T H E S I S

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some kind of ’'arrest'** In all these "ugly" passages the "demon”
that is in Lawrence defeats the anti-puritan. But the so-called
"pornographic” passages do not cover more than 30 pages (according
to many critics who gave evidence in the London trial), and the
whole book has 317« No sane author works through more than 300
pages of a book only to set off 30 pages of sexual matter.
All the characters in LCL are in one way or another aware
of the importance of the sex relation in their lives, even Clifford,
if for nothing else, for the lack of sex, since he is paralysed,
physical and emotionally. As Lawrence says, most men today-
still suffer from a partial paralysis« Running away from
sexual frigidity they trust in a frenzied and perverse sexuality,
voraciously looking for strong emotions and also for pornography.
They do not know what sex really is. They cannot enter ”jihallic
consciousness” because they are muddled by the fake sensuality
of the puritan mind.
Lady Chatterley*s Lover is an excellent book to reconcile
these men with real sexuality at the level of “phallic consciousness"»'
Although Lawrence was already stigmatized as "obscene”
by the fate of The Rainbow? and knew that he was going to have
troubles with censure because of the publication of the new book?
his deep psychological insight into sexual love, or his doctrine
of sex* in this last novel is to assert the primacy of the deepest
instinctual forces over a superficial physical attraction»
He does not overcome all inadequacies but he is courageously deliberate,
and profoundly sincere, a "real” puritan, one might say«
F.R.Leavis remarkss
"The spirit that animates the book is- that strong vital