RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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the hunter older than his prey.
This is the moment in which he
traps March pushing her into a corner and leaving her no choice
for escape.
He does not let her answer, speaking rapidly,
leaving no room in her mind to think or to reply.
His insistence
sounds like injections reaching her blood like poison or like a
paralyzing serum. She cannot answer. She can only feed on his
insistent talk.
Thus Henry has achieved part of his goal for he
gets at the dark part of March's inner self "where she was
helpless against it".
He goes on in the hunt with his
manipulative soft voice forcing her to say 'yes' to his
proposal.
But when he has almost mastered her, there is a break
in the scene because Banford calls them back to reality.
From this day on, things at the farm change.
The first
one is that Banford is suspicious that something is wrong.
This
is seen in the way she challenges Henry about what he and March
were doing before she called.
The second change concerns Henry
who starts behaving as if he had already become the owner of the
place: "The youth... had come to tea in his shirt-sleeves as if
he were at home" (p.108).
This attitude disturbs Banford who
asks Henry if he is not cold, implying her distaste for his shirtsleeves.
By now she feels as if she were menaced and from 'the
delicate thing with spectacles', she turns out to be rather
authoritative: "'If you feel all right as you are, stop as you
are.' [Banford] spoke with a crude authority" (p.109).
It is as
if Banford were not seeing this young man as her young brother
but as a dangerous enemy whose soft voice is like penetrating
claws disturbing her life with March:
Banford was.offended. For all his suave courtesy
and soft voice, the youth seemed to her impudent.
She did not like to look at him. She did not like
to meet his clear, watchful eyes, she did not like