Animal Theme explored Explored

It is many pages into _Women in Love_ that you realize there are animals beneath the surface of these characters, raw beings ready to turn into tigers and beasts and lurch out in very uncontrolled and primitive ways. It\'s like reading Jane Austen with Freudian glasses-- the characters are polite, gentle types but the descriptions of them are raw and fleshy and full of animal drives and desires. Here, Gerald swimming in a lake: …

…before you can know what sensual reality is, lapse into unknowingness, and give up your volition. You\'ve got to do it. You\'ve got to learn not-to-be, before you can come into being. Whatever lessons you may learn or insights you may acquire from the two relationships developed in this book, it is the newness of their presentation and the lurking, psychological uncertainty that they portray which makes this book significant for our time.