RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

eturning home drunken and certainly a fight is about to happen.
The children become terrified with the signalling of the tree.
They think that the noise of the tree is like a bad omen.
Paul
is the son who senses it more painfully and he shares with his
brothers and sister the terror of the parents' quarrel.
The
feeling of pain, expectation and desperation is so strong that
they are always shaken with the terror of the fight, as if one
of the parents were .going to die.
The almost 'demoniacal noise'
of the tree frightens the children in such a way that they
cannot feel any ease at home.
Morel arrives and
Then [Paul] heard the booming shouts of his father,
come home nearly drunk, then the sharp replies of
his mother, then the bang, bang of his father's
fist on the table and the nasty snarling shout as
the man's voice got higher. And then the whole was
drowned in a piercing medley of shrieks and cries
from the great, windswept ash-tree. The children
lay silent in suspense, waiting for a lull in the
wind to hear what their father was doing. He might
hit the mother again. There was a feeling of
horror, a kind of bristling in the darkness, and a
sense of blood. They lay with their hearts in the
grip of an intense anguish. The wind came through
the tree fiercer and fiercer. All the cords of the
great harp hummed,whistled, and shrieked. And then
came the horror of the sudden silence, silence
everywhere, outside and downstairs. What was it?
Was it a silence of blood? What had he done? (p.78)
The sense created by this description is one of total horror. As
if the book itself were telling a ghost story, or a murder.
It
may be said that there is also an association of violence and
sex here.
The children do not know what is going on but the idea
of battle between the parents may be taken as if in sex the father
were also violent with the mother.
Up to now Mrs Morel has
full control over the situation
of the family and, although she suffers a lot, she has the
children's support for "She never suffered alone any more:
the
children suffered with her." (p.79)
What seems rather selfish