RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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Gudrun and Gerald's next meeting anticipates certain
features of their future affair.
While watching Gerald swimming,
Gudrun envies him because he as a man has advantages that she as
a woman does not.
One may even say that this envy she feels may
be interpreted in Freudian terms as 'penis envy'.
Gudrun has her
masculine side tied up within herself and when she meets Gerald,
who is chiefly seen in terms of his maleness, she projects onto
him her desire to be like him:
Gudrun envied him almost painfully. Even this
momentary possession of pure isolation and
fluidity seemed to her so terribly desirable that
she felt herself as if damned, out there on the
high road.
'God, what it is to be a man!' she cried.
'What?' exclaimed Ursula in surprise.
'The freedom, the liberty, the mobility!' cried
Gudrun strangely flushed and brilliant... (p.40).
Their first tête-à-tête meeting in Hermione's house implies
the idea of recognition between the two.
Gerald wants to fulfil
Gudrun in her expectations perhaps because he sees in her a
different woman who is independent, ironic, and distant from the
commonplace people he used to know:
He wanted to come up to her standards, fulfil her
expectations. He knew that her criterion was the
only one that mattered. The others were all
outsiders, whatever they.might be socially. And
Gerald could not help it, he was bound to strive
to come up to her criterion, fulfill her idea of
a man and a human being (p.95).
Three other meetings define their relation: the scene of
Gerald and the Arab mare, Gudrun's dance in front of Gerald's
bullocks in the water party and the chasing of the rabbit
Bismarck in Gerald's home. All three scenes reflect their sado-
masochist exchange of roles.
The first one occurs when Ursula and Gudrun are returning
home from school: when they are going to cross the railway they