RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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my soul. Let me close my prying, seeing eyes,
and sit in dark stillness along with these two
men. They have got more than I , they have a
richness that I haven't got... The curse of Eve
is upon me, my eyes are like hooks, my knowledge
is like a fish-hook through my gills, pulling me
in spasmodic desire. Oh, who will free me from
the grappling of my eyes, from the impurity of
sharp sight 1 Daughter of Eve of greedy vision,
why don't these men save me from the sharpness
of my own eyes!1 (pp.202-3 - My underlining).
The condemnation here seems to be not only a condemnation of
Kate's sexual impulses but the fact that they come through the
eye; that she looks at Ramon as if he were an object.
Hence
this is a possessive, or mental form of desire.
kind of voyeurism is only attributed to the male.
Usually this
It is as if
love-through-the-eye is associated for Lawrence with the old
habits of the mental predatory female beginning with Hermione
and Gudrun and even Helena (though she was a puritan).
It is
not just Kate's sensuality that is being condemned, but her
daring to mix it up with consciousness.
Note also how the sexes
have changed roles here: Ram5n with the magnetic female
attractive power and Kate being attracted like a voyeur.
Kate
(or Lawrence) accuses herself and considers Cipriano and Ramon
as her superiors: furthermore, she can only be saved from her
sensuous sense of sin by these two men.
Of course the author
will not allow Ramon to ''save' Kate because Ramon is the motive
of Kate's 'sin'.
Gipriano is then left to 'save' the woman from
the sin of sensuality - and he will perform this salvation by
using the same instrument which she wants to exclude from her
female consciousness: Cipriano will 'redeem' Kate by means of
the sex she wants to have with Ramon.
Lawrence them pulls Kate to Cipriano and forces her to
marry him.
The point of the marriage is, like the opening of
the Quetzalcoatl religion, female submission and the assertion