RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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destroying in people the creative knowledge of life.
Skrebensky
is seen as a mere robot following the instructions of the great
machine of power.
If the great machine tells him that fighting
and killing is "the most serious business there is" in life, he
would never question it because he does not think, nor feel, he
just obeys commands blindly.
He cannot take up any original
attitude.
Hence, Skrebensky belongs to the great structure of
power but who, without the structure, is nothing.
This is what
Ursula realizes:
'But when [the nation] didn’t need your services
in particular — when there is no fighting? What
would you do then?'
He was irritated.
'I would do what everybody else does.'
'What?'
'Nothing. I would be in readiness for when I was
needed.'
The answer came in exasperation.
'It seems to me,' she answered, 'as if you
weren't anybody — as if there weren't anybody
there, where you are. Are you anybody really? You
seem like nothing to me' (p.311).
Ursula's words contain her dawning realization that the man is no
'son of God' and, although she only comes to reject him later,
she has already started to deny his being.
The lovers in fact have different ideas about the world.
Ursula is an individual with a confused goal; the man does not
have any aim in life except that he lives to 'serve' the
collective.
Skrebensky's personal feelings exist only in terms
of physical fulfilment, and that is what he wants from Ursula.
She, however, demands more from life.
She wants to raise her
being to 'touch the stars' and be beyond carnal love. Skrebensky
"was just a brick in the whole great social fabric, the nation,
the modern humanity" (p.328).
As a person, he "had no importance,
except as he represented the whole... To his own intrinsic life,
he was dead" (ibid).
As a man, all he wants from a woman is