RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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ruling classes. The Indians for him are mere dogs. This may be
why she initially refuses his proposal of marriage.
At the same time that Ursula rejects him spiritually, it
seems that her body needs him in a perverse way.
She madly
craves for him to fulfil her sexually.
It is perverse perhaps
because as she could not attain completeness of being in her
experience at the university she needs to somehow attain
fulfilment in the flesh. But again the man fails her. This is
seen when they are spending some time in a friend's cottage near
the sea.
The moon appears again, a fierce symbol of destruction
that hangs over them, the man specifically.
Together, Ursula
and Skrebensky are two opposite and destructive forces reducing
each other into nothingness.
They do not satisfy each other.
However, the sense of failure is stronger on Skrebensky's side
because again Ursula assimilates the moon's strength to destroy
the man.
In their love-making Skrebensky is reduced to an empty
spectre, a slave of Ursula's power.
Once more Ursula offers
herself to the moon and denies the presence of the man with her.
He becomes a shadow, a dissolving object:
Then there in the great flare of light, she
clinched hold of him, hard, as if suddenly she
had the strength of destruction, she fastened her
arms round him and tightened him in her grip,
whilst her mouth sought his in a hard, rending,
ever-increasing- kiss, till his body was powerless
in her grip, his heart melted in fear from the
fierce, beaked, harpy-kiss... He felt as if the
ordeal of proof was upon him, for life or death...
he succumbed, till he gave way as if dead...
(p.480).
In spite of his destruction in this love-war, it is not only
Skrebensky who is destroyed. Ursula also seems dead. They have
exhausted their own power of consignation till neither can see
life anymore. It is the chaotic end of the affair. On the
following day they break off.
Hence, Skrebensky Who, when