RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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Halliday's room-mate.
In order to clarify this point, it is important to take a
look at the chronological order of events from the time Birkin
meets Gerald at the station till the outcome in Halliday's flat.
Birkin invites Gerald to meet him in the Pompadour where he will
be with Halliday's group.
The Café Pompadour is a place
where the faces and head of the drinkers showed
dimly through the haze of smoke, reflected more
dimly, and repeated ad infinitum in the great
mirrors on the walls, so that one seemed to
enter a vague, dim world of shadowy drinkers
humming within an atmosphere of blue tobacco
smoke (p.54).
The Pompadour is a place where people can be seem as replicas of
one simple model. They do not differ. The mirrors on the walls
imply the extension of their vulgarity.
exchanging masks with their partners.
They are always
It is as if they looked
for their own other side in the being of the others.
A good
example of this mirror-like quality is seen through Minette and
Halliday with the help of Gerald Crich.
The triangle formed by
these people implies the idea that modern society generates
sado-masochistic relations.
For instance, as soon as Gerald
sees Minette, the powerful mine owner craves to have the woman
submissive to him:
[Minette] appealed to Gerald strongly. He felt
an awful, enjoyable power over her, an instinctive
cherishing very near to cruelty. For she was a
victim. He felt that she was in his power, and he
was generous. The electricity was turgid and
voluptuously rich, in his limbs. He would be able
to destroy her utterly in the strength of his
discharge. But she was waiting in her separation,
given (p.57).
It seems clear that there is a certain propensity in both
characters to play with cruelty.
Gerald is the sadist and
Minette is the masochist.
However, Minette plays the sadist
with her lover Halliday by whom she is pregnant.
She is the