RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

114
'Thirty years of earnest love; three years'
life like a passionate ecstasy — and it was
finished. He was very great and very wonderful.
I am very insignificant, and shall go ignobly.
But we are the same; love, the brief ecstasy, and
the end. But mine is one rose and His all the
white beauty in the world.'
Siegmund felt his heart very weary, sad, and
at fault, in the presence of Christ. Yet he
derived comfort from the knowledge that life was
treating him in the same manner as it had treated
the Master, though his compared small and
despicable with the Christ tragedy (p.79 - My
underlining).
Christ and Siegmund are seen as the same: both he and Christ
have only one end: death.
The man feels relieved from his guilt
because he is being given the same treatment as the Master.
Siegmund does not even seem to be frightened at the idea of
death.
It is near him but he seems to see it at a certain
distance.
This is time for him to diminish himself and show his
audience he is a failure: "'I am small and futile: my small,
futile tragedy!''1 (ibid).
This is full of self-pity and
Lawrence is hardly aware of how boring the reading of his book
becomes because of statements like this.
and repeats them throughout the narrative.
That is why he repeats
The trouble is that
Lawrence seems to identify with his self-pitying adolescent hero.
He has no distance from Siegmund.
Up to the moment Helena finds the way home, Siegmund keeps
following her, still not sure of where he is.
Helena holds the
direction, totally in control of herself and of the situation.
He, as usual, is dependent on her.
Siegmund meets a strange man named Hampson the following
day who appears only in chapter 13 and vanishes at the end of
it.
This man and Siegmund have a strange conversation which leads
to a doom in Siegmund's life.
One may think of them being doubles
because of the number of similarities between them.
Hampson
seems to be a projection of Siegmund's superego.
His function