T H E S I S

96
Every critic has seen sex as a vital principle in the Lawrentian
universe.
(22)
The much overworked uphallic symbol*' appears in
his works as high art, hence he creates the touchstone of his doctrine,
‘'phallic consciousness”, the philosophical and symbolical
basis of Lady Chatterlev»s Lover? where sex is a sort of religion,
but a religion in which sex substitutes for love«
This aura of “religiousness” is Lawrence's lingering puritanism,
which he inherited from his puritan mother. Very soon he
rejected the re3.igious doctrine of Puritanism, but the residue of
this parental background remained in his unconscious forever and
came to surface more times than he was aware of* Once in a while
Lawrence admits his puritanic roots, and we have seen how he is
taken by a religious zeal to ”purify” sex from brutality, shame,
furtiveness, and the “dirty secret”, and even to "purify” the
four-letter words* But how can a puritan fight for sexual freedom?
It seems a tremendous contradiction. It is indeed a paradox,
but not entirely so« Lawrence repudiates his old puritanism
because of all its incongruities and falsities and becomes an an»
ti-puritan. But he proposes to purify the sex relation and to
cleanse it of all dirt and falsity, and to elevate it to the dignity
of any human act. Thus, really, he becomes an anti»puritanical
puritan, as I have said, a romantic puritan*1
To pursue his contradictory aims is in a sense a form of
self-destruction. He wants to destroy the old Lawrence, the product
of English culture, the ”son of woman”. Hence his symbol is
the phoenix, who destroys itself and rises again from the burned
nestj with everlasting youth
To what extent Lawrence succeeds in his doctrine it is not