RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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him to be.
The interesting aspect of this love scene under the
bridge is that Gerald is compared to "the firm, strong cup that
receives the wine of her life" (ibid - My underlining).
Gudrun
fills him with life whereas in their next love scene, in
Gudrun's bedroom, he fills her with "his bitter potion of
death" (p.337).
This combination of life and death issues
accounts for the dark use Gerald makes of Gudrun.
While her
'love' in the first scene is positive - perhaps because she is
thinking of the miners and not of Gerald - his 'love' in the
second scene is entirely negative.
Another contrastive point
between these two scenes before and after Thomas Crich's death
is the fact that Gerald is always renewed after using Gudrun.
She, on the other hand, after the love scene in her bedroom is
hollow and her behaviour is almost like a machine working its
'tic-tac' brain.
While Gerald sleeps heavily, she is thoroughly
awake, ceaselessly thinking that the day must come soon.
She
also associates Gerald with the miners and she herself with a
miner's wife waiting for her husband to wake up to go to work.
Another point of contrast is that in the first scene Gerald was
glad not to be seen in the streets with her.
In the second one,
he barely cares whether he meets somebody he knew or not.
However, the most important point of the second love scene
is that it happens after Gerald has been to his father's grave:
he wanders till he finds Gudrun's home, enters it like a thief
and dirties her bedroom with the mud of the grave. "He had come
for vindication" (p.337) and he has brought death with him.
Gudrun accepts his death as if (now) she were the container and
Gerald were the active 'wine of death'.
They exchange roles
again.
The point is that Gudrun feels he needs her and in a way
she sacrifices herself and receives Gerald's "pent-up darkness