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RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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251<br />

cuts his links with the decadence of Halliday's group and ideas.<br />

The funny thing is that it is by Gudrun's hand that this happens:<br />

she is a representative of that world too.<br />

Before analysing the meeting of the two couples in the<br />

Alps it should be useful to say that Lawrence, since his early<br />

stories, had a certain impulse to move his characters away from<br />

England.<br />

In The Trespasser, for example, the characters do not<br />

move far away.<br />

They go to an island which is within the<br />

frontiers of England.<br />

Sons and Lovers also does not travel far.<br />

Paul Morel wants to travel abroad after the death of his mother,<br />

but his desire is only in his mind.<br />

He does not realize it.<br />

The Rainbow brings new elements such as the characters1<br />

yearnings to know the 'beyond'. Lydia Brangwen does not belong<br />

to England.<br />

environment.<br />

The 'abroad' thus travels to the English<br />

It is in Women in Love that Lawrence's characters<br />

actually move away from England.<br />

"The Fox" also shows March and<br />

Henry trying to flee from England to live in Canada.<br />

And,<br />

finally, in The Plumed Serpent, the setting is entirely foreign.<br />

Even the main character is not British at all:<br />

Kate is Irish.<br />

Therefore Lawrence, by the end of Women in Love, renounces the<br />

English setting moving away from it, only to return to his<br />

native land in Lady Chatterley's Lover.<br />

The first impression of the married couple when Gudrun<br />

and Gerald meet them is one of (apparently) complete fulfilment.<br />

Gudrun envies her sister's togetherness with Birkin.<br />

Their<br />

togetherness may be contrasted with the other couple's<br />

separateness.<br />

It is as if one couple were moving towards<br />

creation and the other one towards destruction.<br />

Ursula seems<br />

very happy with Birkin, but she also seems still insecure about<br />

having him entirely: "Ursula was excited and happy, but she kept

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