RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

to her because Henry "wouldn't let her exert her love towards
him.
No, she had to be passive, to acquiesce, and to be
submerged under the surface of love" (ibid).
In his narrative
Lawrence asserts that Henry does not need a woman, he needs some
kind of doll ready to open up her arms and mouth only when she
is ordered to do so.
She can never rise and "look forth above
the water while they lived.Never" (ibid).
Henry's idea of
woman is medieval, horrifying. However, March is not exactly what
he wants her to be: "She had been so used to the very opposite"
(ibid), and it is very difficult to be transformed at once into
the passive woman Henry wants her to be.
In Lawrence's
narrative, it seems that the characters are at different sides
pulling a strong iron chain to see which of them will win over
the other (unless they both fall down in the attempt). Therefore,
this sense of failure persists till the last page of the story.
Lawrence's interference in the narrative is even stronger than
one might think.
In feeling unable to side either with Henry or
with March, he interferes to express his personal feeling about
fulfilment. It is as if it were something unattainable. One
may think that the goals of human beings (as implied by Lawrence)
seem always different when they seem to get there: "You pluck
flower after flower — it is never 'the flower.
The flower itself
is a horrible gulf, it is the bottomless pit" (p.156). Lawrence
seems indeed pessimistic here.
It is as if he himself had been
trying and trying and never finding y/hat he wanted.
It also
seems that he is anticipating that there is no end in Henry and
March's struggle to attain their goals.
More about the inner conflict is stated through the
author's voice: March has failed to make Banford happy and now
she has also failed to fulfil Henry's ideals.
Henry