Gerald Kricher

Gerald’s importance lies in the contrast between the communion he briefly glimpses with Gudrun and the controlling habits that make such communion impossible. Through his treatment of women, the account examines how mastery reduces another person to an object, while leaving the would-be master empty and alone.

Identity and Narrative Role

Gerald is characterized as a proud, egotistical man who takes pleasure in asserting his will. The account uses him to test a claim about love and equality: domination cannot create genuine possession or connection, because treating another person as passive substance denies that person’s independent reality. His story is not presented as a triumph of masculine power but as a demonstration of its failure.

Control and Resistance

Gerald’s desire to master others appears in his treatment of a spirited mare, which he holds against a fence for the pleasure of exercising control. The episode makes his will to dominate concrete, and anticipates the same pattern in his relations with women. His conduct toward Pussum likewise frames her as an object of his will rather than as an independent subject.

Gudrun is disturbed by Gerald’s treatment of the mare. She is also unsettled when Gerald’s former wet nurse recalls pinching him as a child. These details complicate her response: she is not simply a passive recipient of his authority. The account describes her as fascinated by and rebellious against Gerald, and presents masculine arrogance as provoking feminine resistance. Where Ursula’s relationship with Birkin and Lady Chatterley’s with the gamekeeper are described as forms of sexual purity that rescue the women, Gerald draws Gudrun into a conflict without resolution.

A Glimpse of Communion

After a death leaves Gerald unhappy and shattered, he gives himself over to Gudrun’s embrace. For a moment, he experiences her not as an opponent or possession but as a source of life and comfort. The scene suggests that he senses what communion with another person might mean; it does not, however, mark a lasting change in their relationship.

Gudrun remains emotionally apart while Gerald sleeps beside her. She lets him rest on her shoulder, but stays awake, impatient and detached. The difference between his momentary sense of union and her continued distance makes clear that physical closeness has not become mutual recognition. Gerald’s glimpse of connection comes too late to repair the estrangement.

Ending and Significance

Gerald’s account ends in isolation. By erecting barriers around himself, he also erects barriers between himself and the other person; the attempt to master another therefore fails to overcome solitude. His death is attributed both to Gudrun and to himself, closing the arc of a man whose controlling will helps produce the outcome he cannot escape.

The episode distinguishes real communion from possession. A woman reduced to passive material is not truly mastered in any meaningful sense, and a man who imagines that taking another person will complete him is left empty when she is absent or resistant. Gerald’s relationship with Gudrun gives this argument its tragic form: domination provokes resistance, and a brief recognition of possible intimacy cannot undo the separation his conduct has created.