T H E S I S

36
is not only his long-standing mother-son attachment, the Oedipus
complex, but also his unconscious "ingrained puritanism". Only
twice in six years of intimacy Lawrence talked about sex to
Jessie (according to her own account), even after having asked
for permission. In both occasions he did not speak openly,(which
he certainly did in later novels), but said that women should not
discuss sex. When he introduced the subject to Jessie, he said
that women were "purely emotional" and not intellectual:
"Well, you see, it means that you1re governed entirely
by your feelings. You don’t think, you feel. There’s a
lot of difference, you know."(3TJ 130)
The actual term "sex" appears only once in The White Peacock?
on page 23*+, in the last third of the book:
then they settled down, and talked sex, sotto voce«
one man giving startling accounts of Japanese and Chinese
prostitutes in Liverpool."(TWP 23V)
These people are talking in the Ram Inn sotto voce: Lawrence
wanted to talk openly about sex, but in this novel his treatment
of sex is still inhibited.
Re Aldington says that in his Croydon period, The White Peacock
period, "sex had become so complicated in him(Lawrence) that
he would have denied that he could ever want ... any woman that
he knew."(PGB 76)
This period is also the period of the breakdown
in his relationship with Jessie who points out:
"he (Lawrence) began to overemphasize the importance of
sex, ... and later on in life he spoke contemptuously of
those who suffered from ’sex in the head'."(ETJ XXXII)
The disguised treatment of sex in The White Peacock accompanies
as I have argued, the general theme of sexual frustration
in this first novel. Almost all the couples in the book are