RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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Gudrun.
Ursula is more sure of her own 'expectancy' than is
Gudrun of her ''confidence1.
We have had a more detailed view of
Ursula's background in The Rainbow and because of this we can
take her as the most experienced of the two.
Gudrun's background
is slightly darker because in The Rainbow she was not a prominent
character.
In Women in Love we know that she is an artist who
has spent several years in London, "working at an art-school, as
a student, and living a studio life" (ibid).
We also know that
she has had some previous connections with the 'Pompadour' world
of decadent artists.
From this we conclude that she is an
independent woman with modern thoughts about life.
However,
despite this idea of 'modernity' Gudrun seems somehow lost in her
beliefs.
Ursula, on the other hand, is more on the way to
discover herself because she apparently knows what she wants.
When the reader first meets the sisters they are talking
about marriage.
Their ideas can be paired in terms of
opposition: Gudrun considers a marriage for convenience whereas
Ursula is more firm in believing that marriage may be 'the end
of experience' rather than an experience.
These opposed ideas
set the mood for the sisters' search for a relationship.
Another of the sisters' differences relates to their home.
Both feel like outsiders.
But Gudrun protests more than
Ursula: if home feels to her like "a country in an underworld"
(p.5),
why then has she come back? A possible answer is
provided two pages earlier in the book in which Gudrun says that
she "'...was hoping for a man to come along ... a highly
attractive individual of sufficient means-'" (p.2).
This
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