RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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relation unbearable up to the point that indirectly the woman
causes the death of the lover.
The woman's powerful mind which
makes of her a 'dreaming woman' defeats reality.
I would like to make a contrast between Helena's, the
main protagonist of The Trespasser, 'quality' as a woman and
Mellors' (Lady Chatterley's Lover) view of women before he met
Constance Chatterley:
[Helena] belonged to that class of 'dreaming
woman' with whom passion exausts itself at the
mouth (The Trespasser - p.30).
'... Then I took on with another girl, a teacher,
who had made a scandal by carrying on with a
married man driving him nearly out of his mind.
She was a soft, white skinned, soft sort of a
woman, older than me, and played the fiddle. And
she was a demon. She loved everything about
love, except the sex. Clinging, caressing creeping
into you in every way: but if you forced her to
the sex itself, she just ground her teeth and
sent out hate. I forced her to it, and she could
simply numb me with hate because of it...' (Lady
Chatterley's Lover - p.216).
I have chosen this particular passage from Lady Chatterley,
because it suggets a similarity between Helena's dreamlike
quality and Mellors' early lover.
I do not mean that Mellors'
lover and Helena are the same person, but both women can be
categorized as women who cannot project into reality their
fierce dreamlike quality. What is real for them is what they
idealize.
They are aware of this but they cannot reconcile
dream with reality.
Helena, like Mellors' lover, cannot go
beyond her mind.
This fact, in Helena's case, leads to a
frustrated relationship which culminates with the death of
Siegmund.
Past and present frame the story of Helena and Siegmund.
The point is that the past, like dreams, stands for what is
already dead or for what cannot be projected into reality.
Yet,