RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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maintain the relationship.
This is also my opinion.
The second generation shows through Anna and Will a
different 'communion' in marriage.
The woman dominates the
relation.
The flaw in the marriage is due mainly to the lack of
respect between the couple.
Daleski points out that Anna fails
to respect her husband "because Will has ceased to represent
anything beyond her" (p.92).
This process starts when Anna
mocks at Will's view of art represented by his carving of Adam
and Eve.
Daleski says that Will's destruction of the panel" is
in a way a self-destruction, it signifies the extinction, under
the stress of a sensual obsession, of the man who appeared
capable of utterance" (p.93).
And although he tries to keep the
authority of the husband, what he achieves is Anna's disrespect
and her fighting him off.
The crucial moment of this battle
between the couple is represented by Anna's dancing naked and
pregnant in front of Will. Daleski views Anna's dance as a
symbol of "a woman asserting her right to singleness, to
separateness of being.
It is not in her feminine dominance that
she exults but her independence" (p.98).
I do agree with
Daleski's view but it is necessary to add that later in the
story Anna dominates Will in the marriage which becomes a little
matriarchal society.
Will becomes a mere object of Anna's play.
The marriage is only 'balanced' through sex.
Anna becomes the
mother of nine children but she searches for nothing beyond
motherhood.
The critic adds that "To the end both Anna and Will
are not 'quite personal, quite defined as individuals'"(p.106).
Ursula Brangwen . is different from the previous generations
and, according to Daleski, "it is in Iher], indeed, that the
desire for an individual fullness of being is shown at its most
intense" (p.107).
She sees in her first lover, Skrebensky, a