T H E S I S

81
heave her loins, and throw the man out, escape his ugly
grip, and the butting over-riding of his absurd haunches.
His body was a foolish, impudent, imperfect thing, a little
disgusting in its unfinished clumsiness. For surely a complete
evolution would eliminate this performance, this
•function1«*® (LCL 178)
This scene is the negation of everything that happens not
only in the previous passage but in the whole book. The style is
an analogy of the description of the mechanical process. It is
Lawrence who is thinking, playing Connie *s part in the copulation,
for her mind is dissociated from the act« There is no tenderness
and no fulfilment* Neither has achieved orgasm, I mean real and
complete, for he has only a "little evacuating crisis'*, an excretory
activity«» At the end the intercourse becomes "disgusting**
and there is a sudden awareness of the "clumsiness” of the "performance".
The "springing of the seed** is now an '»evacuating
crisis11, implicitly repulsive and deprived of pleasure« Four
times Lawrence says that the act is a ^performance’5 and that performance
is "ridiculous", because it implies the mechanisation
of sex, so contrary to the tender sexuality. Letfs note the
heavy tone of the adjectives. Instead of the "sheer sensuality"
he preaches, Lawrence feels that everything is "farcical, sinister,
humiliating, ugly, absurd, foolish, impudent, and disgusting.”
This distaste which Lawrence attributes to Connie is certainly
a sign of his residual puritanism. This is the voice of
the old unconscious puritan inside the new Lawrence. Only a puritan
can find the sexual act ridiculous and disgusting.
But the sexual acts really belong to our animal nature and
when we cannot achieve the orgasm like the couple in the passage