RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

321.
of male supremacy. Ramon celebrates the ceremony in the
evening, the meeting of the day and the night.
However, the
marriage is miles away from any meeting of male and female in
"the twilight of the Morning Star".
It is rather a swallowing
of the woman by the man.
The words and gestures of the marriage
celebration emphasize the passivity of the wife, although Ramon
begins the ceremony talking about the meeting of day and night
which expresses balance between man and woman:
'Barefoot on the living earth, with faces to
the living rain,' said Ram5n in Spanish, quietly,
'at twilight, between the night and the day, man
and woman, in presence of the unfading star, meet
to be perfect in one another. Lift your face,
Caterina, and say: This man is my rain from heaven’
(p.361).
After Ram5n's strong and beautiful rhetoric, the stress is
finally put on Kate's passivity:
Kate lifted her face and shut her eyes in the
downpour.
'This man is my rain from heaven,' she said.
'This woman is the earth to me - say that,
Cipriano,' said Ramon,kneeling on one knee and
laying his hand flat on the earth.
Cipriano kneeled and laid his hand on the earth.
'This woman is the earth to me,' he said.
'I, woman, kiss the feet and the heels of this
man, for I will be the strength to him, throughout
the long twilight of the Morning 'Star.-1
Kate kneeled and kissed the feet and heels of
Cipriano and said her say.
'I, man, kiss the brow and the breast of this
woman, for I will be her peace and her increase,
through the long twilight of the Morning Star.*
Cipriano kissed her and said his say.
Then Ramon put Cipriano's hand over the rainwet
eyes of Kate, and Kate's hand over the rainwet
eyes of Cipriano... (p.362 - My underlining).
It seems clear that this is a marriage of the flesh which has
nothing to do with the communion of the soul Kate wanted.
Firstly because of the rain and the earth: Cipriano is the
rain, or the semen; Kate is the earth, the fertilizing womb.
Secondly, because their meeting implies the negation of any