RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

35 4-
being.
In fourth place comes Ursula's extremely negative
experience at Brinsley Street school. There she is forced to
learn that society is not formed by individuals.
Society has
no place for them.
Instead, there is only authoritarianism,
power and submission.
Ursula gives part of herself to that
world of automatons and she 'succeeds'.
However, the price has
been too high because her soul is not the same after this
disillusionment.
She leaves the school and, a restless dreamer,
she goes to the university where she once more becomes
disappointed.
The teachers are not 'priests of knowledge' as
she thought they were.
In the middle of her disillusionment she
escapes from the university to recall Skrebensky to her mind.
Thus she fails her examination.
As for her lover, he again fails
her, this time forever.
He marries another girl and Ursula is
not notified of the marriage.
By this time she becomes pregnant
by Skrebensky.
This fact leads her to a 'nightmare' in which
she gives over her previous search for fulfilment in life.
She
writes a letter to Skrebensky in which she says she will submit
to him because of the child.
Ursula is in a terrible inner
conflict and because of it she confronts some horses which are
no other than the tormented projection of everything she fears.
In trying to escape from her inner fear she loses her baby by
miscarriage.
After all these horrible experiences we find
another Ursula apparently ready to be reborn: but the idea of
the old dreaming Ursula is still present in the new one.
And
here is the very flaw of the book.
Lawrence puts an enormous
effort into making us believe Ursula is really renewed. However,
the most he can attain in his attempt is a sense of an
unconvincing end.
For instance, when Ursula receives Skrebensky's cablegram