On a different note, in �The Horse Dealer�s Daughter,� death is an allegory that seems to lead to love. Two characters, Mabel and Dr. Fergusson, experience a symbolic death and rebirth when Mabel tries to commit suicide and the doctor saves her. Mabel emerges from her shock and rejoins the world. She draws strength and life from the doctor to stave off her own desperation. She clings to him as a connection to the living world, and in the process, she consumes the doctor�s sense of self. He takes responsibility for her emotional, as well as physical, well-being at the expense of his own sense of self. The end of the story has the two characters expressing their love for one another, but Dr. Fergusson is no longer himself. His confession of love is an extension of his desire not to hurt Mabel rather than an expression of his own feelings. My intention in this essay is to flesh out these stories, and follow the paths of destruction for the Captain, the Orderly, and Dr. Ferguson.

The story of �The Prussian Officer� opens at what is actually the middle of the narrative. A unit of the German army is marching through the countryside, surrounded by lush green winter rye, which seems to be giving off its own heat, eliciting sweat from the men marching. The highly sensual opening draws the reader into the narrative, and it forcibly dissipates the outside world. It is almost as though the story is designed to consume the reader, to force the reader into the role of unwilling voyeur. The marching soldiers, wet with sweat, move toward mountains that appear to be a boundary between heaven and hell. Immediately, we are made aware that this story takes place in a sort of nether world, not quite real, not quite illusory. The point of view narrows to focus on one particular soldier. He has bruises on his thighs and is in great pain because of them, yet he continues to march in the suffocating, consuming heat. We find out that he is the orderly for the Officer.

The Prussian Officer is a coldly aristocratic man with icy blue eyes and blond hair. Described as in his early to mid forties, the Officer has never been married; no woman had ever moved him to marriage. He registers little emotion and is in complete control of himself. However, he knew �himself to be always on the point of breaking out� (4). It is as though he knew his control was false, and one stimulus too many would expose his violence and rage. That stimulus was the youthful, easy-moving orderly. The Officer thought of his orderly as beautiful and was drawn, against his own control, to the younger man. He knew his attraction to the soldier was dangerous, but could not seem to keep himself from finding reasons to have the boy near him. His desire for the younger man irritated him and festered within him until he became mean and abusive.

The Orderly is initially drawn to the captain in much the same way the captain is drawn to him. The first real penetrating eye contact and communication between himself and the officer leaves the orderly in a state of shock: �he felt something sink deeper, deeper into his soul, where nothing had ever gone before. It left him rather blank and wondering� (3). Prior to this encounter between officer and orderly, the two men had maintained a polite but distant working relationship. The situation became tenuous as the officer tried unsuccessfully to repress his feelings for the orderly. He refused to allow his �innate self� to be stirred by a simple orderly whose innocent zest for life intrigued him. As he realized his interest and investment in the orderly, the officer became more and more violent and overbearing to the young orderly. He loses his hold on his control.

With the captain�s abandonment of control, there is a kind of transference that occurs between him and the orderly. The captain begins to take on characteristics of the orderly, namely his passions. However, in the captain these passions are warped into something dark and deadly. His attraction to the orderly manifests itself in violence, starting initially with intimidations and veiled threats. Upon learning that his orderly has a woman in the village he sees, the captain orders him to make all of his evenings free, effectively ending the burgeoning relationship. He wants to reduce the orderly from person to object. Unfortunately, both for the orderly and himself, the captain succeeds splendidly.

Originally full of life and easy limbed, the orderly, either from fear or desperation, or simply in response to the abuse he suffers at the hands of the captain, begins to close himself off. After that first almost spiritual encounter with the captain, as described above, the orderly pulls within himself, losing his easy confidence. Of course, the violence with which the captain begins treating him takes its toll on the orderly as well. It is as though the orderly is trying to separate his mind from his body, and he becomes a more primal and unconscious emulation of the captain. The main difference between the two men is that the orderly is unaware that his control is false. He truly believes that he is able to hold �himself firm, and not to be plucked to pieces� (13). He does not know that by repressing himself, he is allowing the captain to destroy him.

The captain�s perverted love, which allows him to unite his earthly passions with his intellect, though in a decidedly nasty way, at the same time slowly consumes the passions and life of the orderly. He loses a little more of himself with every beating, every order, every desire not fulfilled, until he becomes like an animal and finally lashes out at his oppressor. In a fit of controlled, but unconscious violence, the orderly slowly and determinedly breaks the captains neck. I say unconscious because the orderly only seems to be aware of his actions from a distance, as thought he is watching someone or something else kill the captain. He has ceased to have any resemblance to a man and has indeed become the animal the captain wanted him to be.

