RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

17 9
and incompetence.
He forces her to understand that in the world
there is no place for individuals».
There are only 'Standard
teachers' dominating a crowd of rebellious children so as to
transform them into automatons.
Ursula tries to refuse this
politic of authority.
However, she is forced to admit that
without it she cannot belong to the system. Alone she is only a
lost screw out of the machine.
When she finally succeeds with
her children, her success is mixed with a certain bitterness
because she had to pay a high price:
She saw no children, only the task that was to be
done. And keeping her eyes there, on the task,
and not on the child, she was impersonal enough
to punish where she could otherwise only have
sympathized, understood, and condoned, to approve
where she would have been uninterested before. But
her interest had no place any more... She could
only feel her will, and what she could have of
this class which she must grasp into subjection...
(pp.393-5).
The price she has paid to be a successful teacher has been
too high.
Actually the system requires that Ursula become cruel,
a sadist almost.
It is a sado-masochistic system that culminates
in her beating a boy.
This sado-masochistic element is also
like her love life: a struggle for domination.
In Ursula's soul
the learning has crystallized as something hard: she must never
let feelings predominate if she wants to succeed.
Society does
not allow feelings, for they imply individuality and in society
there is no place for individuals.
Having acquired the lesson,
Ursula leaves the school with the idea that the world is not so
bad after all.
Her idea is that despite the high price she had
to pay, she has acknowledged a certain control over her'
emotions in relation to the world.
However, she has a long road
to follow in order to really learn how the world is.
Her next
step is the university.