Each of us has two selves. First is this body which is vulnerable and never quite within our control. The body with its irrational sympathies and desires and passions, its peculiar direct communication, defying the mind. And second is the conscious ego, the self I KNOW I am.

The self that lives in my body … has such strange attractions, and revulsions, and it lets me in for so much irrational suffering, real torment, and occasional frightening delight.

—D. H. Lawrence, “On Being a Man”

The theme of male violence against women runs through many Lawrentian fictions. Among his novels it is present in Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, The Lost Girl, and The Plumed Serpent. It also runs through some of Lawrence's shorter works: “A Sick Collier” (1913), “The White Stocking” (1913), “The Primrose Path” (1913), “The Princess” (1925), “The Blue Moccasins” (1928), “None of That” (1928), The Escaped Cock [“The Man Who Died”] (1928); all these are tales in which women are either said or shown to be the target of male bullying, physical violence, and even rape. One ought to add to the list the story which this essay will examine: “Samson and Delilah” (1917).¹

When dealing with those Lawrence texts in which male violence against women is thematized, some critics have not paid sufficient attention to how the subject of women and sexual violence is represented. This paper aims to fill in this lacuna by examining “Samson and Delilah,” a story which constitutes an appropriate fictional terrain for the exploration of characteristically Lawrentian narrative techniques of representation. In what follows, the main emphasis will fall upon two particularly difficult narrative functions in Lawrence's fiction: point of view and narrative voice.² What I intend to demonstrate is that in order to understand the ideological implications of the story, one needs to be especially aware of the shifting modes of representation which characterize it.

“Samson and Delilah” is not just a psychological narrative; it is also a twofold domestico-political story. On the one hand, there is the institutional narrative of a wife's resistance to her husband's matrimonial rights; on the other, the suprainstitutional story about female opposition to male claims within a dominant patriarchal order. These narrative strands complicate further in the light of the Biblical title that frames them.

Like the earlier “Delilah and Mr. Bircumshaw” (written in 1912; published in 1940), “Samson and Delilah” borrows from the Samson narrative in the Bible. However, in contrast with Mr. Bircumshaw's mock incarnation of the defeated Biblical Samson, Willie Nankervis in “Samson and Delilah” remains the powerful Samson, even after being temporarily defeated; Willie—like Samson in Christian typology—triumphs in defeat.

Willie Nankervis, however, does not merely stand out as Christian type. Actually, as Virginia Hyde remarks, Lawrence very often “[taps] into the archetype through the [Biblical] type; that is, he often takes up a typological figura to diffuse it, expanding it dynamically into a universal dimension” (40). Such would be the case with Willie, a character who, in so being tacitly connected with some mythical embodiments of fertility, seemingly endows the story with archetypal import.³ One could venture to suggest that it is the very coexistence of the archetypal with the literal that makes the ending of “Samson and Delilah” rather disturbing. In effect, whatever the archetypal nature of Willie, the fact remains that one is literally presented in the end with Mrs. Nankervis's acquiescence to a bullying husband.

Unsurprisingly, the story has provoked the hostile reaction of some critics. Gilbert and Gubar, for example, object to Lawrence's presumed celebration of male “sexual authority” and “female defeat” (38) as the story comes to an end. True, the woman appears to submit to her husband, but only when the end is considered from the husband's viewpoint. What both critics fall short of apprehending is the tension which arises in this particular ending from the incorporation of not just one, but two viewpoints: the husband's and the wife's. Once one realizes this characteristic double-sidedness, the story can be seen to accommodate not merely the power struggle between husband and wife, but also the battle between the two essential selves of the woman (social/sexual). Furthermore, in so incorporating both viewpoints the narration illuminates the danger that may arise when woman's sexual liberation is not appropriately matched by man's relinquishment of an anachronistic conceptualization of woman. Therefore, in order to comprehend the woman's story and its political implications, one must attend to the different viewpoints from which the story emerges.

