RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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and for a young doctor who was trying to rescue her. Gerald
struggles the whole night to find the couple and when he finally
stops looking for the bodies he talks to his father and
expresses his guilt:
'Well, father, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm afraid
it's my fault. But it can't be helped; I've done
what I could for the moment. I could go on diving,
of course - not much, though - and not much use
(p.175).
Although Gerald could not do anything to save his sister and the
doctor, his guilt appears in his mind because of his lack of
responsibility in relation to those people in the boat.
One can
also say that the two deaths at the lake set a kind of doom in
Gerald's life.
His feelings after diving the whole night in the
dark water give the impression that people are bound to die,
especially if they are of the same sort of Gerald: "'If you once
die,' he said, 'then when it's over, it's finished.
Why come to
life again?
There is room under that water there for thousands'
(p.176).
And Gerald adds:
'There's one thing about our family, you know,'
he continued. 'Once anything goes wrong, it can
never be put right again - not with us. I've
noticed it all my life - you can't put a thing
right, once it has gone wrong' (ibid).
The 'going wrong' with his family may be a reference to the
killing of Gerald's brother.
He unconsciously feels the burden
of that death and now he has got two others to carry on his
shoulders. When the two bodies are found, people notice that
"Diana had her arms tight round the neck of the young man,
choking him" (p.181).
killed her rescuer.
As Gerald has killed his brother, she has
This reinforces the doom over the Crich
family and, more directly, over Gerald, who kills himself after
(like Diana)
having tried to strangle Gudrun in the Alps.