RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

335
And if she tries to run away, the author pulls her back using
the strategy of his authorial hand.
When Lawrence marries Kate legally to Cipriano the
implication is clear: even though Kate has apparently decided to
return to Europe after the marriage, there is for her the link
of her legal marriage which may inevitably bring her back to
Mexico.
And it is after the marriage that Lawrence, again
unable to really convince himself that he is a chauvinist and
that all he wants is to put the woman at the feet of the male,
puts Kate in a terrible battle with herself.
She becomes a
divided woman who has a self that craves for submission and
another self that desires her freedom.
This is seen in her
decision to return to Europe:
The moment she has admitted the necessity, she
realised it was a certain duplicity in herself.
It was as if she had two selves, one, a new one,
which belonged to Cipriano and Ramon, and which
was her sensitive, desirous self: the other hard
and finished, belonging to her mother, her
children, England, her whole past. This old
accomplished self was curiously invulnerable and
insentient, curiously hard and "free". In it,
she was an individual and.her own mistress. The
other self was vulnerable, and organically
connected with Cipriano, even with Ramon and
Teresa, and was not "free" at all (p.470).
Kate feels that her old self was a "prison" because it demands
that she have a strong self-responsibility that perhaps she is
tired of.
The other self does not demand any responsibility
because, being a submissive woman, all she has to do is to
acquiesce to her master (the conflict seems exactly the same as
March's in "The Fox") and this she is not so sure if she wants
it or not.
I would say that Kate had better look for another
self, perhaps in the middle of these two extreme selves.
This
certainly is very much linked with Lawrence's personality