Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 10:08:37 -0500 (CDT)
From: Kathleen Ricker <kricker-AT-ncsa.uiuc.edu>
Subject: Re: Response to Re: modernism and the middlebrow






On Tue, 6 May 2003, Paul Stone wrote:

> 
> >On a more serious note, it also seems to me that Lawrence might be an 
> >interesting subject for examination here, as well.  Despite his notoriety, 
> >and despite my fondness for *Women in Love* and *Lady Chatterley's Lover*, 
> >I find him deeply conventional in many respects.  Seemed to think there 
> >was only one legitimate way to get a female to orgasm, after all.
> 
> My sister, after reading several of Lawrence's books said to me "he doesn't 
> really know women very well you know!" Perhaps he wrote about what _was_ 
> [outwardly] conventional THEN!

But think of Oliver Mellor's (ex)wife, who he described as having a hard
little beak down there (I'm paraphrasing, not having the book in front of
me)-- the sort of thing that if any modern woman took seriously, she would
come to see clitoral stimulation as weird and deviant-- and the lesbian
relationship in "The Fox," which had to disintegrate so that one of its
members could form a "real" relationship with a man.  Also, pregnancy and
fertility are the desired results of sex! (though Lawrence was himself
childless) No, Lawrence was very conventional about female sexuality
--those were his personae.

I give him a B- for effort, though.  And I still have a soft spot for his
novels (of course, it could be on the top of my head).

Kathleen

--
Kathleen Ricker					NCSA
Research Editor, Public Affairs			605 E. Springfield Av.	
E-230 SRP/(217)244-3351				Champaign IL 61820

We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What
falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know 
not; what walls ride over the river, we know not. Ah, well! we may
conjecture many things.  -- John Wesley Powell (1834-1902)