Lawrence’s basic point is that we have gone from
the Victorian era’s denial of the existence of sex to an acknowledgment of its
existence that denies it any significance. For Lawrence, the phrase “casual sex”
only makes sense if you are so alienated from your own flesh that you can think
of your body as a sort of accident rather than as all and everything you are or
will ever be in this material world. Lawrence believed that the people in his
time (1885-1930) who thought of themselves as liberated from Victorian sexual
mores were still operating within the framework of the Victorian era’s denial
of the importance of bodily experience.
As a result, sex was trivialized to exactly the
extent that it ceased to be taboo. “What’s the big deal about sex?” was the
hipster response of Lawrence’s time to Victorian sexual norms. “Sex and a cocktail:
they both lasted about as long, had the same effect, and amounted to about the
same thing.” a quote from Lady
Chatterley's Lover, sums up this attitude perfectly. Lawrence felt that asking
that question with a straight face meant that the individual who asked was as
much out of contact with his body and his sexuality as any prude Victorian. The
shift from Victorian prudery to thinking of sex as trivial was not, in Lawrence’s
view, progress.
Lawrence felt that all meaningful human experience
was bodily. We are all walking around in bodies and only meaningfully exist for
one another through those bodies. Even conversation is one body sending out
puffs of air (words) which are answered by other puffs of air. Even writing is
only a way to represent those puffs of air visually so that we can virtually
puff at people who are not really there in the flesh. Lawrence felt that sex
was the most intense bodily experience, which, for him, meant the most intense
experience, which we can share together. We become more powerfully and immediately
present for one another during sex than at any other time, unless, of course,
we are so alienated from our bodies that we can see sex as either trivial or
taboo. Lawrence’s point is that both are equally awful.
Lawrence felt that we do not “have” our sexuality
but “are” our sexuality. This is why we fear it. We fear its power. However, another
quote from Lady Chatterley's Lover
reading “The only reality was nothingness, and over it a hypocrisy of words.” shows
us where denying the body leaves us. We fear our sexuality most of all and deny
it most of all because we fear it but, for that same reason, denying it leaves
us nothingness disguised in empty puffs of air. If you do not have the time to
read Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the
poem below sums up Lawrence’s point of view more briefly. The poem is so famous
that, without
going to the library, you can Google it to find as much commentary unpacking it
as you could want.
D.
H. Lawrence
Snake
A
snake came to my water-trough
On
a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To
drink there.
In
the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I
came down the steps with my pitcher
And
must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.
He
reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And
trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the
stone trough
And
rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And
where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He
sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly
drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.
Someone
was before me at my water-trough,
And
I, like a second comer, waiting.
He
lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And
looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And
flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And
stooped and drank a little more,
Being
earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On
the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The
voice of my education said to me
He
must be killed,
For
in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.
And
voices in me said, If you were a man
You
would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But
must I confess how I liked him,
How
glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And
depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into
the burning bowels of this earth?
Was
it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to
talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I
felt so honoured.
And
yet those voices:
If
you were not afraid, you would kill him!
And
truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That
he should seek my hospitality
From
out the dark door of the secret earth.
He
drank enough
And
lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And
flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming
to lick his lips,
And
looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And
slowly turned his head,
And
slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded
to draw his slow length curving round
And
climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
And
as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And
as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A
sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid
black hole,
Deliberately
going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame
me now his back was turned.
I
looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I
picked up a clumsy log
And
threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
I
think it did not hit him,
But
suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed
like lightning, and was gone
Into
the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At
which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.
And
immediately I regretted it.
I
thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I
despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.
And
I thought of the albatross
And
I wished he would come back, my snake.
For
he seemed to me again like a king,
Like
a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now
due to be crowned again.
And
so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of
life.
And
I have something to expiate:
A
pettiness.
Taormina,
1923
