RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

336
because he really is an author who is unable to juxtapose
extreme feelings in a place where there is no extremity.
He is
always dual: it is either body or soul; domination or submission,
etc. He cannot find a point of equilibrium in his duality. All
his novels present this duality and The Plumed Serpent has shown
that Lawrence could not, even though fiercely desiring it, put
the woman down, or make her entirely submissive.
Kate's two
selves show clearly Lawrence's conflict.
Ramon as the soul,
Cipriano as the body also reinforce the impossibility of a point
of equilibrium.
The end of the novel, which will be closely examined in
the conclusion of this dissertation, shows that Kate in fact
does not really decide whether she will go away or not.
The
ending marks the continuity of the conflict of which relation is
more important: the man-to-man or the man-to-woman.
What we
gather is that Lawrence feels really unable to force Kate to
stay in Mexico and be in peace with her submissive new self.
There is a play with words by the end of the novel, as we will
see later, which deliberately blurs the nature of her final
decision.
To make a short summary here, I would say that although
this novel attempted to destroy the woman's personality, making
of her a mere vessel of receptivity in relation to the male
supremacy, Lawrence has once more failed.
Or rather the
rhetorician and prophet has failed, but perhaps the artist has
succeeded, i.e., the tale has proved wiser than the teller.
Kate is seen as a dual woman because the author forced her to
be like this.
In splitting Kate's self into two, Lawrence's
intention was to make her new self overcome her old and free
self.
However, the more he tried the less his intentional