RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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and once more the answer goes back to the sense that March
alone (without Banford's help) has discovered her femininity:
"'Nellie's done it all, I 've done nothing,' said Banford". Then
Henry says "'Let me just finish it for you, shall I?' said the
boy" (p.150).
It seems to me that as he is partly responsible
for March's awakening, he must also help to destroy what is left
of her masculinity represented by the dead tree.
Henry replaces March and when he is going to start the
cutting some ducks appear in the way the tree is supposed to
fall. Banford tries to send them away. But the ducks turn to
her in a fierce way as if to warn her of something: "... they
came eagerly towards her, opening their yellow-green beaks and
quacking as if they were so excited to say something" (ibid).
Banford does not take this 'warning' and goes behind them trying
to make them find another way, and she goes near the fence
exactly where the tree is going to fall.
Seeing her there Henry
becomes a hunter again: he looks at her and looks at the tree as
if thinking what might happen:
As he looked into the sky, like a huntsman who
is watching a flying bird, he thought to himself:
'If the tree falls in just such a way, and spins
so much as it falls, then the branch there will
strike her exactly as she stands on the top of
that bank' (p.151 - My underlining).
Poor Banford, if she only could penetrate the mind of this
devilish hunter she would never have got so close to the fence!
His perversity is so strong that he seems to exert a kind of
hypnotism that spellbinds people so that they behave in the
exact way he wants them to do.
He is like a snake mesmerizing
its prey:
In his heart he had decided her death. A
terrible force seemed in him, and a power that