RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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transformed into an over-simplified, negation of all her previous
values. Lawrence imposes on her all the burden of an unwanted
child which makes her reject everything she wanted before.
She
is transformed into a weak and passive female who is not allowed
to think by herself and Who will always depend on man to walk.
Ursula, thus, starts a process of negation of her 'maximum' self
to become a 'minimum' one subjugated to the man's authority. The
above letter is her punishment.
Because of the child she must
kneel in front of the man to ask for forgivenness and to promise
to be a faithful subservient slave of the almighty husband.
However, the force that leads Lawrence to punish Ursula is the
same one which makes him repent of his chauvinistic attitude
towards her and change it.
Before Ursula receives the answer
from her letter to Skrebensky she has a nightmare involving a
crowd of horses who haunt her as she walks in the rain.
It is a
nightmare because in fact nothing in the narrative proves that
the horses are really chasing Ursula.
It may be true that
Ursula sees the horses, but the idea of them driving her into a
dead end is perhaps her own tormented mind creating a situation
of fear and danger.
This situation reflects the whole set of
conflicts she has been going through in her experiences in the
man's world.
The horses can be seen as the symbolic projection
of her inner conflicts into reality. They represent for her the
unsatisfactory result of her search.
The dead end she seems to
be going to may be the war between her passive self versus her
active self.
The former wants her to marry and submit; the latter
forces her to get out of this situation and continue her search.
When she jumps over the fence it means that her active self has
won.
The old and passive self is defeated and along with it
Skrebensky's world.
(When I say 'old and passive self' I mean