RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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between power and potency as defined by the psychologist Erich
Fromm:
The word 'power' has a two fold meaning. One is
the possession of power over somebody, the ability
to dominate him; the other meaning is the
possession of power to do something, to be able, to
be potent. The latter meaning has nothing to do
with domination; it expresses mastery in a sense
of ability. If we speak of powerlessness we have
this meaning in mind; we do not think of a person
who is not able to dominate others, but of a person
who is not able to do what he wants. Thus power
can mean one of two things, domination or potency.
Far from being identical, these two qualities are
mutually exclusive. Impotence, using the term not
only with regard to the sexual sphere but to all
spheres of human potentialities, results in the
sadistic striving for domination; to the extent to
which an individual is potent, that is, able to
realize his potentialities on the basis of freedom
and integrity of his self, he does not need to
dominate and is lacking the lust for power. Power,
in the sense of domination is the perversion of
sexual love (p.306).
And as this above quotation implies, the search for domination
(in the case of The Plumed Serpent) is not at all connected with
equilibrium, harmony between the sexes.
It is the perversion
of sexual love.
This is entirely true in the case of Cipriano
and Kate. The mutual respect is replaced by sexual savagery,
dominance of the male over the female; the transformation of
sexuality into a relation of sado-masochism.
It has nothing to
do with the meeting of the body and soul, the 'two in one'. The
perverse male swallows the female. And even in Lawrence's last
novel, Lady Chatterley, the idea is still the separation of body
and soul. And as Connie has rejected Clifford's mind to be the
worshipper of Mellors' body, and vice versa, we may say that the
only salvation for the human being (for Lawrence) is in blood
consciousness, not in mind consciousness.
Lady Chatterley
represents the surrender of the mind. Lawrence, therefore, could
never be able to put in practice what he believed to be the most