RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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text and supported by the text.
I say this maybe because his
views are similar to my own.
Daleski is one of the few critics who views the failure of
the Morels* marriage in a rational way.
I definitely agree with
him when he says that what Sons and Lovers
plainly shows', time and again, is that the Morels
are — at the least — equally responsible for the
failure of their marriage; and yet Morel is here
presented as feeling that the ruin is of his making.
Indeed, if ultimate responsibility for the ruin
must be fixed, then on the objective evidence offered
by the book it is Mrs Morel who has the most to
answer for (p.48).
Other critics (see Kate Millet and Eliseo Vivas, for instance)
fail to see this and put the blame on Morel who is in reality a
mere victim of circumstances.
When Mrs Morel dies, Daleski points out, Paul 'kills1 her
in a 'mercy killing' and the death represents
symbolically, both a repudiation of what [the
mother] stands for, and a decisive act of selfliberation,
as does [Paul's] turning towards the
city at the end of the book (p.57).
I only agree partially with this interpretation because (as I
will argue later) I fail to see Paul's turning towards the city
as a full self-liberation from the mother's influence.
In The Rainbow, Daleski says, "Lawrence deals with three
generations in order to discover what is constant in the lives
of men and women" (p.75).
This is the period Daleski calls "Two
in One".
His discussion is more explicity in line with my main
theme: the balance of power in marriage.
Tom and Lydia (first generation), according to this critic,
achieve a balanced relationship through the recognition of each
other's otherness, i.e., they keep their inner divisions apart
from the marriage.
Each one preserves his/her own identity to