RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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the other, and he had stood in the doorways facing
each other, whilst the light flooded out from
behind on to each of their faces, it was the
transfiguration, the glorification, the
admission (p.96).
Thus Tom and Lydia forget to question themselves for the sake
of their own happiness.
For them the importance of life is in
the present.
Past or future is distant from them.
As for the child Anna, she is left to her own life.
She
is to answer for the question "Whither?". Now
Anna's soul was put at peace between them.
She looked from one to the other, and she saw
them established to her safety, and she was free.
She played between the pillar of fire and the
pillar of cloud in confidence, having the
assurance on her right hand and the assurance on
her left. She was no longer called upon to
uphold with her childish might the broken end of
the arch. Her father and her mother now met to
the span of the heavens, and she, the child, was
free to play in the space beneath, between (p.97).
This is what I call the most perfect image of balance in the
whole opus of D.H. Lawrence. It is in Lydia and Tom that this
author achieves his goal of a balanced relationship between man
and woman.
The other books by Lawrence never show a balance
assured and final as the one this couple has achieved.
In its next phase, the novel shifts its attention to the
developing second generation.
At this point the woman (Anna
and, later on, Ursula) tends to become the main protagonist. Anna
Lensky, although not a Brangwen by birth, sums up a great deal
of the Brangwen women's aspiration. Anna herself embodies the
unknown since she is Polish by birth.
Since her early girlhood
she has shown traits of a rebellious character.
She is a
different girl and she realizes this difference by having a
certain contempt for other children.
Anna has a domineering
temperament and because of this she masters the other children