RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

37-4
the masculine side. Also, another idea must be presented to
defend Kate: Lawrence, even wishing to make her submit, has put
into her mind the thought that she could fool both men and
because of this Lawrence has not attained his purpose of putting
the woman at the feet of men.
If he lets her have this thought
he implies that Kate is still spiritually strong and not the
passive female he has tried to make her appear.
However, Kate's
character is inferior to Ursula's because Kate is seen as strong
■mostly in her mind, whereas Ursula defends her points of view
even though she knows she is going to fight her husband off.
Kate is strong internally, but Lawrence makes her weaker in terms
of making her depend on the two men.
Ursula has never been a
puppet in Lawrence's hands but it seems that Kate is.
Among these three fictions the one which seems more
'balanced' in terms of the couples is Women in Love because
Ursula and Birkin, as I already pointed out, up to the end of
the novel, are still defending their different points of view.
The other two stories may be seen as theory and practice: Henry
wants to dominate March, but he cannot, thus Cipriano dominates
Kate (at least sexually).
But the idea of a perfect communion
between man and woman is still absent.
It is as if Lawrence
could not portray this and the more he tried,
the less he could
even convince himself of his intentions.
Lawrence's endings seem always a problem.
What is really
the sense of his endings? To answer this question one must
examine the intention of any ending.
The end of a story may be
intended to teach a moral lesson.
This possibility I discard
because Lawrence himself said that this is immoral.
His stories
end almost always in an ambiguous way due to the author's
conflict between intention vs feeling.
What does this prove? His