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who want to dominate them, Mellors gives up his married life
with Bertha Coutts because she is like a sexual animal and only
wants "brutish activity’*, that is, animalistic sexual practices,
Bertha is that sort of “clitoral woman'1, “a greedy sexual beast'*,
as R. Hoggart points out (LCL VIII), whom Mellors accuses as a
"beaked woman** s
*6... she?d sort of tear at me down there, as if it was a
beak tearing at me. - But I tell you the old rampers have
beaks between their legs,** (LCL 210)
This kind of woman would threaten Mellors* male supremacy and like
him Lawrence feared brutish and dominant women too®
After Mellors abandons Bertha he chooses to live alone®
R»!Hoggart observes:
“He (Mellors) is a grown man, has known married life, and
presumably feels sexual needs. But sex in his married life
had become a brutish activity, and he has chosen to live
alone.“(LCL X)
It seems to me that there is a frivolity in the first sentence
above. The hero of the "phallic novel** *presumably feels
sexual needs!** **Presumably!** Mellors must be a bit coy in his
“sexual needs'* and *presumably*1 does not succeed with his proverbial
tenderness with his wife. Nevertheless he teaches; tenderness
to Connie, his lady-lover* and there is no indication of coyness
in the various sorts of sexuality he enjoys with her, including
♦
anality, as we are going to see.'
Thus the natural man Mellors - Lawrence - in quest of the
primitive beauty catches hold of his erect phallus as a remedy
for the maladies of civilization« But I think that the final
diagnosis of these maladies is not going to change the Mellors-
Connie relationship. They are not really affected by that indus­