RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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of lanterns in the Water Party and by the stockings Gudrun gave
her.
Therefore, both Birkin and Ursula contain elements of
decadence counterbalancing their 'silver river of life'. Besides
this, the old world has more living representatives than the new
one, as I pointed out in the beginning of this analysis.
Halliday's group, Gudrun, the pregnant Minette, Loerke, Hermione:
they are all alive.
I think that the question at the beginning
of this paragraph must be rephrased: what are the chances for
Birkin and Ursula to survive in such a world of dissolution and
corruption?
Women in Love, as part of Lawrence's second phase, still
shows the persistent conflict between soul and body in the main
characters.
This division is clearly seen in Hermione and
Ursula.
body.
The former is seen as the soul and the latter as the
However, Ursula cannot be said to be a character whose
main 'virtue' lies in her sensuality.
She seems to be half-body
and half-soul.
Hermione, on the other hand, is the picture of
the strong soulful woman, or another 'dreaming woman' like Helena
in The Trespasser.
The difference is that Hermione is not a
victorious character as the women in Lawrence's first phase.
Rupert Birkin is the one who still has trouble in defining
whether he wants the soul or the body.
But it can be said that
in his attempt to build a new life with Ursula, who is not a
passive woman nor is she a domineering one,
he is trying to
find his way.
The main problem is that when he broke with
Hermione and developed a theory of a relation based on 'star-
polarity', in fact he did not know that his practice was not a
balanced one but a very chauvinistic one as seen in the chapter
"Mino".
What he wanted really was a relation of dominance in
which the male subjugated the female.
His relation with Ursula