RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

take hers: but in her own way" (ibid).
Even here Anna does not
forget she is the master and if the man is to come to her, it
will be the way she likes.
Thus Will and Anna restart their
marriage through the recognition of their obsession with sex.
They cease to exist as human beings.
The flame of love and
mutual respect has died.
In their new meeting "There was no
tenderness, no love between them any more, only the maddening,
sensuous lust for discovery and the insatiable, exorbitant
gratification in the sensual beauties of; '[Anna's] body" (p. 236).
They have no feelings, only lust.
The children are left aside
for the couple "lived in the darkness and death of their own
sensual activities" (p.237).
The lovers have also lost their
reserves:
All the shameful things of the body revealed
themselves to him now with a sort of sinister,
tropical beauty. All the shameful natural and
unnatural acts of sensual voluptuousness which
he and the woman partook together, created
together, they had their heavy beauty and their
delight. Shame, what was it? It was part of the
extreme delight. It was that part of delight of
which man is usually afraid. Why afraid? The
secret, shameful things are most terribly beautiful
(pp.237-8).
The passage seems to refer to anal intercourse.
Sex is seen as
a natural act.
But if they (Will and Anna) have discovered
'delight' in 'unnatural and shameful' acts, one may easily infer
that it is the use of the anus as a source for pleasure or pain.
The element of sado-masochism or domination would be particularly
strong in this kind of sex.
The same kind of language used in
this quoted passage is used (more explicitly) in Women in Love
and Lady Chatterley to refer to anal intercourse:
[Ursula] traced with her hands the line of
[Birkin's] loins and thighs, at the back, and a
living fire ran through her, from him, darkly...
It was a dark fire of electricity that rushed
from him to her, and flooded them both with rich