Some literary critics, such as F.R. Leavis have claimed that �The Prussian Officer,� as one of Lawrence�s early works, lacks sophistication, that it is �too sensuous� and over the top with its imagery (308). I disagree. I believe that the sensuality of the story is necessary to its meaning. I believe Lawrence wants to put his readers in touch with their bodies, through reading, that no other author has tried before. Reading is almost purely an intellectual activity, dissociated from the tactile senses and therefore from the body. Lawrence, with his lush landscapes and focus on his characters� bodies reconnects his readers minds and bodies to emphasize the mind/body split in both the captain and the orderly. He wants to illustrate exactly how dangerous that split can be, especially when it involves an emotional connection. He wanted to prove, as Fiona Becket says, that Freud�s method of psychoanalysis was, while not exactly wrong, inaccurate. He didn�t believe the location of the unconscious was in the head alone; he believed the unconscious lay in the solidarity of the mind and body connection (135). In other words, the body is just as important to Lawrence as the mind is. For it is the body through which we receive and emit sense data. We are not simply minds with no ability to feel or sense the world around us. Illustrating this concept is the whole point of �The Prussian Officer,� along with proving that such a separation leads to death.

�The Horse Dealer�s Daughter� has a different message. Some critics, like Clyde de l. Ryals, believe that this story is about the �psychic death and rebirth through love� (153). But this kind of reading of the story is too optimistic in my opinion. This reading does not take into account the end of the story at all. What about Dr. Fergusson�s loss of self to Mabel�s emotional state? His confession of love at the end of the story is to prevent Mabel from feeling wounded: he �feared [her] look of doubt still more� than the terrifying �terrible shining of joy in her eyes.� While Mabel is reborn, the good doctor is consumed by her desperation and pulled into her world.

We first meet Mabel in conjunction with her brothers. She is a silent, sullen woman, fully capable of taking care of herself. She performs the tasks of housewife with equanimity. She knows that she is the only one who will do those duties. Her brothers are mere animals, surviving from one day to the next without really engaging themselves in it. Mabel is different. She remembers a time when she was more than just the housefrau. She remembers the time when the family had money: �the men might be foul-mouthed, the women in the kitchen might have had reputations, her brothers might have illegitimate children. But so long as there was money, the girl felt herself established, and brutally proud, reserved� (2334). She may still have that stubborn pride, but Mabel is disconnected from the world, as Ryals explains: �Mabel is dead, spiritually dead. Differing from her brothers�only in knowing she is dead [and] exists in a living hell� (154).

Dr. Fergusson is in much the same situation as Mabel. He too is cut off from colleagues, and any friends. He was a �slave to the country-side� (2335). His only friends, or what he called friends were Mabel�s brothers, and he too recognized their stupidity. To him they were coarse and vulgar, but at least they provided him with a modicum of company.

Both characters are existing in a kind of living hell that is not only in their isolated minds, but in the dark landscape. The countryside is blanketed in a �moist, heavy coldness, sinking in and deadening all the faculties� (2336). Both Mabel and Dr. Fergusson are caught in this hell, neither knowing the way out of it, initially. Mabel thinks she can extricate herself from her non-existence through rejoining with her dead mother. She communes with her mother in the graveyard, tending the grave in the foggy morning. She thinks that by joining her mother in death that she will finally leave the hellish existence she has had to live since her mother�s death. Dr. Fergusson does not feel the same kind of desperation that Mabel feels. Perhaps this is because he has a job to do outside the home, but the doctor seems more resolved to his fate than Mabel seems willing to be. However, in order to transcend this �living hell,� both characters must suffer some form of �psychic shock� (Ryals 155).

When Mabel tries to drown herself in the pool, she provides the necessary shock for them both. For Fergusson, the shock is that of being submerged in the dank water. Because he can not swim, he tries, initially, to merely search for her with his hands under the water: �he moved again, a little deeper, and again, with his hands underneath, he felt all around under the water. And he touched her clothing. But it evaded his fingers. He made a desperate effort to grasp it�.so doing he lost his balance and went under, horribly, suffocating in the foul earth water� (2337). He succeeds in grabbing Mabel and rescuing her, but his fearful dip in the murky water brings him up coated with slime that his and Mabel�s footsteps had dredged up. Having been thus terrified, Fergusson is brought back to life, so to speak.

What then is the shock for Mabel. Her nearly drowning was something she did of her own accord, so to consider that her psychic shock would be too simple. I tend to think it was being rescued, being forced to reconnect to a world that had already disconnected from her. If her real salvation was to join her mother in death � the murky pond being a perfect metaphor for returning to the mother at least by Freudian terms � would not Fergusson�s rescue be the shock she needs to bring her back to life? Her rescue can lead to two responses: anger (which is doubtful) and/or fear. What is she to do, if she can not, through her last vestige of control, even contrive to kill herself? Even the power to end her own life is taken from her. The instinctive response to this violation of her autonomy is to remove someone else�s autonomy. Ergo, it is because he rescues her that Fergusson is taken in by her, or consumed.

Further evidence of the consumption of Fergusson is given by the framing of the story. Ryals says that light imagery exists throughout the framing of the story, but is conspicuously absent once Mabel is submerged (157). Fergusson�s entrance into the water suspends the imagery. Since both characters are undergoing symbolic rebirth, which is allegorical, there is no need for the light imagery. The image of the water and their re-emergence is evidence enough of their supposed change. However, the first light image after their emergence is that of fire. Ryals reads this as �suggestive of purification and the establishment of organic bonds,� but it can also be read as the consumer (157). Fire consumes the wood which sustains it, eventually burning itself out, just as Mabel consumes Fergusson, who has sustained her.