RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

atmosphere of something hidden between them.
Now that Birkin
is sick, Gerald comes to see him, and Lawrence tells us that
"The two men had a deep, uneasy feeling for each other" (p. 193).
It is interesting to notice that it is almost always either
Lawrence who tells us this or Birkin who observes the unadmitted
love between himself and the blond Gerald.
Since the opening of
Women in Love this hidden attraction is gradually revealed to the
reader.
It is first mentioned at the wedding of Gerald's sister.
After Birkin talks about his theory that it takes two to make a
murder, Lawrence tells us:
There was a pause of strange enmity between the
two men, that was very near to love. It was always
the same between them; always their talk brought
them into a deadly nearness of contact, perilous
intimacy which was either hate or love, or both...
the heart of each burned from the other. They
burned with each other, inwardly. This they would
never admit... they were not going to be so unmanly
and unnatural as to allow any heart-burning between
them (p.28).
And Lawrence goes further saying that the men could not believe
”in deep relationship between men and men, and their disbelief
prevented any development of their powerful but suppressed
friendliness" (ibid).
The trouble is that the hidden attraction
is a latent tendency towards homosexuality which both men deny.
This tendency is best explained in "The Prologue to Women in
Love", published in Phoenix II (1970). This prologue in fact
was never published.
It is a discarded section of the early
conception of the novel.
Its importance lies in the fact that
it reveals some of Lawrence's ideas at the time he was writing
the novel.
In the prologue Lawrence explains how Birkin comes
to know Gerald: from then on Birkin develops within himself a
deep desire for sensual communion with the blond Gerald.
And
although they are never described in intimate terms, it is clear
that Birkin is often more attracted by Gerald's body (or men's