RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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shocked,to really blame Gudrun.
His best friend is dead and
Birkin's desire to have a close contact between himself and the
other man is frustrated: "He wondered if he himself were freezing
too, freezing from the inside" (p.468).
Something seems to be
dying within himself and his feelings are projected outside like
the mourning of a man who has lost a lover, his man-lover. Ursula
is horrified.
Birkin is cruel to her as if it were her fault
that the foetus-like dead Gerald rejected his bloodbrotherhood:
Then [Birkin] suddenly lifted his head and looked
straight at Ursula with dark, almost vengeful eyes.
'He should have loved me,' he said. 'I offered
him.1 She, afraid, white, with mute lips, answered:
'What difference would it have made?'
'It would!' he said. 'It would.' (p.471)
Birkin sounds like a little boy crying after he lost or broke a
loving toy.
Finally they return to England and the dead Gerald returns
with them to be buried there.
Birkin and Ursula go to the Mill
to stay for some time.
Their return to the world they wanted to
reject seems to imply their uncertainty because Lawrence does
not say when they will leave England again.
He only says that
they "stayed at the Mill... for a week or two" (p.472).
There
is no certainty whether they will stay in England or will leave
it forever. Their return is marked by a feeling of pessimism because of Gerald's
death.
Also because Gerald has meant too much for Birkin and he
cannot feel Ursula's presence as the fulfilment he needs to go
on living.
It is interesting to notice that before the couple
has gone to the Alps, Ursula has almost quarrelled with Birkin
because he wanted to take Gerald and Gudrun with them.
She has
told Birkin at that moment that he did not need others to fulfil
his life: after all, he had her by his side.
'You must learn to be alone. And it is so horrid
of you. You've got me. And yet you want to force