RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

376
Ursula, in a rejected fragment of epilogue,
goes to Italy (apparently with Birkin) after
Gerald's death in the Alpine sequence with which
the book ends; in this fragment, Ursula a year
later receives a letter from Gudrun who has left
Loerke and has borne Gerald a posthumous son...
Still another rejected ending was a comparatively
'happy' one, with correspondences to Lawrence's
later (1919) play, Touch and Go. In this attempt
to end the novel, Lawrence didn't kill Gerald,but
sent him back to England, Gudrun following. Loerke
offers to marry her, although she is with child by
Gerald, who himself now considers marriage... (p.
341).
I do think that the rejection of these endings only serves to
prove that Lawrence did not really want to impose an idea.
By
finishing the book with the characters involved in a debate he
simply divided the conflict between them.
On the one hand, one
may see that Lawrence is too honest to simply impose his view. He
preferred perhaps to leave the reader with a sense of multiple
and ambiguous possibilities.
The reader then is given
'alternatives'.
Thus, Lawrence has not chosen one single
alternative, but rather presents alternatives and in them a
feeling of tension and conflict.
On the other hand, one may take Lawrence as incoherent and
confused because he does not know how to end his stories.
I
believe that his fondness for open-endings means that the author
does not have made-up conclusions.
It is a truism that modern
literature does not teach one how he must behave.
I think that
Lawrence is in fact avoiding simple solutions to complex problems
— it is not easy to discover answers which can instantly solve
problems related
to emotional relationships, especially if they
refer to a division in the self (soul and body conflict), or if
they relate to making a choice between man and woman, and man
and man.
Some of the endings of Lawrence's stories may be seen
as 'good endings' since they create multiple possibilities.
The