Fluid medium, fixed form: Gudrun and Gerald's strive for completion

We’ve talked a lot about the fluidity of perspective, of the chameleon quality of Berkin, and of the “decentralization” of both Berkin and Hermione.  I’m going to depart from this notion of the fluidity of narrative and self to examine more closely the relationship between Gudrun and Gerald.  Both these characters seem interested in completing and “fixing” things—which contrasts with the continually changing and evolving notion of self that Berkin and (I would argue) Ursula demonstrate.  At the beginning of the novel, Gudrun watches people with “objective curiosity,” and sees them as “subjects in a picture” . . . as a “finished creation.”  “She loved to recognize their various characteristics, to place them in their true light . . . settle them forever . . . She knew them, they were finished, sealed and stamped and finished with, for her” (8).  This finality of language indicates Gudrun’s fixation on completion.  Even though Gudrun yearns for the “fluidity [of the water]” (46) when she sees Gerald swimming, she claims she cannot attain such a desire due to her gender (47).   Unable to realize this desire, Gudrun instead becomes associated with the rigidity of the plants (in her sketching—pg. 111) that grow in the fluid medium whose very form she desires.  Whereas Berkin uses art to understand the world around him—Gudrun exhibits her control through her artistic expression. 

            Gerald expresses similar goals of production and completion during his conversation with Berkin on the train—claiming that he live[s] “to work, to produce something” (46).  Associated with the material and the mechanistic, Gerald was “bound to strive to come up to her [Gudrun’s] criterion, fulfill her idea of a man and a human being” (95).  This conflation of idea/fulfillment (intangible) with “criterion” (something fixed and goal-oriented) indicates that Gerald’s way of seeking the intangible is through tangible means (having a criterion/method to guide him).  Thus, in “Sketchbook,” when their “bond was established” (finality of language) over water (a fluid medium), Gerald and Gudrun demonstrate that the outward manifestation of their relationship is one of control (Gudrun puts Gerald in his place—“their was a body of cold power in her . . . [her spirit] was finished” just as Gerald exerted control over the mare).  However, the image of the surrounding water over which this bond is established illustrates the possibility of fluidity (maybe just in their subconscious desires—ie: class fluidity—they traverse these societal boundaries in the subconscious realm). 

Note:  I have a different edition . . . add 7-8 to each page number for the edition on the syllabus. =)