RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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experiences with men.
Winifred's experiences with men are
described in terms of men's lack of respect for women, of their
imposition of power and subjugation over women.
It seems a hard
lesson; however, the main conclusion one may derive from
Winifred's 'teaching' is that although she tries to pull Ursula
to her own side— to hate men — the schoolteacher really
introduces her pupil to a new world: not just beautiful Sundays
but the weekday world of corruption and terrible aspirations for
the future.
The lesson seems to enter into Ursula's mind the
moment she starts to reject Winifred's world.
she visits her uncle Tom's town, Wiggiston.
This happens when
The town seems to
represent everything Winifred has tried to show Ursula and to
which she (the schoolteacher) belongs.
Wiggiston belongs to the industrial world of which uncle
Tom and Winifred are the main representatives. Graham Holderness
(1982) has a very accurate view of the influence of the town in
the characters' lives:
Wiggiston is the negation of community. It is
dominated by the 'proud, demon-like colliery'; the
miners are subdued to that dominion — they have to
'alter themselves to fit the pits'; each man is
'reified1 to a function of the machine, one of
Ruskin's unhumanised' labourers. Personal and
social life are subordinated to the machine; the
values have disappeared. 'The pit was the great
mistress;' (p.178).
Holderness also says that Ursula's departure from Wiggiston
"involves a comprehensive rejection of society as a whole" (p.
179). This is true. Her decision to reject this society in
terms of her putting her uncle and her mistress together and
leaving them to be swallowed by the system they both represent.
They are corrupt and they deserve each other because the 'real
mistress' of Winifred and uncle Tom is the machine.
As Ursula
does not want the mechanization of her feelings she refuses her