RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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'the boy' and 'the lad'.
It seems again that Lawrence is
intentionally putting a gap between the boy and the girls.
Or
it could be a way to say that Henry is no more than an adolescent
looking for adventures.
He is about twenty and the way he is
introduced leads one to think of him as being younger than he
really is.
Another point is that though he seems at first scared
by March's sharp tones, he is not.
It seems that he will take
advantages from his arrival at the farm run by these two women.
What seems curious to notice is that the young soldier seems
scared when he enters the kitchen, but he never really shows fear
because of March's gun.
In fact, instead of going back, he
advances towards the girls:
'Why, what's wrong? What's wrong?' came the
soft, wondering, rather scared voice: and a young
soldier, with his heavy kit on his back, advanced
into the dim light...
The young man - or youth, for he would not be
more than twenty, now advanced and stood in the
inner doorway.(pp.92-3 - My underlining).
And surprisingly what comes next proves that March is no longer
herself: her man has just come: "March, already under the
influence of his strange, soft, modulated voice, stared at him
spellbound" (p.93).
She is unable to do anything against the
newcomer. Her sense of impotence grows before this youth. For
her now he has become the fox.
He is what she has been
expecting.
He is her male:
But to March he was the fox. Whether it was
the thrusting forward of his head, or the glisten
of the fine whitish hairs on the ruddy cheekbones,
or the bright, keen eyes, that can never
be said: but the boy was to her the fox, and she
could not see him otherwise (p.93).
Previously I said that this young man arrives at the farm as if
he were an animal looking for a prey and the way March behaves
seems to prove my point: she becomes his prey (even though she