RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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mutual hellish recognition (p.234).
Even so, Gerald must disguise his feelings because it is not
good for his integrity to show the most dangerous trait of his
personality.
It may also be said that the 'hellish recognition'
implies their mutual necessity to live in violence: "And
[Gerald] felt he ought to say something to cover it.
He had
the power of lightning in his nerves, she seemed like a soft
recipient of his magical, hideous white fire.
unconfident, he had qualms of fear" (ibid).
He was
His fear is due to
the power Gudrun's strident voice exerts over his senses.
Her
voice makes him go mad in desire to have her and dominate her.
The rabbit has been a side-show, an allegory to demonstrate how
far violence is implied between them.
The symbol of the
'hellish recognition', or their Devil's pact, is strengthened
by the red gashes Bismarck leaves in the flesh of both Gerald
and Gudrun.
It is a kind of 'dark marriage' in which the animal
is the 'priest'.
This 'dark marriage' may also be a substitute
for Birkin's idea of Blutbrtiderschaft between him and Gerald and
which the latter refused.
With Gudrun it is different because
neither of them proposed any sort of connection.
The connection
has happened, up to a point, casually without any committment
between the two.
Gerald and Gudrun, after they 'marry', "knew
that he was initiate as she was initiate" (p.235).
When the
scene closes, Gerald feels somehow uneasy because "He felt again
as if she had hit him across the face - or rather as if she had
torn him across the breast, dully, finally" (p.236).
And again,
the idea seems to be that Gudrun is stronger and that Gerald is
doomed by her to have a disastrous life after they become
intimate.
There is an insistent connection between Gerald and