Mechanical vs. Creation, all questions, no answers.

So by the end of the book, we’ve heard the word “mechanical” or “mechanism” a lot. I think it’s hard to classify exactly what this word means for D.H. Lawrence throughout the novel. To some extent, I think it shares the same meaning that we would commonly attribute to it, which would be to do something without thinking about it (for example, in Chapter XV, Sunday Evening, “Another shameful, barren school-week, mere routine and mechanical activity. Was not the adventure of death infinitely preferable?”) But I also think as the word gets repeated, perhaps the meaning of it evolves, and it gets more and more commonly applied, in both positive and negative ways (which makes me believe that Lawrence has a variety of meanings for it). For example, in Chapter XVI, The Industrial Magnate), “… he could establish the very expression of his will, the incarnation of his power, a great and perfect machine, a system, an activity of pure order, pure mechanical repetition … and this is God-motion, this productive repetition ad infinitum.” In this the mechanical aspect becomes an inhuman quality, seeming more fitting for a deity. And later, in Chapter XXX, Snowed Up, Laurence describes the word “mechanical,” stating “He saw the grotesque, and a curious sort of mechanical motion intoxicated him, a confusion in nature.” I know I’m missing a lot of the instances of this word, but going from this definition, it seems as though the term mechanical is occasionally being used to described something beyond that of man, something foreign to the natural world.

When Birkin is considering the human race near the end of the novel, thinking about creation and God, he claims that God is “the creative mystery … [who] would bring forth some other being, finer, more wonderful, some new more lovely race, to carry on the embodiment of creation. The game was never up. The mystery of creation was fathomless, infalliable, inexhaustible, forever. Races came and went, species passed away, but ever new species arose, more lovely, or equally lovely, always surpassing wonder” (etc. etc.). So, at this point, I would like to attribute the word “mechanical” to describing God and creation, but with this passage, I simply can’t. But I think Lawrence has some meaning beneath this word, considering his exhaustive use of it throughout Women in Love, though I don’t have any sort of conclusion to draw from it. I think he definitely means for it to be inhuman and God-like, but when actually describing God and the act of creation, it doesn’t seem to fit his definition at all, especially considering “mechanical” is often used in a negative sense.