RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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knowledge, breaks out with harsh comments about her.
The curious
thing is the irony of the fact that Birkin himself has just been
very intellectual about Botany with Ursula.
So it is himself,
his own self-consciousness and intellectuality, that Birkin is
criticizing in Hermione.
He throws at her the fact that all she
wants is a kind of 'commerce' of the mind in which nothing more
matters but the fierce wish to cling to knowledge as if it were
everything in life.
He tells her that
'... knowledge means everything to you. Even
your animalism, you want it in your head. You
don't want to be an animal, you want to observe
your own animal functions, to get a mental thrill
out of them... you want the lie that will match
the rest of your furniture1 (p.35).
The point of the discussion is the implication that the whole
relation between Birkin and Hermione has involved nothing more
than the sick mental abstraction of both persons. In a way it
can be said that, although Birkin criticizes his lover, he is
like her too. He does not want sensuality. She is a mirror of
Birkin.
At the same time that he blames her for her mental
life, he is also admitting his own fault for permitting her to
feed her thirst with his life.
The difference between them
lies perhaps in the idea that Hermione uses her power as a way
to keep people whom she 'loves' under her wings.
Birkin is
conscious of this:
'... your passion is a lie,' he went on violently.
'It isn't passion at all, it is your will. It's
your bullying will. You want to clutch things and
have them in your power. And why? Because you
haven't got any real body, any dark sensual body
of life. You have no sensuality. You have only
your will and your conceit of consciousness, and
your lust for power, to know' (ibid).
Even here in this horrible view of his lover, Birkin seems to be
unsure of his desire to get rid of her: "He had an impulse to
kneel and plead for forgiveness" (p.36).
Instead, he goes on