RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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always imply a fierce confidence in the future.
Sometimes Tom
feels a certain anguish because of Lydia's strangeness:
They were such strangers, they must for ever be
such strangers, that his passion was a changing
torment to him. Such intimacy of embrace, and such
utter foreignness of contact! It was unbearable. He
could not bear to be near her, and know the utter
foreignness between them, know how entirely they
were strangers to each other (p.49).
This attraction and repulsion exchange places in both of them
and, till they get married, Tom is in a mood of uneasiness and
anguish.
They marry and "At the wedding [Tom's] face was stiff
and expressionless.
He wanted to drink, to get rid of his
forethought and afterthought, to set the moment free" (p.57).
Lydia, on the other hand, seems to feel much more at ease because
for her there is "No future, no past, only this, her hour" (ibid).
This fact is important because it marks different feelings of
two people who are to share their lives together.
One feeling
counterbalances the other. Tom and Lydia will keep their
differences, even though they are not fully aware of each other's
feelings.
Contradictory as it may seem, this is what seems to me
to be responsible for this couple's balanced relationship.
The marriage is marked basically by Tom's insecurity about
possessing Lydia. He seems never sure of having her. He knows
that
he lived by her. Did he own her? Was she here
forever? Or might she go away? She was not really
his, it was not a real marriage, this marriage
between them. She might go away. He did not feel
like a master, husband, father of her children.
She belonged elsewhere. Any moment, she might be
gone (p.60).
The only thing he feels he must do to keep her is to be home, to
see her and to unite his insecurity to her foreignness.
Sometimes he cannot even understand her.
Lydia seems too superior
to him. When this crisis passes they meet again and