From the outset, the narration fluctuates between the narrator's focalization on the male protagonist and the latter's perception of the surrounding landscape. The sense of immediacy which this opening creates is characteristic of other Lawrence stories. One recalls, for example, the opening of “Fanny and Annie” (1919), in which one is positioned, from the very first line, within Fanny's angle of vision as she looks through the window of the carriage in which she is traveling and catches sight of Harry among the crowd waiting on the platform. It is also reminiscent of the opening of “Odour of Chrysanthemums” (1911; re-written in 1914), where one is at once situated within Elizabeth Bates's mind as she watches the miners pass by. Finally, it resembles the beginning of “The Primrose Path” (1913), where one is made to follow the movements of a man as he comes out of Victoria station searching for a cab; almost immediately, the narration plunges into his mind, from which the reader must apprehend the surrounding setting.

Apart from the sense of propinquity which all these beginnings create, they all incorporate a narrator whose tone is remarkably grave, non-judgmental, and rather conjectural. This helps create the impression in all these stories that their narrators are themselves inhabitants of the fictional realms they present. In the case that occupies us now, it also heightens the feeling that the traveler in question is as much a stranger to the narrator who presents him as he is to the reader at this stage:

A man got down from the motor-omnibus that runs from Penzance to St. Just-in-Penwith. …

The man … went his way unhesitating, but looked from side to side with cautious curiosity. …

He tramped steadily on, always watchful with curiosity. He was a tall, well-built man, apparently in the prime of life … he leaned forwards a little as he went … like a man who must stoop to lower his height. …

Now and again short … figures of Cornish miners passed him, and he invariably gave them goodnight, as if to insist that he was on his own ground. He spoke with the west-Cornish intonation … he seemed a little excited and pleased with himself, watchful, thrilled, veering along in a sense of mastery and of power in conflict.

(108)

The narrator's suppositional statements about this man, together with the title that frames the narrative, contribute to establishing a connection between the yet unknown traveler and the Biblical Samson. At the same time, they help create a specific horizon of expectations vis-à-vis future events. But more importantly, the narrator's similes serve to endow this character with an intimidating demeanor, at once imminently bellicose and domineering.

Soon afterwards the narration dives into the stranger's mind as he arrives at the “Tinners' Rest.” This is important in view of the man's apprehension of the inn's landlady: “The lamp was burning, a buxom woman rose from the white-scrubbed deal table” (109). Such is the first picture we get of the female protagonist, one which at once foregrounds the man's sensual perception of the woman's sexuality. Yet the narration does not linger on her and swiftly shifts to represent the woman's visualization of the stranger himself:

She had noticed the man: a big fine fellow, well dressed, a stranger. But he spoke with that Cornish-Yankee accent she accepted as the natural twang among the miners.

The stranger put his foot on the fender and looked into the fire. He was handsome, well-coloured, with well-drawn Cornish eyebrows and the usual dark, bright, mindless Cornish eyes. He seemed abstracted in thought. Then he watched the card-party.

(109)

This extract directly articulates Mrs. Nankervis's perception of Willie and, therefore, ought to be taken not primarily for what it reveals about the man, but for what it unveils about the perceiver. Like the stranger's earlier visualization of her, Mrs. Nankervis's appraisal of him exposes at once a similar physical attraction towards him. True, her attraction also owes to her vague intuition of a familiar air about him. In spite of this intuitive feeling, however, the woman (or the reader for that matter) does not know the real identity of the man at this stage.

Interestingly, the narration swiftly slips again into the man's field of vision:

The woman was buxom and healthy, with dark hair and small, quick brown eyes. She was bursting with life and vigour, the energy she threw into the game of cards excited all the men, they shouted, and laughed, and the woman held her breast, shrieking with laughter.

(109)

Considering the man's perception of her in the light of the narrator's earlier portrayal of him (a man “in the prime of life”), the narration would seemingly prepare the ground for an imminent sexual encounter between both characters. Actually, as the narrative advances, the narration increasingly appears to entreat us to regard any eventual sexual meeting between the two as the natural conclusion:

“Oh my, it'll be the death o' me,” she panted. “Now come on, Mr Trevorrow, play fair. Play fair, I say, or I s'll put the cards down.”

“Play fair! Why who's played unfair!” ejaculated Mr Trevorrow. “Do you mean t'accuse me, as I haven't played fair, Mrs Nankervis?”

