RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

6
In relation to Lawrence's novels, Kate Millet starts her
analysis by arguing that Lady Chatterley's Lover shows Lawrence
making his peace with the female.
This is perhaps because it
reverses the tendency of the period of the leadership novels
(Aaron's Rod, Kangaroo and The Plumed Serpent) in which Lawrence
attempted to deny the woman the right to freedom.
Millet's most
successful argument appears to me to be the parallel that she
traces between two heroines:
Connie chatterley in Lady
Chatterley and Kate from The Plumed Serpent.
Millet argues that
sexual intercourse in the former novel is presented according to
Freud’s directions of "female is passive and male is active" (p.
240). However, she claims that Connie's progress in achieving
orgasm is better than Kate's:"Passive as she is, Connie fares
better than the heroine of The Plumed Serpent, from whom
Lawrencian man, Don Cipriano, deliberately withdraws as she
nears orgasm, in a calculated and sadistic denial of her
pleasure" (ibid).
I agree with Millet's view although I think
that this critic forgets to provide enough evidence to prove her
points.
Again I agree with Mailer's idea that Millet's attacks
on Lawrence only fulfil her radical interests.
He argues that
Millet starts her analysis with Lady Chatterlay and ends with
The Woman Who Rode Away as a way to prove to her readers the
perversity of Lawrence's chauvinism.
The end of her analysis is,
according to Mailer, provident for her criticism since The Woman
Who Rode Away is perhaps the most savage of Lawrence's stories
and it concludes with the sacrifice of a woman by the indians.
Mailer quotes Millet: "Probably it is the perversion of sexuality
into slaughter, indeed, the story's very travesty and denial of
sexuality, which accounts for its monstrous, even demented air"
(p.103).
Mailer's defense of Lawrence points out, "Not every