RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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stock, stupid brutality, and the girl was a girl you loved and
tortured and then ignored'" (p.422).
Loerke and Gudrun unite to
ignore Ursula's 'stupid* criticism about art.
Gerald then comes
and joins the two artists:
"He joined his forces with the other
two.
They all three wanted her to go away" (ibid).
Ursula, after this sad and revealing episode, tells Birkin
she wants to go away from the Alps.
The place is damaging her:
"'I hate the snow, and the unnaturalness of it, the unnatural
light it throws on everybody, the ghastly glamour, the unnatural
feelings it makes everybody have'" (p.425).
Birkin agrees with
her and they decide to go 'to Verona and find Romeo and Juliet'.
Their escape from the Alps is rather ambiguous.
Although Verona
implies love it also implies tragedy.
Also, although Italy seems
a warm place, Birkin says, "'... a fearfully cold wind blows in
Verona from out of the Alps.
snow in our noses'" (p.426).
We shall have the smell of the
This is a clear anticipation of
Gerald's tragedy some time after Birkin and Ursula leave for
Italy. "Gudrun and Gerald were relieved by their going" (p.427).
This relief is due to an unconscious desire Gudrun and Gerald
have to be free and be by themselves so that they can destroy
each other without witnesses.
I
said before that Loerke means a. danger to both couples.
Birkin and Ursula escape from him.
Gudrun and Gerald, however,
do not.
They are in a way tied to the 'wizard rat' by a strong
link: their deep attraction to corruption and dissolution.
Loerke can also be seen as a kind of concrete reason for Gudrun
to leave Gerald.
Before he appears Gerald and Gudrun have been
already seen as going away from each other.
Their affair is
already falling apart.
The cold air of the Alps influences
them both.
Gerald feels the place as if it were a kind of trap