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  • Give Her A Pattern

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    Hassam Hussain
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    D.H. Lawrence argues that modern man fails to accept women as real human beings. Women constantly try to adapt themselves to men's theories and ideals of what women should be, which leads to hysteria when no pattern fits. Throughout history, different male types have produced different woman ideals, from the matron to the child-wife to the learned woman. Lawrence says the real tragedy is that while women need a pattern to follow, men provide abominable patterns that reduce women rather than accepting them as full human beings of the feminine sex.

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    D.H. Lawrence argues that modern man fails to accept women as real human beings. Women constantly try to adapt themselves to men's theories and ideals of what women should be, which leads to hysteria when no pattern fits. Throughout history, different male types have produced different woman ideals, from the matron to the child-wife to the learned woman. Lawrence says the real tragedy is that while women need a pattern to follow, men provide abominable patterns that reduce women rather than accepting them as full human beings of the feminine sex.

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    41 views5 pages

    Give Her A Pattern

    Uploaded by

    Hassam Hussain
    D.H. Lawrence argues that modern man fails to accept women as real human beings. Women constantly try to adapt themselves to men's theories and ideals of what women should be, which leads to hysteria when no pattern fits. Throughout history, different male types have produced different woman ideals, from the matron to the child-wife to the learned woman. Lawrence says the real tragedy is that while women need a pattern to follow, men provide abominable patterns that reduce women rather than accepting them as full human beings of the feminine sex.

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    Give her a pattern

    No category Today 7:41 am

    Give Her a Pattern, Part 1


    (English poet, novelist, and essayist D.H.
    Lawrence wrote frequently--and
    controversially--about marital and sexual
    relations. (In 1915, he was prosecuted for
    obscenity after the publication of his novel
    The Rainbow.) In "Give Her a Pattern," first
    published in 1929, he argues that modern
    man is "a fool" because of his failure to
    accept a woman as "a real human being.")

    The real trouble about women is that they


    must always go on trying to adapt
    themselves 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 she
    doesn’t quite know what to be, which
    pattern to follow, which man’s picture of
    woman to live up to.

    For, of course, just as there are many men in


    the world, there are many masculine
    theories of what women should be. But men
    run to type, and it is the type, not the
    individual, that produces the theory, or
    “ideal” of woman. Those very grasping
    gentry, the Romans, produced a theory or
    ideal of the matron, which fitted in very
    nicely with the Roman property lust.
    “Caesar’s wife should be above suspicion.”
    So Caesar’s wife kindly proceeded to be
    above it, no matter how far below it the
    Caesar fell. Later gentlemen like Nero
    produced the “fast” theory of woman, and
    later ladies were fast enough for everybody.
    Dante arrived with a chaste and untouched
    Beatrice, and chaste and untouched
    Beatrices began to march self-importantly
    through the centuries. The Renaissance
    discovered the learned woman, and learned
    women buzzed mildly into verse and prose.
    Dickens invented the child-wife, so
    child-wives have swarmed ever since. He
    also fished out his version of the chaste
    Beatrice, a chaste but marriageable Agnes.
    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 noble mothers, 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 new touch we added.
    Because young men are definitely
    frightened of the real female. She’s too risky
    a quantity. She is too untidy, like David’s
    Dora. No, let her be a boyish little thing, it’s
    safer. So a boyish little thing she is.

    There are, of course, other types. Capable


    men produce the capable woman ideal.
    Doctors produce the capable nurse.
    Business men produce the capable
    secretary. And so you get all sorts. You can
    produce the masculine sense of honour
    (whatever that highly mysterious 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 she hasn’t got a
    mind--she has. She’s got everything that
    man has. The only difference is that she
    asks for a pattern. Give me a pattern to
    follow! That will always be woman’s cry.
    Unless of course she has already chosen
    her pattern quite young, then she will
    declare she is herself absolutely, and no
    man’s idea of women has any influence
    over her.

    Now the real tragedy is not that women ask


    and must ask for a pattern of womanhood.
    The tragedy is not, even, that men give them
    such abominable patterns, child-wives,
    little-boy-baby-face girls, perfect
    secretaries, noble spouses, self-sacrificing
    mothers, pure women who bring forth
    children in virgin coldness, prostitutes who
    just make themselves low, to please the
    men; all the atrocious patterns of
    womanhood that men have supplied to
    woman; patterns all perverted from any real
    natural fulness of a human being. Man is
    willing to accept woman as an equal, as a
    man in skirts, as an angel, a devil, a
    baby-face, a machine, an instrument, a
    bosom, a womb, a pair of legs, a servant, an
    encyclopaedia, an ideal or an obscenity; the
    one thing he won’t accept her as, is a
    human being, a real human being of the
    feminine sex.
    sex

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