T H E S I S

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easy to say* I think that he has not succeeded at all, not yet«
Maybe in the near future, as he says, the phallus will be the
bridge toward a new tenderness and understanding between man and
woman*
Why has he not succeeded? Because there is a gap in his
sex doctrine. His “sheer sensuality" is basically perverse, i.e*,
it is directed with exclusiveness to sex for pleasure, sex for
self-realisation* Self-realisation in the sex sphere is only com«
plete when sex meets the highest demand of species’ preservations
procreation« Whenever procreation is completely out of question,
as it almost always is in Lawrence1s works, we have a case of
“sex in the_ head*1» Lawrence has always been denouncing this in
others, including his wife* but I think that it is now clear that
he is an outstanding example of “sex in the head**«. Of course I
am not proposing that sex in Lawrence5s head or his way of treating
it is lustful, a case of ‘doggy1*sex without any consequence.'
On the contrary, he tries to focus on sex as something religious
and mysterious: the “phallic mystery“•’
However, the phallus is but a symbol and Lawrence is silent
now» He lias often been compared, as prophet and puritan^ to
Carlyle, another conservative revolutionary, who said at the end
of his life that he had written “fifty volumes on the virtues of
silenceau (PGB 125) Whatever Lawrence says he is building up a
philosophy of salvation based on the body and on sex and, again,
this is clearly to put “sex in the head“. His own final judgement
iss
“The tragedy is, when you've got sex in your head, instead
of down where it belongs, and when you have to go on cop-