RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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unfulfilled sensuality that she hides in the disguise of a soul
fulfilment.
This unfulfilled self is particularly stressed by
Lawrence since he puts Kate in some situations which contradict
her wish for a communion with the soul.
One of these situations
is presented when Kate is in Ramon's hacienda and she observes
him.
The embarassing thing about Kate's looks at Ramon is that
she consciously wants to feel him only as a man of soul, but
what she projects in her thoughts is a terrible desire for
Ramon as a man of flesh and blood who emanates pure sensuality:
Ramon sat forward in his rocking-chair,
holding his cup in his hand, his breasts rising
in relief. And on his thighs the thin linen
seemed to reveal him almost more than his own
dark nakedness revealed him. [Kate] understood
why the cotton pantalons were forbidden on the
plaza. The living flesh seemed to emanate
through them.
He was handsome, almost horribly handsome,
with his black head poised as if it were without
weight, above his darkened, smooth neck. A pure
sensuality, with a powerful purity of its own,
hostile to her sort of purity. With the blue sash
round his waist, pressing a fold in the flesh, and
the thin linen seeming to gleam with the life of
his hips and thighs, he emanated a fascination
almost like a narcotic asserting his pure fine
sensuality against her... He emitted an
effluence so powerful that it seemed to hamper
her consciousness, to bind down her limbs (p.202).
Here Kate is almost unaware of Ramon's body from the waist up.
She concentrates her looks on the man's thighs and hips which
certainly imply her sensual desire for the man and denies her
conscious wish for his soul and her soul.
Lawrence seems to
mean that no matter how much Kate thinks of soul in her conscious
mind what she really wants (or Lawrence wants for her) is an
unconscious strong desire for a dark communion in the flesh.
That seems to be why Kate wants to be 'punished' by Ramon and
CiprianoI:
'Let me close my eyes to [Ramon], and open only