RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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dominant figure in the affair.
The man is submissive to her.
This can be seen when Halliday tells her that she cannot drink
brandy with oysters.
The fact that oysters are a supposed
aphrodisiac may imply that Halliday is jealous, worried Minette
will betray him.
The girl in a burst of temper throws the
brandy at his face and the impression Gerald has is "that
[Halliday] was terrified of her and that he loved his terror"
(p.61). These characters have no respect for each other. It is
the burden of a highly corrupt society in which people's roles
are seen in the way they treat each other.
As I said, Birkin is a mere spectator of this society.
His
attitude towards his London friends is one of distaste and
anger:
Birkin was mad with irritation, Halliday was turning in an
insane hatred against Gerald. Minette was
becoming hard and cold, like a flint knife, and
Halliday was laying himself out of her. And
her intention, ultimately, was to capture
Halliday, to have complete power over him (p.73).
As Birkin cannot cope with this mood of antagonism he escapes
from it by going to town.
The reason why Birkin is always fleeing from a more close
contact with these friends may be that in fact he repudiates
their tendency towards destruction.
Birkin already knows that
they are nihilists; that they do not want to build anything.
Life, the way it is - bound to destruction -, is what they need
to support their own self-destructive personalities.
Through
their negation of creative life they have become predatory
creatures, like Hermione.
The difference is that they do not
stick to one single creature but actually to various persons
who form the group.
It is a circle of decadent artists whose
main objective in life, contradictory as it may seem, is not