“I do. I say it and I mean it. Haven't you got the Queen of Spades?—Now come on, no dodging round me. I know you've got that queen, as well as I know my name's Alice.”

(109-10)

Brief as it is, this dialogue presents a woman who breaks patriarchal stereotypes of passive femininity; apart from the fact of her exceptionally being the licensee of the pub and the barmaid in what is clearly a predominantly male environment, she represents herself as a potential fighter ready to confront any man who may attempt to take advantage of her. Like the stranger himself (108), she insists on being on her own ground. This unorthodox image needs to be borne in mind; considered in conjunction with the previous instance of represented perception, one could be led to envision a smooth physical reunion of the pair. In retrospect, however, the narration will prove to be immensely deceptive at this point.

Shortly afterwards, the woman disappears into the kitchen and the narration does not follow her there. Instead, one is compelled to remain with the stranger. This spatial constraint is crucial too, in the sense that it now bars any occasion to fathom the rationale of the woman's subsequent attitudinal turn against the man. (Interestingly, a similar spatial constraint occurs when Willie is thrown out of the pub; there, as here, the narration hinders any insight into the woman's mind, thus avoiding any explicit justification of her decision to unlock the door.) The crux of the matter is that in so keeping her mind out of reach the narration becomes notably equivocal.

One needs to bear in mind that Lawrence fictions characteristically force the reader continually to reconsider any previous assumption in the course of the reading process, be it with regard to the characters or the possible import of the story. In this respect, “Samson and Delilah” is a good illustrative example. In effect, following Mrs. Nankervis's reappearance on the stage, the narration draws away from the representational mode that characterizes the first part of this narrative and hands the narrative over to the narrator. As the narration falls upon the narrator, the latter becomes increasingly manipulative.

On the surface, the narrator merely reports the characters' vocal tones when they address each other or their external movements. This reporting, however, is not as innocently objective as it may seem:

The landlady darted looks at him from her small eyes, minute by minute the electric storm swelled in her bosom, as still he did not go. She was quivering with suppressed, violent passion, something frightening and abnormal. She could not sit still for a moment. Her heavy form seemed to flash with sudden, involuntary movements as the minutes passed by, and still he sat there, and the tension on her heart grew unbearable. She watched the hands of the clock move on.

The landlady sat behind the bar fidgeting spasmodically with the newspaper. She looked again at the clock. At last it was five minutes to ten.

(112)

This excerpt concurrently modulates the narratorial voice and the woman's thoughts. The articulation of the woman's thoughts foregrounds her mounting disquietude at the stranger's presence. Yet in providing such a limited insight, the passage obstructs any possible explanation of the woman's anxiety. The result is that she manifestly emerges as a purely hysterical woman. But just as her behavior remains thoroughly inscrutable at the level of self-representation, it is accounted for by the narrator's discourse.

Adopting the posture of a recording camera, the narrator seemingly relates the woman's external bearing. Looking closely into the discourse of this objective recorder, however, it soon becomes clear that the recording is not as innocent as it first appears. One notices, to begin with, the connection which this narrating instance overtly establishes between the woman's “passion” and her own physique (her “[swelling] bosom”). Then, there is the sexually overloaded lexicon that pervades the narrator's portrayal to be taken into account (the “quivering,” the “suppressed, violent passion,” the “involuntary movements,” her “spasm[s]”). Finally, one cannot overlook the imagery which this supposedly objective narrator employs, that is to say, not just physical, but natural: she is overcome by an “electric storm.” Everything in the narrator's discourse would point to the woman's conscious struggle to suppress her anger as ultimately disguising the woman's repression of sexual desire. Furthermore, one is enticed into perceiving her as an unnatural woman (“frightening and abnormal”) because she unconsciously denies her natural (sexual) self. Therefore, the narration at this point presents as natural any potential release of the woman's sexuality, or to be more precise, it makes her later acceptance of this stranger as her sexual mate natural. But as it turns out, this mate is the husband who deserted her fifteen years ago.

