T H E S I S

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he directly faced the censors and brought sex fully into the open
/
through the use of four-letter words and other physical descriptions^
G. Hough states his dilemma very precisely;
"Of course it is quite true, we have no proper vocabulary
to discuss sex. There is the scientific, which sterilises
it by depriving it of all emotional content, and the 'obscene'1«,..
and the fact remains that the connotations of the
obscene physical words are either facetious or vulgar -
(slang). But in Lady Chatterley's Lover the passages which
are describing the sexual act more fully than has ever been
done-before, can be justified by the whole intention of the
book."(IDS 160)
In Pornography and Obscenity Lawrence says that if he uses
four-letter words there is a reason: the reason is to use realistic
language for a realistic treatment of sex, for a "phallic"
reality. As Stephen Potter, giving evidence in the trial of Lady
Chatterley, said:
"What he (Lawrence) was trying to do was to take these words
out of what you may call the context of the lavatory wall
and give them back a dignity and meaning, away from the
context of obscenity and of the swear-word."(TTL 188)
Because of this "context of the lavatory wall", the books
which deal directly with the sexual acts and contain the taboo
words are called "pornographic", that is to say, they contain
obscenity. Now the question is, what is the usual meaning of
these terms, "pornography" and "obscenity"?
Pornography comes from the Greek porno.graphosf which means
"what is written by licentious people", or "pertaining to harlots’!
Justice William Rehnquist of the United States Supreme Court, a
very conservative jurist, defined pornography ("hard-core porn")
as: