RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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morphia.
A third parallel can be traced between Thomas Crich and
Gertrude Morel when they die.
Both are described as if they had
rejuvenated in their death:
and
The dead man lay in repose, as if gently asleep,
so gently, so peacefully, like a young man sleeping
in purity. He was still warm (p.327).
She lay raised on the bed, the sweep of the sheet
from the raised feet was like a clean curve of
snow, so silent. She lay like a maiden asleep...
She lay like a girl asleep and dreaming of her
love... She was young again (p.485).
It is as if Lawrence were somehow relieving both man and woman,
father and mother, of the strong suffering they have had in their
lives.
Now they are neither the charitable man nor the
domineering woman.
They have become young again as if ready to
restart life.
The final parallel relates to Walter Morel and Christiana
Crich facing their dead wife and husband.
Christiana has
despised her husband because of his intense love for the poor.
Now that he is dead, she restarts loving him because he looks
young and because she may be feeling guilty about his death. That
is what she tells her children in a very Shakespearean way:
'Blame me, blame me if you like, that he lies
there like a lad in his teens, with his first
beard on his face. Blame me if you like. But
none of you know... If I thought that the
children I bore would lie looking like that
in death, I'd strangle them when they were
infants, yes (p.327).
Walter Morel, however, refuses to face his dead wife in fear of
a possible reproach she would give him in her cold bed as she
used to do with him throughout her life.
He feels guilty because
she is dead but he tries to hide from the others his tortured