RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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even here Lawrence could not present an achieved balance.
The
balance is still related to Birkin's theory of 'star-polarity1,
or, as Ursula sees it, as one mate being the 'satellite' of the
other.
In the man-to-man 'friendship' there will be a dominant
partner and a submissive one.
This is what the relationships
of Aaron and Lilly, Kangaroo and Somers, and Ramon and Cipriano
imply.
It seems, therefore, that in essence Lawrence has not
changed. His mind still cannot cope with equilibrium. This is
also true in relation to Lawrence's eternal conflict between
soul and body.
These two elements are still not in harmony.
Each belongs to a different character.
In these novels, the
male characters are married but unhappy in their marriages.
Their frustrated relations lead them to break them in order to
search for a 'rebirth' in another kind of relation with other
men.
But, as I said, in these relations is always present the
idea of submission to a more powerful and authoritarian partner.
In these novels the search for power is a strong theme.
Not only power in personal relations but power in the political
sense.
Daleski, in 'The Forked Flame (1965), defines the three
novels of Lawrence's leadership phase:
In Aaron's Rod, it will be remembered, the world
was to be saved, prospectively, by a leader who
would know how to exercise power. In Kangaroo power
is considered in relation to politics and to
possible alternatives to an outmoded system of
democracy, but in the end political programmes are
found to be wholly inefficacious. Somers, the
Lawrence-like protagonist of the novel, finally
realizes that 'the only thing is the God who is
the source of all passion. Once go down before
the God-passion and human passions take their
right rhythm' (p.221). As the passage quoted above
indicates, it is to 'the great dark God, the
ithyphallic, of the first dark religions' that he
turns - and it is this God who is resurrected in
The Plumed Serpent. The myth, however, leaves us
with the uncomfortable suspicion that the God is
reborn as much to vindicate a mode of personal