RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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The interesting point is that when Birkin seems disillusioned
with one, he goes straight to the other and when he finds the
other dissatisfactory, he comes back to the one he left behind.
It is like going back and forth in a swing where one is neither
satisfied with the left side of the swing nor with the right one.
In fact there are at least four scenes which define
Birkin's search for the ideal partner.
Each scene, which is
intermingled with some sub-scenes, prepares the path to the
other and they alternate Birkin's attempts to succeed with
Ursula or with Gerald.
In the four scenes Birkin is defeated
only to recover in the chapter "Excurse" which apparently
expresses the victory of the love between man and woman.
The first of these scenes occurs in the chapter "Mino" in
which Birkin explains to Ursula what he means by the equilibrium
he wants in a relation.
He tells Ursula that instead of the
love she wants,
there is a beyond, in you, in me, which
is further than love, beyond the scope, as the stars are beyond
the scope of vision...'" (p.137).
This 'beyond' is where he
wants to meet Ursula.
The trouble with Birkin's idea of 'love
beyond love' is that he seems to want to find in Ursula neither
the female, nor the woman to complete him.
His idea seems to
be much more related to the homosexual in Ursula because, as he
tells her, "'I want to find you, where you don't know your own
existence, the you that your common self denies utterly...'"(p.
139). He also implies that her opinions, thoughts, good looks
mean nothing to him.
This self Birkin wants to find may be that
which is entirely submissive to his power.
He is the owner of
the words, of the thoughts.
Ursula does not need to think, she
should leave thinking to him, the man.
This idea is contradictory
because Birkin defines his search for balance in terms of 'star