At the point at which the identity of the stranger is unveiled, the passage I have just examined comes forth in a different light; this is not so much a hysterical woman, but a woman who is distressed by the unexpected presence of the husband who abandoned her. This unexpected revelation does not, however, erase the narrative which the narrator has already woven in: the story of Mrs. Nankervis struggling against her own sexuality. Rather, the latter conflates the former so that, hereafter, two different stories co-exist: the story of the woman and the story of the wife. Furthermore, both stories are interlaced on two different levels; while the story of the deserted wife resisting her bullying husband is brought forth at the level of dramatic events, the parallel story of the woman emerges at the level of narratorial discourse and represented consciousness.

After this rather equivocating passage, the narration becomes predominantly dramatic. This shift endows “Samson and Delilah” with paradigmatic force. In effect, it is a shift which also occurs in other Lawrence stories (see, for instance, “Hadrian” and “Tickets Please”). In “Samson and Delilah,” the effect of the shift is twofold: it offers the reader the opportunity to get a clearer picture of what has been until now the rather shadowy figure of the stranger and, more importantly, sheds new light, not just on the woman protagonist, but also on the community to which she herself belongs and on the way she relates to it.

At the level of direct representation, the narration verifies the exactitude of Mrs. Nankervis's earlier utterance: indeed, she does not allow any man, least of all her husband, to “dodge around her” (110). Not even when physical confrontation is involved does this woman cringe. Instead, she actively partakes in the fight that ensues, even undertaking the leading role:

And suddenly she flung her arms round him, hung on to him with all her powerful weight, calling to the soldiers:

“Get the rope boys, and fasten him up. Alfred—John, quick now—”

(117)

In spite of all, Mrs. Nankervis is not such a nonconformist. On the contrary, she still adheres to conventional moral standards:

“Are we going to stand it, boys?—Are we going to be done like this, Sergeant Thomas, by a scoundrel and a bully as has led a life beyond mention, in those American mining-camps, and then wants to come back and make havoc of a poor woman's life and savings, after having left her with a baby in arms to struggle as best she might?—It's a crying shame if nobody will stand up for me—a crying shame—!”

(116; italics in the text)

In this address Mrs. Nankervis not only conveys her outrage at her husband's desertion; more significantly, she invokes morality in the phrase “a life beyond mention.” Actually, this will not be the only time Mrs. Nankervis censures her husband on moral grounds. Later, for example, she appeals again to public opinion: “‘You don't think I've not heard of you, neither, in Butte City and elsewhere’” (120). No less pertinent is her reaction and rejoinder when Willie retorts that he has heard about her too:

She drew herself up.

“And what lies have you heard about me?” she demanded superbly.

“I dunno as I've heard any lies at all—‘sept as you was getting on very well, like.”

(120)

This dialogue evokes the moral pressure that the social community of this fictional world exerts upon its inhabitants. In fact, it harks back to the world of “Tickets Please,” specifically to the “scandal” about John Thomas “in half a dozen villages” (England, My England 36). In Mrs. Nankervis's world, as in John Thomas's, the private lives of individuals are under constant moral surveillance.⁴ The key point is that Mrs. Nankervis herself shows no resistance to this moral society. She may be a landlady and a barmaid; and she may call herself Alice instead of Mrs. Nankervis at the beginning of the story (120), thus appearing to deny her married status. But as her speech elucidates, for over fifteen years she has been the faithful Mrs. Nankervis—and not Alice. She has lived according to moral customary expectations on principle.

It is noteworthy that while the surface of the story narrates the wife's fight against her bullying husband, the narrator subliminally construes the story of the woman shedding her social/moral carapace and concurrently recovering her natural self. This metamorphic process begins precisely at the moment in which the battle starts; after the man has stated that he is stopping at the inn for the night, the narrator reports that she “Involuntarily … shut the door, and advanced like a great, dangerous bird” (113). This is only the first of a tripartite chain of similes which the narrator gradually weaves in. A second matching simile summons shortly afterwards another wild animal, this time an earthly one: “Her small, tawny-brown eyes concentrated in a point of vivid, sightless fury, like a tiger” (114). Finally, coinciding with the moment in which the woman embraces the man during the struggle, the narrator compares her to a “a cuttle-fish wreathed heavily upon him” (117). At the moment of touch the woman is seen to incarnate three elemental substances: water (fish), earth (tiger), air (bird). Significantly, the element which is so conspicuously absent at this point—fire—will be no less manifestly present in the last scene.

