Hermione

Hermione is a figure in D. H. Lawrence’s fiction whose longing for Birkin becomes an attempt to possess him. In Simone de Beauvoir’s account, the defining contradiction is that Hermione suffers from an inability to give herself, yet her love does not overcome that absence: it becomes a way of annexing the other person. Her failed effort to secure Birkin culminates in an attempt on his life, exposing the destructive force within a love organized around filling the self’s perceived lack.

Desire and Deficiency

Hermione’s attachment begins in what Simone de Beauvoir describes as a “horrible deficiency”: she has never been able to give herself. She speaks continually of love, but her loving is characterized as taking—an effort to fill the emptiness she feels within herself. That need brings love close to hate, because Birkin is not encountered as an independent person so much as someone Hermione wants to incorporate into her own emotional world.

The distinction between giving and taking explains why intensity does not create intimacy. Hermione’s desire is powerful, but it remains centered on what Birkin can supply to her. Her inability to give herself is not resolved by the language of devotion; instead, it shapes a possessive attachment that makes his independence difficult to accept.

Conflict with Birkin

Hermione wants to annex Birkin, but she fails. The attempt to make him her own therefore turns from frustrated attachment toward violence: she tries to kill him. The sequence makes the conflict more than a disagreement between lovers. Hermione’s wish for union cannot accommodate Birkin as a separate person, and the failure of possession becomes an effort to destroy what she cannot secure.

Simone de Beauvoir connects the pleasure Hermione experiences in striking Birkin with the egotistical pleasure of sexual gratification. The comparison does not make violence a proof of love; it identifies a shared self-centered structure in both experiences. In each, Hermione’s attention remains fixed on her own gratification rather than on a reciprocal relation with Birkin.

Significance in the Account

Hermione’s brief appearance illustrates Simone de Beauvoir’s criticism of a model of love that treats the beloved as a remedy for inner deficiency. The movement from longing to attempted possession, and from possession to attempted killing, shows the consequences of making another person responsible for filling an absence within the self. Hermione’s tragedy lies not simply in wanting Birkin, but in being unable to transform that want into a relation that respects him as other than an answer to her need.