T H E S I S

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the mechanical images are deflections of mechanical sex, the only
admissible form of sex for Puritans. Thus Clifford is the anti-
Mellors or the anti-Lawrence and with him and with his ingrained
Puritanism the Chatterleys and Wragby are going to disappear.
At the beginning of his early period, The White Peacock
phase, Lawrence deals with sex originally, but vaguely, and his
callowness is evident. The narrator, Cyril-Lawrence- is a’Voyeui11
and kisser first of all. The real problems.of sex are not yet
properly focussed and Lawrence displays his inherited puritanism,
through his veiled and evasive treatment of sex. In LCL, his last
novel, although still lingering in his puritanism he becomes actually
anti-puritan, that is, against the old puritan, against
the old Lawrence. Then the doctrine of sex he preaches in LCL,
the supremacy of the body’s life over the mental life, for the
necessity of complete sexual fulfilment, is finally embodied in
the expression "phallic consciousness"*'
Since The Rainbow period Lawrence is already initiated and
he wants to initiate us in the "phallic mystery" through LCL,
which is our bible. Bernard Shaw said that this book should be
in the libraries of all schools and that the girls ought to read
it in order to get their marriage licenses. (BBA 133) And Lawrence
remarks:
"Arid in spite of all antagonism, I put forth this novel as
an honest, healthy book, necessary for us today. The words
that shock so much at first don’t shock at all after a
while." (APL .87)
What Lawrence tried .to do with the four-letter words in LCL
he continued in A Propos of Lady Chatterlev’s Lover and Pornography
and Obscenity: to regenerate them, as I have stated in the