RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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they have tried hard not to be swallowed up by their ex-partners.
They are somehow similar in the sense that they are soulful
characters.
They differ in the sense that each uses his/her
mind for different purposes.
Ramon, getting rid of his old
life, attempts, and apparently succeeds, in transforming his
country into a place where people can meet in 'the twilight of
the Morning Star'.
Kate, on the other hand, attempts to get rid
of her old self and knows almost nothing about her future till
the moment she meets Cipriano and Ramon and becomes the doubtful
Malintzi, the goddess of forgiveness.
The Plumed Serpent evaluates the two characters differently.
Lawrence in depicting Kate shows her at first positive but with
some suspicious traits.
The point of view in the novel is
almost entirely hers and sometimes we do not know if we trust
Kate as a separate character or if we see her as one of Lawrence's
mouthpieces.
Kate is seen several times as if the author were
interfering in her own thoughts so as to produce exactly the kind
of feeling that he would have if he were her.
Through Kate, for
instance, Lawrence propounds a positive view of the man-to-man
relation:
It seemed to Kate that the highest thing this
country might produce would be some powerful
relationship of man to man. Marriage itself would
be always a casual thing (p.167).
Female characters in Lawrence's previous novels would never be
able to accord with the above statement.
It would be useful to
contrast Kate's thought here with Ursula's quarrel with Birkin
at the end of Women in Love.
There, Ursula could not admit the
possibility of Birkin having a man-friend such as he wanted to
find in Gerald Crich.
Ursula told Birkin that it was a
'perversity', an 'obstinacy' to have such a communion with a