RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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teaching that all women can do is to satisfy their husbands and
never seek for orgasm.
Lawrence's Women in Love has also
presented the same idea but with the difference that Ursula could
not accept the kind of love Birkin offered her.
The Plumed
Serpent, according to the critic, has as its strongest idea,
the assertion that Kate learns from Teresa (Ramon's second wife)
what she should want from love: Kate learns to "submit".
However, I think that this is not true otherwise why should Kate
continue to question herself about staying in Mexico or going
away from it? Teresa is seen by Vivas as the 'norm' of women,
i.e., the kind of woman who "may find in submission a satisfaction
she could not find in any other manner" (p.130).
Lawrence may
have presented Teresa not as a 'norm', or as an 'exception' but
as a way to contrast the two women.
Ramon may have chosen the
submissive woman, Teresa, because he could not bear the idea of
having a wife questioning him as Kate would certainly do.
The
very fact of the contrast between Teresa and Kate has the
purpose, I think, to show that Lawrence's conflict over
domination is not resolved.
Vivas, it seems to me, has misread
the book.
Lawrence's triumph in art includes Sons and Lovers,
The
Rainbow and Women in Love.
I definitely agree with Vivas'
classification. But this is not new. What most readers do not
share with the critic (at least I do not) is the idea that the
mother in Sons and Lovers is a victim of the drunkard father.
Vivas says that
Lawrence wants to show how Paul and his mother
were forced to come together because Gertrude's
husband, the uncouth, drinking, bullying miner,
was no husband to her nor was he, properly
speaking, a father to his children (p.180).
Vivas' 'failure' in interpreting the book is chiefly due to the