RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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to Birkin, does not exist, we can say that Gerald may have
wanted to really kill his brother.
Birkin says that
'No man... cuts another man's throat unless he
wants to cut it, and unless the other man wants
it cutting... It takes two people to make a
murder: a murderer and a murderee. And a
murderee is a man who is murderable. And a man
who is murderable is a man who is in profound
if hidden lust desires to be murdered' (p.27).
We can also say that if Gerald wanted unconsciously to kill his
brother (in Birkin*s view) he wants to be killed too.
This idea
seems to be true if Gerald's suicide at the end of the novel is
taken into account.
Besides the death of his brother, Gerald is also
indirectly involved in the death of his sister Diana who died
in the lake of Willey Water.
This episode will be discussed
later in relation to Gerald and Gudrun's affair. Another death
haunts the Crich's home: Thomas Crich's. Despite his being
severely ill, suffering from terrible pains, his wife Christiana
seems to have contributed to hasten his death because of her
contempt for the man's beliefs.
Here it would be useful to draw
some parallels between the Criches and the Morels.
Thomas Crich
is about to die but he holds life as if in a fierce opposition
against death. Here he resembles Mrs Morel's last months of
life.
She, too, grasped life unable to cope with death.
Observe the similarity of these two characters:
and
[Thomas Crich] lay unutterably weak and spent,
kept alive by morphia and by drinks, which he
sipped slowly. He was only half-conscious - a
thin strand of consciousness linking the
darkness of death with the light of the day.
Yet his will was unbroken, he was integral,
complete. Only he must have perfect stillness
about him (p.313).
'And (Mrs Morel] won't die. She can't. Mr
Renshaw, the parson, was in the other day.