RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

CHAPTER V
THE PLUMED SERPENT - THE ASCENDENCE OF THE DARK MALE
'... the balance lies in that when one goes up,
the other goes down. One acts, the other takes.
It is the only way in love. 1
(Aaron 's Rod, p.287).
During the so-called 'leadership period', Lawrence finally
decided that his previous yearnings for balance in Sons and
Lovers, The Rainbow and Women in Love will no longer constitute
the main quest of his characters.
Women must definitely bow and
submit to the men.
It is in his third phase, or the period
represented by Aaron1s Rod, Kangaroo and The Plumed Serpent that
Lawrence experiments with punishing his strong female characters
by attempting to destroy their spirituality and transforming
them into blind parrots of male supremacy.
It is in these three
novels that Lawrence develops the bloodbrotherhood theme with an
apparently more successful result.
It is also in the leadership
novels that the author provokes a certain collapse in the
relation between man and woman.
placed in a secondary sphere.
This relation is definitely
The man-to-man relationship is in
a fierce opposition with the man-to-woman relation.
However,