RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

197
view of them is very accurate and disgusting:
There was Gerald, an amused look on his face;
the game pleased him. There was Gudrun,
watching with steady, large, hostile eyes; the
game fascinated her, and she loathed it. There
was Ursula, with a slightly startled look on her
face, as if she was hurt, and the pain were just
outside her consciousness (ibid).
What seems important here is the fact that Gerald and Gudrun
like the 'game' because they are intrinsically part of it. Ursula,
who looks like an outsider, is involuntarily playing in the game
but she does not want to belong to it.
She is the one who with
Birkin will refuse the game of the old world to build a new one.
Here Birkin decides he must get away from Hermione's rotten
world: "'That's enough,' he said to himself involuntarily"(ibid).
Another refusal of Hermione's world occurs during a
conversation among the guests.
Hermione says that people are
only equal in spirit.
People are "'... all brothers there - The
rest wouldn't matter, there would be no more of this carping
and envy and this struggle for power, which destroys, only
destroys'" (p.96).
This speech leads all the guests, except
for Birkin, to leave the table, perhaps in a silent agreement
with Hermione.
Birkin, on the other hand, argues with her:
'We are all different and unequal in spirit - it
is only the social differences that are based on
accidental material conditions... We're all the
same in point of number. But spiritually there
is pure difference and neither equality nor
inequality counts. It is upon these two bits of
knowledge that you must found a state. Your
democracy is an absolute lie — your brotherhood
of man is pure falsity...1 (ibid).
I believe that Birkin's disagreement with Hermione is due to
the fact that she wants people to be equal in spirit because in
this way they would never disagree with her.
As the idea of
equality comes from her she would be the 'strength' to make
people's mind equal.
Birkin wants thus to deny this strength