T H E S I S

72
trial background; they retreat to their love-making. Anthony
Beal thinks that Lawrence is more preoccupied with the relationships
man-machine than with the relationships man-woman in LCL.‘
I do not think so* The central theme of the novel is “the study
of man", as G. Hough points out, and the relationships be Ween man
and woman are of first importance.
Only the natural man like Mellors knows the "mysterious
force** of sex. For Lawrence sex is always a great mystery, an
unknown emotion, in the darkness;
"The man (Mellors) lay in a mysterious stillness. What was
he feeling? What was he thinking? She (Connie) did not
know. He was a strange man to her, she did not know him.
She must only wait, for she did not dare to break his mysterious
stillness. He lay there with his arms round her,
his body on hers, his wet body touching hers, so close. And
completely unknown. Yet not unpeaceful. His very stillness
was peaceful.'* (LCL 121)
But for the final Lawrence it is not necessary to know the mystery
of sex. A, peaceful stillness is enough. Ho "horror" and no
"fascination" as Jessie said of his early feelings. However, is
not this "mysterious stillness" itself the cause of the "dirty
little secret" he so vehemently abominates in Pornography and Obscenity?
"There is only one way: Away with the secret! No more
secrecy!" (PAO 76)
And what has recently brought a tremendous publicity to LCL
is just this "dirty little secret", which makes sex a furtive and
prohibited subject, shameful and spicy smut, raised by the ban of
the book and the London trial. There is nothing Lawrence could
have hated more than this puritanical conception of the treatment
of sex. However, it seems to me that here there is a controversial