Before turning to this denouement one more observation needs to be made. Subsequent to the completion of such a natural tableau, the narration focuses on the woman as she herself focuses on her defeated husband:

The woman looked at the prostrate figure, the strong, straight limbs, the strong back bound in subjection, the wide-eyed face that reminded her of a calf tied in a sack in a cart, only its head stretched dumbly backwards.

(118)

This is a peculiar perception, especially taking into consideration that it is usually women who, in sexist discourses, are perceived by men as cattle/meat. One recalls, for example, John Thomas's conception of women as livestock grazing in “pastures” in “Tickets Please” (England, My England 39); or Cuesta's thinking of Ethel in terms of “meat” in “None of That” (The Complete Short Stories of D. H. Lawrence 715). But more significant is Mrs. Nankervis's sexual attraction towards her husband: just as the narrator subliminally constructs the natural woman, the narration draws attention to the woman's fascination at the man's “strong, straight limbs,” as if to suggest that her sexual nature has finally displaced her customary self.

We then reach the end of the tale. In the absence of witnesses, the woman recognizes the man as her husband and tackles the question of his desertion. One notices the almost total withdrawal of the narrator from the stage at this point; but limited as the narrator's comments are, they are still paramount. In effect, whenever this narrator intervenes it is mainly to bring into prominence the woman's fear of her husband.

The subject of fear first emerges at the level of represented consciousness:

Her anger stirred again in her, violently. But she subdued it, because of the danger there was in him, and more, perhaps, because of the beauty of his head and his level-drawn brows, which she could not bear to forfeit.

(121)

This is a critical moment of introspection in which the narration underlines Mrs. Nankervis's confusion. On the one hand, she feels sexually attracted to the man; on the other, she perceives him as a threatening figure. Mrs. Nankervis finally surrenders to the man's sexual advances; but as the sentence above cited evinces, her acquiescence is smudged with fear, a fear to which the narration, through the narrator's medium, continuously draws attention once it is brought into play. Thus, whenever the man makes the slightest movement, the narrator focuses on the woman's fearful reaction and manipulates the reader into perceiving her response as that of a “hunted” victim: “So near was his head, and the close black hair, she could scarcely refrain from starting away, as if it would bite her” (121); “Then he rose. She started involuntarily” (122); “And he pulled off his overcoat, throwing it on the table. She sat as if slightly cowed, whilst he did so” (122). The crux of the matter is that the narrator's insistence on her fear heightens the distress one may feel when confronted with the closing passage:

“As grand a pluck as a man could wish to find in a woman, true as I'm here,” he said, reaching forward his hand and tentatively touching her between her full, warm breasts, quietly.

She started, and seemed to shudder. But his hand insinuated itself between her breasts, as she continued to gaze in the fire.

“And don't you think I've come back here abegging,” he said. “I've more than one thousand pounds to my name, I have. And a bit of a fight for a how-de-do pleases me, that it do. But that doesn't mean as you're going to deny as you're my Missis …”

(122; ellipsis in the text)

The scene is remarkably disturbing.⁵ What is important to realize is that the distress which this scene may cause is an effect of the narration itself, insofar as it powerfully foregrounds the woman's speechlessness and numbness. Hence to think that this narrative is celebrating male sexual power is to sidestep the way in which the narration has been working up to this point.

