RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

106
'This is fine, Siegmund]' she said,halting
and facing west. Smiling ironically, he sat down
on a boulder. They were quite alone, in this
great white niche thrust out to sea. Here, he
could see, the tide would beat the base of the
wall (p.50).
This passage seems to describe a female genital in preparation
for the sexual act.
Notice Helena's delight and Siegmund's
ironical smile.
As the narrative goes on Siegmund seems to
become possessed by hard sensuality and wants to get closer to
Helena, so as to make love to her. However, the woman does not
want to stay in the place because it is for her a situation of
danger in which she cannot control her senses:
She looked sharply at the outjutting capes.
The sea did foam perilously near their bases.
'I suppose it -is rather risky,' she said;
and she turned, began silently to clamber
forwards (ibid).
The man does not want to go but she cannot accept what he wants
because "Now it was a question of danger, not of inconvenience".
She is feeling menaced.
As they go on in their walking there is
a sense of crisis in the narrative.
Helena is afraid and clings
to Siegmund but he seems to be as brutal as the sea: "She had no
weapon against brute force" (p.51).
The point of this crisis
may be explained by the idea that she can dominate him only
through the strength of her siind and if physical force is used,
she cannot do anything.
It is useful here to return to a
comment Lawrence makes about Helena's character. He says that
[Helena] fled as soon from warmth as from cold.
Physically, she was always so; she shrank from
anything extreme. But psychically she was one
extremist, and a dangerous one (p.44).
This, I think, reinforces the idea that her strength is in her
mind but physically she can be of no harm, especially when she
is menaced by somebody physically stronger than she.
In
comparing the sea's brutality with Siegmund's, Helena does not