE is often wrongly used . . . Afteropening with THE REASON WAS or THE REASON WHY, the clausestating the reason must begin with THAT.’

For his own part the editor pedantically expanded Lawrence’s contractions such as

‘didn’t’ and ‘doesn’t’, and – like the editor of Vanity Fair – prudishly omitted referencesto the womb, lles de joie, the ‘lurid prostitute on black silk sheets’ and the like.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITER

D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) , English novelist, storywriter, critic, poet and painter,one of the greatest figures in 20th-century English literature. "Snake" and "HowBeastly the Bourgeoisie is" are probably his most anthologized poems.

David Herbert Lawrence was born on September 11, 1885, in Eastwood,Nottinghamshire, central England. He was the fourth child of a struggling coal miner

who was a heavy drinker. His mother was a former schoolteacher, greatly superior ineducation to her husband. Lawrence's childhood was dominated by poverty andfriction between his parents. He was educated at Nottingham High School, to whichhe had won a scholarship. He worked as a clerk in a surgical appliance factory andthen for four years as a pupil-teacher. After studies at Nottingham University,Lawrence matriculated at 22 and briefly pursued a teaching career. Lawrence'smother died in 1910; he helped her die by giving her an overdose of sleepingmedicine.

In 1909, a number of Lawrence's poems were published by Ford Max Ford inthe English Review . The appearance of his first novel, The White Peacock (1911),launched Lawrence into a writing career. In 1912 he met Frieda von Richthofen, theprofessor Ernest Weekly's wife and fell in love with her. Frieda left her husband andthree children, and they eloped to Bavaria. Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers appeared in 1913 and was based on his childhood . In 1914 Lawrencemarried Frieda von Richthofen, and traveled with her in several countries. Lawrence'sfourth novel, The Rainbow (1915), was about two sisters growing up in the north of England. Lawrence started to write The Lost Girl in Italy. He dropped the novel forsome years and rewrote the story in an old Sicilian farmhouse near Taormina in1920.



During the First World War Lawrence and his wife were unable to obtain passportsand were targets of constant harassment from the authorities. They were accused of spying for the Germans and officially expelled from Cornwall in 1917. The Lawrenceswere not permitted to emigrate until 1919, when their years of wandering began.

Lawrence's best known work is Lady Chatterly's Lover , first published privately inFlorence in 1928. It tells of the love affair between a wealthy, married woman, and aman who works on her husband's estate. The book was banned for a time in both UKand the US as pornographic. Lawrence's other novels from the 1920s include WomenIn Love (1920), a sequel to The Rainbow .

Aaron's Rod (1922) shows the influence of Nietzsche, and in Kangaroo (1923)Lawrence expressed his own idea of a 'superman'. The Plumed Serpent (1926) was avivid evocation of Mexico and its ancient Aztec religion. The Man Who Died (1929), isa bold story of Christ's Resurrection. Lawrence's non-fiction worksinclude Movements In European History (1921), Psychoanalysis And TheUnconscious (1922) and Studies In Classic American Literature (1923).

D.H. Lawrence died in Vence, France on March 2, 1930. He also gained posthumousrenown for his expressionistic paintings completed in the 1920s.

Women's Role in Society: D. H. Lawrence

For many years, women played a small role socially, economically, and politically.Because of this, many writers portray this role of women in their works of literature. D. H.Lawrence was the first great writer of the twentieth century to come from the workingclass. Much of his work deals with issues of class and society. His famous novels suchas Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover are about the position

of men and women in society. In “Give Her a Pattern,” from Phoenix II: UncollectedPapers of D. H. Lawrence, Lawrence criticizes men for not accepting women as realhuman beings of the feminine sex.

The feminist movement of Lawrence’s time continued to evolve becoming morepowerful. However, D. H. Lawrence purports a fact of life that “men are fools,” and thatwomen follow patterns men set for them. Men don’t know what they really want, sincemost times once they achieve something, they move on to improved things. A man hasthis perception of how he portrays the perfect woman or wife, yet once he finds a womanof his liking, he will pursue her until he is satisfied and then immediately begins to seeother women, which he now wants more. Women on the other hand are always looking

for the right type of “pattern’ to follow so that they become more attractive to men.Usually after marriage, the woman’s pattern falls to pieces because men begin to admireother patterns and therefore other women.

Lawrence believed women of his day were unable to make a choice without the directionof their men and they were unable to control their emotions. He states that women needto become stronger, more powerful, and more independent. There is always somethingwrong with the female character...

Give Her a Pattern

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