As I observed at the beginning, the scene incorporates two viewpoints which in turn are clearly demarcated within the narrative. From the woman's viewpoint the scene represents her willing capitulation to her sexual nature (Alice unlocks the door), that is to say, to Willie inasmuch as he figuratively represents the voice of her previously repressed natural self.⁶ This in turn is something which the narration intimates by insistently focusing on the woman as she stares at the fire, as if pointing to the final accomplishment of the tableau which the narrator left unfinished earlier. Then, from the point of view of the husband, this is his victory over his “Missis.” Nevertheless, the husband's loud triumphant speech is undermined as it is made to resound against the silence of his “Missis,” one which bespeaks desire as much as anger, and not simple acquiescence: “She only sat glowering into the fire” (122)⁷

“Samson and Delilah” is not an encomium of male supremacy. Rather, as this paper has set out to demonstrate, it is a story in which sexuality is recovered as an essential part of Mrs. Nankervis. Concurrently, it is a story which takes cognizance of the problems inherent in Mrs. Nankervis's acceptance of her sexual nature. As one reaches the end of this recovering process, the narration introduces a note of fear. That such a fear should be incorporated into the narrative at the very moment when the woman protagonist appears to have come to terms with her purely sexual desires is significant. Indeed, the story would seemingly suggest that, in so coming to terms with her sexual nature, she risks being reduced to just that, a purely sexual trophy for the male hunter. Admittedly, the narration does not explicitly account for the woman's fear. But in so making it spark off against a background of physical violence and almost verbal abuse, one is tacitly enticed into interpreting it along these lines. Were we to read “Samson and Delilah” alongside “The Princess” and “None of That”—two of the most controversial Lawrence stories—one might even venture to see it as an intimation of the violence that may result when female sexual liberation collides against an essentially conventional male conception of the sexes. This, however, would constitute the object of another paper.

Notes

1. The story was first published in the English Review in 1917 and collected with some changes in England, My England and Other Stories (1922). All page references in the text will be to England. All italics in the quotations from Lawrence are added, unless otherwise stated.

2. For an apposite approach to shifting narrative voice in Lawrence's short fiction, see Thornton.

3. In particular, Willie shows some obvious affinities with the resurrected Osiris, Lord of the Underworld, and the pagan figure of the passing stranger, both of them endowed with fertility powers. For additional information about these two figures, refer to The New Golden Bough, especially Part IV: “Dying and Reviving Gods” (339-470), and Part V: “Spirits of the Corn and Wild” (471-587).

4. Note that “Samson and Delilah” was composed in 1916 when the Lawrences themselves were in Cornwall; this year has come to be known as Lawrence's “nightmare year” because of the constant moral and political surveillance he was subjected to, first by the Cornish community, then by the police and the Home Office. See “The Nightmare” episode of Kangaroo for a fictionalized account of the Lawrences' experience in Cornwall.

5. I am aware that some scholars do not experience any discomfort when faced with this scene. See, for example, Harry T. Moore, for whom this is “a story of reunion rather than separation” (159).

6. F. R. Leavis appears to intuit something along these lines when, in the manner of a conclusion to a brief study of “Samson and Delilah,” he observes that “the restored marital relation [is] part sensual attraction, part conflict and part something else” (300); unfortunately, he does not elaborate on this idea any further. Similarly, Harris feels that “the point of the tale is not to show Willie's power over his wife but to demonstrate the power of desire” (135).

7. Approaching this story from a different angle, Virginia Hyde arrives at a similar conclusion: according to her, while the ending “[celebrates] the sensual consciousness,” it nevertheless leaves “the power struggle unresolved” (68).

Works Cited

Frazer, Sir James George. The New Golden Bough: A New Abridgement of the Classic Work by Sir James George Frazer. Ed. Theodor H. Gaster. New York: NAL, 1964.

Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The War of the Words. New Haven: Yale UP, 1988. Vol. 1 of No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century.

Harris, J. H. The Short Fiction of D. H. Lawrence. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1984.

Hyde, Virginia. The Risen Adam: D. H. Lawrence's Revisionist Typology. University Park: The Pennsylvania State UP, 1992.

Lawrence, D. H. “Samson and Delilah.” England, My England and Other Stories. Ed. Bruce Steele. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. 108-22.

———. The Complete Short Stories of D. H. Lawrence. Vol. 3. London: Heinemann, 1955.

———. “On Being a Man.” A Selection from Phoenix. Ed. A. A. H. Inglis. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971. 473-80.

Leavis, F. R. D. H. Lawrence: Novelist. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.

Moore, Harry T. The Life and Work of D. H. Lawrence. London: Unwin, 1953.

Thornton, Weldon. D. H. Lawrence: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Macmillan, 1993.