T H E S I S

27
The tall meadow-sweet was in bud along the tiny beach and
we walked knee-deep among it, watching the foamy race of the
ripples and the whitening of the willows on the far shore.
At the place where Nethermere narrows to the upper end, and
receives the brook from Strelley, the wood sweeps down and
stands with its feet washed round with waters* We broke
our v/ay along the shore, crushing the sharp-scented wild
mint, whose odour checks the breath, and examining here and
there among the marshy places ragged nests of watter-fowl,
now deserted.“(TWP 23)
This passage like many others in the novel shows how Lawrence’s
early treatment of sex appears in his description of the
landscape and many details cloak sexual meanings. There is an
overabundance of adjectives to reinforce the quality of the verbs
of perception which are used to give clear auditory, visual, olfactory,
and tactile impressions, but a sexual excitation is
really concealed* What "rouses“ the narrator is certainly the
"whipping” of the wind, "the swish of the rushes and the freshening
of the breeze“, the “watching" of the‘tipples“, the "sweeping"
of the wood, and the “odour" of the "wild mint", but he
transfers to other senses the sexual feelings which are evoked
or excited through these impressions.
What Eudora Welty says of Lawrence’s short stories is also
valid for his first novel:
“It is in the world of the senses that Lawrence writes in,
works in, thinks in, takes as his medium - and if that is
strange to us, isn’t the loss ours?...“(WIS llU-)
According to Mr. Gadjusek,^ counting symbols ±n The White
Peacock he found “1H-5 different trees, bushes and plants which
are presented; 51 animals are introduced} *+0 different birds
slide, hover, flutter, fly and change direction through the un­