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is a language that has to be invented at every step because modern love has yet to be invented. Or, more accurately, it is being invented with every word. What we understand is that the old love with inequality on both sides cannot stand. This calls into question whether the word “love” itself is adequate to describe this new condition. Birkin keeps referring to something “beyond love.” This in the end is too vague for Ursula, and she insists that he tell her he loves her in the old-fashioned way, but with the new meaning that they have attached to it. Ultimately, he acquiesces, though he is concerned that this concession might signal a return to abandoned principles. By the end of the chapter, Birkin goes even further and asks Ursula to marry him. In rejecting traditional love, they have, nevertheless, affirmed the principle of its biblical roots. God created man with the capacity to reject His will: There can be no love without absolute freedom. Love must always be given freely. Without freedom, love isn’t really love.
    Because Lawrence is interested in showing us the dilemma of everyday life, his characters are not beyond overreaching, petty jealousies or being downright silly. Ursula insists on using the old-fashioned word “love,” but she pretends to herself that she is put out by Birkin’s proposal to her. She insists that she does not want to give herself up to him, and it is not difficult to grasp her exasperation with him in his vague insistence on wanting “more than love.” Such a state of affairs creates strange bedfellows: Natural allies may turn against one another, and one’s natural enemy may come to one’s side. It should not shock us, therefore, that Mr. Brangwen bullies Ursula to answer Birkin’s marriage proposal, a proposal he delivers to his daughter secondhand, rather than waiting for Birkin to do so. On the other hand, it is Hermione who sides with Ursula against Birkin, supporting Ursula’s decision to accept or reject Birkin’s proposal on her own terms, a truly Christian gesture on Hermione’s part, since she would have loved to have had Birkin under any circumstances. “Wisdom is a butterfly / And not a gloomy bird of prey,” the poet W. B. Yeats reminds us. Birkin and Ursula understand this and find that the most direct route to truth is a circuitous one. Preconceptions lead to the dead, unproductive, snow-abstraction of Gerald and Gudrun. A life of pursuing one’s instincts leads back to Pussum.
    In order to reinvent the past, one must start over completely. This means turning one’s back on the present as well as the past. Birkin urges Ursula to quit her job and to leave England with him. Theirs will be a whole new beginning. Ursula will not entertain the idea that Hermione and Birkin can remain friends if Ursula and Birkin are to reinvent themselves. Personal relationships, too, must fall victim to this radical transformation. If Gerald and Gudrun are not put aside, at least as their respective intimate relationships with Birkin and Ursula are presently constituted, it is because they are assumed to be traveling along the same path. When this proves not to be the case, a distance immediately inserts itself between Birkin and Ursula and their intimates. Gerald undergoes the ultimate alienating experience, and Gudrun’s behavior, primarily toward Gerald, serves to divorce her from her sister and Birkin. This is, after all, a true marriage not only of minds but also of souls. One must be morally responsible toward others, but one cannot tolerate immoral, callous behavior from those with whom one is intimate.
    Of course, already at the end of “Moony,” Ursula has accepted the necessity of putting distance between her and Gudrun. “So she withdrew away from Gudrun and from that which she stood for, she turned in spirit towards Birkin again” (p. 264). Ursula’s sacrifice is, of all the characters‘, the greatest. Consequently, her growth during the course of the