RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

This is like Paul's passion for Clara.
As soon as he feels
tired of passion and understands Clara's attachment to him as
one more submissive woman by his side, he loses interest.
Clara
is still "very gentle, almost loving.
But he treated her
distantly with a touch of contempt" (pp.401-2).
Now Paul does
not feel uneasy when Clara is not near him.
He also does not
need her all the time as before.
night, only to be met indoors.
Clara becomes a figure of the
It is time then for Clara to
replace Paul and become uneasy till she has him in her arms. Paul
is tired of all these demonstrations of love.
At work mainly he
is rude to her, saying that there are times for everything. Work
is work, love is love — but in different places and hours.
(He
seems to have forgotten how he became inflamed and uneasy because
of her, wherever he was, when he could not have her).
During the
day they behave (mostly Paul) as if they were strangers, but in
the darkness they meet, exchange meaningless words and are tender
to each other.
Their meaningless words express the big gap that
leads any unbalanced relation to fail.
Paul and Clara can only
understand their feelings (separately) when making love.
Apart
from this, there is nothing between them.
Clara, like Miriam, inevitably falls on to the web of
submission.
Paul has dominated her and she feels that "she took
him simply because his need was bigger than her or him, and her
soul was still within her.
She did this for him in his need, even
if he left her, for she loved him" (p.430 - My underlining). Clara
implies, again like Miriam, that she does not care for her own
feelings. Paul is more important. It is rather monstrous to
think that this "balanced" woman turns out to be so annulled in
relation to a man.
And how strong this man seems to be in
manipulating this woman so as to transform her into this kind of