RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

elation to dominance and submission and this includes not only
'masculine' women who become feminine, like March, but 'feminine'
men, like Kenry or the little, soft voiced Cipriano, who prove
their masculinity.
In the case of Cipriano, for example, he
proves his 'masculinity' by killing people who do not agree with
the Quetzalcoatl religion or in his sexual sadism with Kate.
Also the pattern of X-shaped plots can be said to be the result
of Lawrence's desire to 'remarry' his parents in fiction.
This
'remarriage' represents the author's wish to redeem his father because
he gives him the upper hand — the blood conscious male Who
becomes 'superior' to the mind-conscious woman.
Apart from this, Lawrence also attempts to create a new
kind of relationship which may replace the man-to-woman relation.
This new relation begins in Women in Love through the frustrated
Blutbruderschaft between Gerald and Birkin and is fully developed
in the period of the leadership novels.
At first bloodbrotherhood
is seen as additional to marriage but in Lawrence's leadership
phase it becomes the alternative to marriage.
The Plumed Serpent
is where this relation seems more successful because Ramon and
Cipriano are still together by the end of the novel in a clear
reference to the author's predilection for the relation between
men.
The woman is seen as an intruder and she no longer is the
most important partner for the man.
However, this period in
which the friendship between men replaces the relation between
man and woman is still a period of conflict because
bloodbrotherhood is something related to the darkness.
In
daylight these men are still married to women and this seems to
imply that the author is not really convinced that man and man
form the ideal pair.
That seems why the author is divided in
himself when he has to end his books.
The open-endings of his