RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

229
critical realization: "He stood smiling in frustration and
amusement and irritation and love" (ibid).
And he also gives
in for he is 'forced' to declare his love (the 'ordinary' love)
for Ursula at the end of the chapter.
The second scene I will analyse is preceded by the party
at- Willey Green.
This party also precedes a break between
Ursula and Birkin which leads Birkin to Gerald.
Some aspects
of this party have already been discussed in relation to Gudrun
and Gerald.
The aspects which refer to Birkin and Ursula are
important to mention since most of them describe Birkin's theory
of the world and its "two rivers".
While Gudrun is with Gerald,
Birkin dances strangely for the second time before Ursula (the
first one was his "chameleon"— like dance in Breadalby).
It seems
that in his strange dance he throws away some of the seriousness
that surrounds him. Ursula criticizes him. The other couple
joins them and Birkin starts preaching his philosophy.
Birkin
describes the existence of two rivers in life: one is the "black
river of dissolution" and the other is the "silver river of
life".
Birkin's idea is that one river grows inside the other.
The "river of dissolution" is corrupt and destroys.
says, is what Gerald and Gudrun represent: they are
This, he
born in
the process of destructive creation'" (p.164). There must be
another kind of people to represent the "silver river of life".
These may be Birkin and Ursula, but he does not assure us of
this.
He only says that the "black river" leads to "universal
nothing" and that the other river "means a new cycle of creation
after - but not for us" (p.165).
He and Ursula, Gudrun and
Gerald are "fleurs du mat", not "roses of happiness" as Ursula
thinks she is.
In fact what Birkin seems to imply is that
everyone has within him/herself both rivers and that perhaps