RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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Quetzalcoatl and choose not to follow it.
Lawrence, in a clear
symptom of nervous breakdown, introduces human sacrifices which
are performed by the living god Hut'zilopochtli, the bloody
executioner of Quetzalcoatl.
madness in writing this book.
It is the apex of Lawrence's
The choice of the new religion
which replaces Catholicism is, instead of a regained freedom, a
regression to barbaric rituals of murder where Cipriano
incarnates the power to decide people's lives.
imposes an acceptance of the murders on Kate.
Lawrence also
Her acceptance is
a denial of her previous refusal to see the bullfight in the
beginning of the novel which, compared to the human sacrifices,
is only minor brutality.
These two different moments in Kate's
life show two Lawrences: the sane author who treated his
character as a human being showing the nauseating sensation Kate
felt in seeing a spectacle of violence in the bullfight and the
insane one who transformed the woman into an accomplice of human
violence.
In the bullfight Kate was horrified by what men made
the animals do:
Kate had never been taken so completely by
surprise in all her life. She had still cherished
some idea of gallant show. And before she knew
where she was, she was watching a bull whose
shoulders trickled blood goring his horns up and
down inside the belly of a prostrate and feebly
plunging old horse.
The shock almost overpowered her. She had
come for a gallant show. This she had paid to see.
Human cowardice and beastliness, a smell of blood,
a nauseous whiff of bursten bowels 1 She turned
her face away (p.13 - My underlining).
And she ran way from the place unable to face the stupidity and
violence of the show.
with human sacrifices!
And then we see a new Kate who agrees
It is as if Kate herself had forgotten
her senses to feel herself superior to the sacrificed people.
She is a goddess: