T H E S I S

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inhibited:
"She looked up, and found his eyes. They gazed at each
other for a moment before they hid their faces again. It
was a torture to each of them to look thus nakedly at the
other, a dazzled, shrinking pain that they forced themselves
to undergo for a moment, that they might the moment
after tremble with a fierce sensation that filled their
veins with fluid, fiery electricity. She sought almost in
panic, for something to say."(TWP 1+3)
The inhibitions described in this disguised style reveal the repression
of normal sexual instincts. At the time Lawrence finished
The White Peacock he was 25 and if this "voyeurism" is an
indication that he was undeveloped in his sexual life, this was
due to his mother's puritanism. But add to it other factors,such
as his Oedipus complex and his constant illness (pneumonia), and
we will understand that Cyril, the "voyeur", the watcher, did not
have his libido-function fully developed.
Another of the most important primitive sexual traits seen
throughout The White Peacock is the kiss* There are more than
thirty passages showing this sensual and perfect form of touch,
thus revealing Lawrence’s incipient sexuality.
A. strange Scotch woman at the Ram Inn induces Cyril to kiss
Emily, for the first and only time in the novel, although Lettie
has been kissing all the time:
"Look at her, look at her! How many kisses a night, Emily?
Ha! Ha! Kisses all the year! Kisses o1 nights in a lonely
place'•
♦♦*
When we were out on the road by the brook Emily looked at
me shamefaced, laughing eyes. I noticed a small movement
of her lips, and in an instant I found myself kissing her,
laughing with some of the little woman’s wildness,"(TWP 306)