RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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the conclusion that in Mexico the only possibility for a
balanced relationship is the one between men.
Women are
secondary.
The strange fact is that Kate, a woman, thinks
about this as if she were an inferior being because of her sex.
Finally, the man-to-man relationship, which is supposed to
be the most balanced, is in itself divided since the two men who
initiate themselves in the bloodbrotherhood ritual are seen in
terms of one being the soul (Ramon) and the other being the
body (Cipriano).
Moreover, this relationship between men is an
affair of the darkness since both men are married in daylight to
women (especially Ramon Vho marries a submissive dark woman whom
he classifies as a parasite).
Also in the division between soul
and body, the soul is seen in superior terms.
Ramon, who
represents the soul, is tall and handsome and is superior to
Cipriano who, as the body, is small in stature and sinister in
his deeds.
Killing people is something that the soul cannot
perform: the body is the executioner.
I would say that the highest Lawrence could achieve in this
novel is that his bloodbrotherhood is really stronger than in any
other novel which develops this same theme.
In The Plumed
Serpent it is more successful because Ramon and Cipriano are
still together by the end of the novel, in a clear reference to
their communion.
Neither Ramon nor Cipriano is physically dead,
like Gerald was in the end of Women in Love, and this fact
certainly implies a degree of success in their relation.
On the
other hand, both Ramon and Cipriano as characters are never as
alive as Gerald and Birkin. They are'wooden1. When Kate comes
to tell them her decision to stay in Mexico, Lawrence portrays
her as an intruder:
She had come to make a sort of submission: to
say she didn't want to go away. But finding them