RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

stories show his internal conflict in terms of the fierce battle
between his
feelings.
conscious intention and his unconscious
Feelings always contradict the author's intention.
This is perhaps a clear sign of the author's artistic honesty and
because of this the conflict of the characters is never fully
solved.
And although the author sometimes tries to press his
thumb in the scale to favor his intentions, he does not achieve
it because his feelings are stronger and, therefore, there is
always ambiguity in the way he finishes his stories.
As for the theme of 'star-polarity' or balance in the whole
opus of the author, I believe that it does not exist.
It is more
a question of who in the relation has sufficient strength to
fight off the partner who wants to dominate.
The so-called union
of body and soul could not be reconciled or united by Lawrence.
He simply could not do it in any of his stories.
Here, I repeat,
perhaps.the most 'balanced' relation seems to be Birkin and
Ursula's, but we know that Birkin is a chauvinist and Ursula may
succumb at his feet, although she protests against this side of
her lover's theory.
In the whole opus there is not really a
balanced 'marriage' between the two halves of the self.
Daleski
and Sagar, for instance, think that in The Rainbow and Women in
Love, specifically, there is a successful presentation of
balance between the couples. But there is not. Balance between
the characters implies balance between conflicting impulses
(male vs female, body vs soul) in the author. This is not really
reconciled.
In the novels of the leadership phase, the search
for balance is replaced by the search for power, for dominance.
It may be useful here to quote from Mark Schorer's essay "On
3
Lady Chatterley's Lover" where Schorer discusses the distinction
3 Modern British Fiction (New York, 1961).