T H E S I S

W6
literation of consciousness and separation in physical sensation.”
(BOD 100) Taken as a ritual, as something mystically sensual,
these experiences remain "perverse“, since Freud says that rituals
permit partial satisfaction of denied impulses, and that
homosexuality is the most frequently repressed component impulse,1
Lawrence expressed his repugnance to sodomy, anality, buggery,
or anything linked to the excretory
see in Pornography and Obscenity:
functions, as we can
"The sex functions and the excrementory functions in the
human body work so close together, yet they are, so to
speak, utterly different in direction. Sex is a creative
flow, the excrementory flow is towards dissolution, decreation,
if we may use such a word.'1(SLC 70)
In fact there are other obscurities both in The Rainbow and
in Women in Love which are connected to the "excrementory functions"
and its "dissolution" and "decreation". Of course, Pornography
and Obscenity was written in 1929, Lawrence's last year
and the two novels above belong to his middle period. But the
whole question of anality, the atmosphere of Sodom, the sexuality
based on the excretory
flow, which appear in The Rainbow and
in Women in Love in foggy passages, anticipate the same kind of
obscure scenes in Lady Chatterley!s Lover.
In The Rainbow Will and Anna ( a couple of the second generation)
partake of "a sensuality violent and extreme as death"s
exploring the "secret shameful things", but Lawrence does not say
openly what is happening. On the contrary, he simply asks and
answers some veiled questions for Anna:
"Shame, what was it? It was part of extreme delight. It
was that part of delight of which man is usually afraid.
Why afraid? The secret, shameful tilings are most terribly