RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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in Love best represents this struggle.
The 'domination urge'
while present in his works is never fully realized because
Lawrence's characters have within themselves part of the author's
domineering temperament and part of his desire for a balanced
relationship. This division establishes conflict. Spilka, on
the other hand, sees conflict in Lawrence as the demonstration
of his 'love ethic', that is, it represents the author's
"impressive and decidedly artistic attempt... to set forth the
conditions of manhood, womanhood, and marriage, as he felt or
understood them in his own life" (p.31).
The next group of critics whose ideas about Lawrence
relate to the contextual and non-technical psychological
criticism, comprises three authors: Eliseo Vivas (1960), H.M.
Daleski (1965) and R.E. Pritchard (1971).
Their ideas are worth
considering because the three of them analyse Lawrence's works
according to a different point of view from the. other critics already
discussed.
Among these three authors, Eliseo Vivas is the one
whose arguments do not always work in relation to Lawrence, as
I shall try to show.
Daleski strikes me as one of the most
complete critics in Lawrence.
The last one, Pritchard, seems to
me to be a critic Who views Lawrence under the light of Freudian
criticism.
Vivas starts his analysis by pointing out Lawrence's
failure in his art.
What Vivas considers as failure include
four of Lawrence's works — Aaron's Rod, Kangaroo, The Plumed
Serpent and Lady Chatterley's Lover.
are a deterioration of Lawrence's art.
These novels. Vivas says,
They mean a decline in
the perfection of style which Lawrence applied when he wrote his
first novels.
I have concentrated on The Plumed Serpent because
it is the only book of Lawrence's leadership phase that I analyse