RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

294
From this point on, March has fallen completely under the
power of the youth. She does not reply logically anymore. She
mechanically obeys him.
And though she seems repented of going
out and wants to go back to the weeping Banford,
Henry holds
her tightly, forbidding her to go.
He makes a sort of plea to
her that sounds not like pleading but rather like blackmail and
March submits to him, impotent to fight against his powerful
authority over her.
Henry's intelligence acts upon March as a
spell, he knows how to trap her so that she cannot even have a
sight of the house where Banford is: "He had put her in the
corner, so that she should not look out and see the lighted
window of the house across the dark garden.
He tried to keep
her all there inside the shed with him" (p.137).
The fact that Henry does not make love to March in the
shed puzzles me: he has her under his power; she has submitted
to him and the atmosphere favors him.
However, he seems to
reject love-making.
It is as if he had realized something
deeper in her which makes him run away from her.
It seems that
he has suddenly realized that she was much more than what he
expected her to be.
The idea of March being "a woman, and
vulnerable, accessible..." makes him "shrank from any such
\
performance, almost with fear" (p.138).
Henry seems to be seeing
in March a different kind of person and that "She was the woman,
and he was responsible for the strange vulnerability..." in her.
It seems that this sudden realization makes him shrink from her
as if he were afraid of hurting her because she is not like
other girls "nice enough for a bit of play".
It may be that
March is only fit for marriage, not for an affair.
This forbids
him to have sex with her.
Probably if he makes love to her he
will feel guilty as a Victorian puritan.
He therefore must be