RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

199
Hurriedly, with a burrowing motion, he covered
his head under the thick volume of Thucydides,
and the blow came down; almost breaking his
neck, and shattering his heart (p.99).
What seems ironic here is the fact that Birkin is saved by a
solid instrument of knowledge.
Hermione who has always wanted
to suck from him his innermost knowledge, is now defeated by
'knowledge' itself.
The question, however, is whether she is
really defeated or not.
I think that she has relieved her
thirst for destruction otherwise how could she feel so at ease
after the attempt?
She sleeps like an innocent child and it
is Birkin who feels annihilated or in "fragments, smashed to
bits".
Moreover, it seems that Birkin feels Hermione was right.
That is what he tells her in a note:
'I will go on to town - I don't want to come
back to Breadalby for the present. But it is
quite all right - I don't want you to mind
having biffed me, in the least. Tell the others
it is just one of my moods. You were quite
right, to biff me - because I know you wanted to.
So there's the end of it' (p.102)
It is the end of the affair.
It is not, however, the end of
Birkin's dependence on Hermione.
It is his farewell to her
world, but his new world will inevitably be built and based
upon Hermione's.
This is seen in her gift to his new house:
she gives him a carpet which definitely implies that wherever he
wants to go and whatever he wants to do will rest on Hermione's
foundations.
b. Gerald and Minette
What has been just analysed is only part of the cycle of
destruction in Women in Love.
Besides Birkin's rejection of
Hermione's world which takes place mostly in Breadalby, a
microcosm of a bigger structure, there is the decadence of