RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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they never did in Thomas Crich's administration.
The miners at
first disliked Gerald, but the strength of the machine makes
them all submit:
The men were satisfied to belong to the great and
wonderful machine, even whilst it destroyed them.
It was what they wanted... Their hearts died within
them, but their souls were satisfied. It was what
they wanted (p.223).
And now that Gerald has done everything to occupy his time
and to satisfy his thirst for power, he is dismissed too.
The
machine does not need him anymore.
When he feels that his
system is so perfect that it does not even need him, he becomes
hollow.
There is nothing more he can do: thus, he feels
desperate because what is he apart from the machine?
His whole
being is shaken by this sudden realization:
when he was alone in the evening and had nothing
to do, he had suddenly stood up in terror, not
knowing what he was. And he went to the mirror
and looked long and closely at his own face, at
his own eyes, seeking for something. He was
afraid, in mortal dry fear, but he knew not
what of (p.224).
Gerald's conflict is due to his own hollowness.
He is a man
who has not built anything in life except for the
modernization of his mines.
His feelings are abstractions. He
is a non-human being.
That is why he looks at his own eyes and
Yet he was not sure that they were not blue false
bubbles that would burst in a moment and leave
clear annihilation. He could see the darkness in
them, as if they were only bubbles of darkness.
He was afraid that one day he would break down
and be a purely meaningless bubble lapping round
a darkness (pp.22 4-5).
His fear of becoming a 'bubble of darkness' may be explained by
his own fear of suicide.
In his family death is a very common
word.
As a child Gerald has played'Cain' and accidentally killed
his brother with a gun.
But as the word 'accidental', according