RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

107
like him:
She glanced up at Siegmund. Tiny drops of
mist greyed his eyebrows. He was looking out to
sea, screwing up his eyes, and smiling brutally.
Her face became heavy and sullen. He was like
the heart and the brute sea, just here-;.he was
not her Siegmund. She hated the brute in him (p.51).
This hatred for the 'brute' occurs because here Helena cannot
exert power over him.
Therefore, Siegmund could easily.take her
and rape her.
The man she likes is the one who she can mock at
and who is afraid of taking decisions, who depends entirely on
her. This Siegmund she rejects and hates is the man of instinct
that she cannot control with her mind.
This mood of sudden courage and brutality does not last
any longer.
As soon as Siegmund comes to his conscience again,
he reverts to the coward he has always been: "When at last he
turned from the wrestling water, he had spent his savagery, and
was sad.
He could never take part in the great battle of action.
It was beyond him" (ibid).
He also feels guilty over his
previous attitude.
The goddess he loves should never be offended
by a poor humble mortal.
He tries to justify his mood as a kind
of vengeance because she could not make love to him.
He even
excuses her rejection of sex as being something she is not ready
yet to accept.
It is as if her refusal were his own fault.
As the narrative proceeds, the reader notices that Helena
somehow resembles Miriam of Sons and Lovers,
especially as the
latter is related to religious imagery or to self-sacrifice. At
home Helena decides that "She must minister to him, and be
submissive" (p.55), but there is a conflict between what she
says and what she does: "she kissed him, clasped him fervently,
roused him till his passion burned away his heaviness..." and
then Lawrence says "she let Siegmund predominate". However,