RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

349
JDorn.
The next two endings which I have put together under the
same classification, "ambiguous closed ending in narrative", are
from Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow.
The reason for this
connection is that both novels end in narrative.
The author does
not let the characters speak because he does not want to lose
control of his intention.
The point of this incisive control of
the narratives at the end of the novels means that the author
wants unconsciously to impose the motif of rebirth on both Paul
and Ursula.
This imposed solution may signify Lawrence's wish
not to end the novels as tragedies, even though the experience
of the protagonists has been primarily tragic.
The sequence of
negative episodes in the two novels must be recalled — separately
— to make my point clear.
In Sons and Lovers we recall that Paul has gone through a
whole set of negative experiences which have provoked but not
resolved the conflicts in his tormented mind.
The environment of
his birth and upbringing is responsible for the split in his
conscience.
His mother, a very spiritual woman, has mistreated
her lower class husband in such a way that she destroyed any
possibility for a happy relationship with Walter Morel.
He, for
her, was an inferior being because he was a man conscious only
in the blood, whereas she was a woman led by mental consciousness.
These are two extremes which, according to Lawrence, cannot
relate but as antagonists.
In the essay "Nathaniel Hawthorne
and The Scarlet Letter" he says:
Blood consciousness overwhelms, obliterates,
and annuls mind-consciousness.
Mind-consciousness extinguishes bloodconsciousness,
and consumes the blood.
We are all of us conscious in both ways. And the
two ways are antagonistic in us...