BOOKS
311
Similarly, Vivas's chapter on
Kangaroo
might have considered
the rather interesting problem of Somers' hypersensitivity to the
medical examination. Somers curses the doctors with Biblical grand–
ness and seriousness: "And because they had handled his private
parts and looked into them, their eyes should burst and their hands
should wither and their hearts should rot." Mr. Vivas's explana–
tion of this response,
alienation,
and hatred of the war, will not
account for its excess of feeling, since we find evidence of the same
hypersensitivity elsewhere in Lawrence, notably in a poem called
"Wedlock" where the poet objects to his beloved touching him.
By now, we all know that Lawrence considered sex sacred, yet does
not his frenzy point to an elementary confusion?
D. H. Lawrence's grand failure is, of course,
The
Plumed
Serpent
and Mr. Vivas rightly takes this novel as the
locus classicus
for Lawrence's pronouncements on sex. Here he performs a service
of inestimable value.
It
is in this book that Kate Leslie painfully
and unwillingly learns what Ursula Brangwen balked at: that in
the ideal Laurentian marriage, the woman must both understand
THE SCHOOL OF LETTERS
INDIANA UNIVERSITY - SUMMER 1961
Courses on the graduate level in the theory and practice of
Literary Criticism
Induding work toward advanced degrees in
Criticism, English Literature, and Comparative Literature
Courses By
John Berryman
Irving Howe
.Robert Fitzgerald
Steven Marcus
A few all-expense scholarships available to qualified students
Address Inquiries to
The School of Letters, Ballantine Hall
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
