Sex, not being Sexy

Pages:105-106
Rakhi and Shammi Nagpal (Department of English, Dravidian University, Kuppam, A.P.1, Department of English, D.N. College, Hisar2)

Lawrence’s religion of the blood, his insistence on the life of intuition and instinct, was mistaken by many as a plea for indiscriminate sex. Nothing is far from the truth. It is likely that many a reader may naively assume that Lawrence’s novels present a tantalizing feast of erotica. The catchy titles may pull the reader in that direction : Sons and lovers, Women in love, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Love among the Haystacks and other stories. I have headed off Lawrence’s discussion with his “Mystic” and deeply “religious” philosophy precisely to dispel any such notion in the mind of the reader. Hence sex is the central theme of Lawrence’s novels. However, this theme expresses itself in Sons and Lovers as well as in superficially dissimilar work like The Rainbow Women in Love, Kangaroo and The Escaped Lock, as a search for tenderness between parent and child, friends of each sex, lovers, races, man and god, man and nature. This is surely much more profound, rich and serious than mere sex. Sex is not the focus of life just as the spirit is not. Life is a process embracing both. This is the balance Lawrence postulates in Fantasia of the Unconscious.