RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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in the end of Women in Love illustrates Lawrence's choice to end
his book in a dialogue form because he does not want to impose
the idea that Birkin is the dominant figure in his marriage. Nor
does the author want to say that Ursula is stronger than her
husband.
In preserving their differences, Lawrence implies that
both Birkin and Ursula contain features of himself which may
lead them to a balanced relation, or, on the contrary, it may
lead the weaker party to be swallowed up by the one who is
stronger. While the author sympathizes with Birkin's 'macho'
theory, he also sympathizes with Ursula's violent questioning of
this theory.
The final implication is that both worlds, the
corrupt and the 'uncorrupt', are intrinsically part of one
another.
This connection is apprehended not in the voice of the
author but in the opposed ideas implied by the final dialogue.
The characters' voices are not impositions, but a defense of
their own points of view.
The novella "The Fox" is also an open ended story, but its
quality is different from Women in Love. The term 'quality'
refers to the mood of the stories as related to the author's
intention in writing them. "The Fox" belongs to the beginning of
Lawrence's struggle to put the woman down, at the feet of the
man.
I have already said that the three endings of the novels
and the novella I am discussing at present, there is an
oscillation on the author's part in defining which side of the
scale he wants to favor.
"The Fox" best represents this
oscillation, because in this story Lawrence seems to have more
sympathy for the man than for the woman, yet he also makes clear
the protagonist's chauvinism from the beginning.
Lawrence does
not disguise it in a theory like Birkin's.
We know that Henry
wants to subjugate March from the moment he sees her and