The “Mesmerised States” of Becoming-Woman in D. H. Lawrence’s The Virgin and The Gipsy

Abstract

D. H. Lawrence introduces a new ontological dimension into his writing, emphasising the primacy of unbounded desire over oedipal structures situated in the social, political and sexual spheres. His writing often seeks to formulate unstructured, non-oedipalised, and non- binary relations to liberate life from its congealments and established boundaries, and to articulate it in its immanence. These new relations suggest a shift from “being” to "Deleuzian" becomings. The Virgin and the Gipsy (1930) is one of Lawrence’s novels in which characters are transposed into such becomings primarily in the form of becoming-woman. Becoming- woman in the novel calls for new modes of relationality going beyond the molar paradigms of sexual and religious identity imposed within the striated space of the Rectory house, and promises "mesmerised states" of transgression. This paper aims to investigate this affective trajectory of becoming-woman in Lawrence’ The Virgin and the Gipsy in the light of Deleuze and Guattari’s theories. Keywords: Oedipalisation, Becoming-Woman, Lawrence, Deleuze and Guattari, Affect.