242
ALAN FRIEDMAN
is characteristically modern, each partly a matter of attitudes, partly
a matter of technique. But the basic change Lawrence made in fic–
tion was still more far-reaching than any of these: it included them
all
and made their successful deployment possible.
He was seeking for the unknown sources of the mysterious stream
of consciousness.... Whence did it come, and whither was it
bound?
Lawrence wrote that, but as .a matter of fact it
is
neither about
him–
self nor about Joyce, but about Freud. And yet this specific search–
and no less - was Lawrence's own too, not only in such often
cranky essays as
Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious
and
Fantasia
of the Unconscious
(from which the quotation comes), but
in
his
fiction. That
is,
while Lawrence's novels happen not to employ the
particular technique we have learned to call the stream of conscious–
ness, they do indeed trace, map and present the springs from which
the stream rises - its "unknown sources." And from
this
energetic
pursuit of the sources of the "mysterious" stream of consciousness,
all of Lawrence's fiction flows. This is as true of
Lady Chatterley's
Lover,
where the stre.am takes a turn-
The quiver was going through the man's body, as the stream of
consciousness again changed direction, turning downwards. And
he was helpless, as the penis
in
slow soft undulations filled and
surged and rose up, and grew hard, standing there hard and over–
weening, in its curious towering fashion. The woman too trembled
a little as she watched.
"There! Take him then! He's thine," said the man.
And she quivered, and her own mind melted out.
- as it
is
of
Sons and Lovers,
where the stream wobbles between
Nottingham and Vienna-
Suddenly a piece of paper started near his feet and blew along
down the pavement. He stood still, rigid, with clenched fists, a
flame of agony going over him. And he saw again the sick-room,
his mother, her eyes. Unconsciously, he had been with her,
in
her
