RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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energy.
Hermione.
That is how Ursula seems to feel Birkin's relation with
Birkin is most of the time silent in a mute agreement
with Ursula's statements: "He knew he was perverse, so spiritual
on the one hand, and in some strange way, degraded on the other
..." (p.300). Ursula then throws the second-hand rings at
Birkin:
'And take your rings, ... and go and buy
yourself a female elsewhere - there are plenty to
be had, who will be quite glad to share your
spiritual mess - or to have your spiritual mess,
and leave your spiritual mess to Hermione' (p.301).
She leaves him.
Birkin realizes she is right in her criticism:
he is depraved, perverse, egocentric and self-destructive.
But
at the same time that he accepts the criticism, he questions
both Hermione and Ursula's kinds of love: "And was it not
Ursula's way of emotional intimacy, emotional and physical, was
it not just as dangerous as Hermione's abstract spiritual
intimacy?" (ibid). It seems that Birkin still fears women. He
fears their domineering temperament because he knows his own
inability to fight this off.
He knows that he is weak and
sooner or later he will submit to them.
Thus, his self-defense
tells him to stick to the idea of 'balance' - an idea that
perhaps inwardly he knows cannot be entirely true in relation
to him.
And he wants to be single because, in being single, he
may preserve the right distance so as not to submit to the woman.
That is why he does not want 'fusion1 of two beings.
He
theoretically wants 'unison in separateness'.
Ursula is somehow
different in his mind, otherwise he would take her criticism as
a definitive reason to break with her, but he does not.
He wants
her back.
And she returns to him and brings him a flower. There
is peace again.
It seems that now they are ready to really
begin a new life.