RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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to perforin the action. The narrative continues vacillating back
and forth between his suicide and his surviving. There are two
possibilities: either to use a razor to cut his wrists or to
hang himself. Then Helena comes to his mind again and he seems
to give in the idea of suicide. In the following day his body
is found by a window-cleaner Beatrice has called to help her.
Siegmund has finally hung himself.
Helena comes to know of his suicide through a newspaper.
She falls delirious. Beatrice, on the other hand, does not seem
to suffer much. Lawrence tries to make us believe she feels
guilty, but it is not convincing.
One may think that the author
tries to do this because he does not sympathize with Siegmund1s
wife.
He seems to want to show that Beatrice is in fact better
off because of Siegmund's death, because soon after his burial
she moves to South London to reorganize her life. She becomes
a successful landlady.
After this long flash-back the story comes back to to the
present, almost a year after Siegmund's death.
Helena is with
Cecyl Byrne, a new friend of hers.
She is trying to reorganize
her life. Byrne represents another possible sweetheart.:.
The
point in the new affair is not new, though. Byrne is a potential
Siegmund. He also seems to be about to fall under the woman's
spell as Siegmund did.
The couple starts their affair by going
to the same places Helena has been with her dead lover the
previous year. Helena is again dealing with a dependent male who
"Like a restless insect hovered about her" (p.213).
The idea of
a repetition in the story of the dreaming woman is clear: they
walk through the same paths she has walked with Siegmund; the
same larch-fingers which stole her pins are the same ones. The
man wants to fulfil the gap Siegmund left. He does not think in