Gerald’s assault on the mare

In D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love, Gerald’s assault on the mare is a defining instance of his attempt to master life through force. He pins the spirited animal against a fence as a train passes, treating control itself as a source of power; the episode also foreshadows the damaging contest that develops between him and Gudrun.

The Assault and Its Meaning

Gerald’s desire to master the mare is not described as an isolated action. It expresses the self-assertion that characterizes his relations with others: he seeks to impose his will rather than meet another being as an independent presence. The episode thus makes domination visible through an encounter in which the mare’s resistance is answered with control.

Gudrun’s Response and Their Conflict

Gudrun is disturbed by Gerald’s treatment of the mare. Her response establishes that she is not simply absorbed into his will: masculine arrogance provokes resistance, and the attraction between them is bound up with conflict. The account distinguishes their trajectory from relationships in which a woman’s sexual purity is said to transform or redeem a man; Gerald instead draws Gudrun into a struggle without resolution.

Narrative Significance

The assault serves as an early, concrete sign of the destructive pattern that governs Gerald and Gudrun’s relationship. In the book’s analysis, an attempt to reduce another being to a passive object does not produce genuine communion. Gerald’s apparent mastery therefore anticipates isolation rather than fulfillment, and the conflict it helps define culminates in his death, attributed to Gudrun and to himself.