RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

may be well seen when the couple receives Tom in their cottage
some days after the wedding.
Will feels that
One ought to get up in the morning and wash oneself
.and be a decent social being... [Anna] never washed
her face but sat there talking to her father as
bright and shameless as a daisy opened out of the
dew (p.149).
Anna does,not (yet) distinguish between day and night.
At this
moment of her life, everything is the same, no matter whether it
is light or dark.
Will cannot do anything because from this
point he is already in her hands and "He let her do as she liked
with him, and shone with strange pleasure.
She was to dispose
of him as she would" (ibid).
So it goes. Anna becomes tired of her seclusion and
decides to give a tea-party.
It is her return to the 'dead
world'. Here starts the love-hate cycle of the couple. Will
cannot understand why Anna wants the 'dead world'.
He thinks
that both he and she are 'perfect' together.
He starts to feel
Anna going away from him:
He wanted her back. Dread and desire for her to
stay with him,- and shame at his own dependence on
her drove him to anger... All the love, the
magnificent new order was going to be lost, she
would forfeit it all for the outside things. She
would admit the outside world again, she would
throw away the living fruit for the ostensible
rind. He began to hate this in her. Driven by
fear of her departure into a state of helplessness,
almost of imbecility, he wandered about the house
(p.151).
The problem of Will's conflict is that he keeps it within himself.
He says nothing to Anna.
She, on the other hand, can only see
his uneasiness as a sign of dissatisfaction, and then she begins
to demand that he do something to busy himself and not hang
around as if he were lost. Will hates her because of this. The
two, instead of coming to an agreement, start to be separate, as