Revitalizing the reader: literary technique and the language of sacred experience in D.H. Lawrence's 'Lady Chatterley's Lover.'

Style, Spring, 1998 by Charles M. Burack

Given the theological significance of the number three, it is not surprising that the third sex episode, which contains the third and fourth couplings, is highly significant. In Apocalypse, Lawrence underscores that the number three signifies sanctity, divinity, balance, integrity, perfection, absolute being (100). He sometimes refers to the Holy Ghost - the Third Person - as "the balancer."(30) The Holy Ghost encompasses intellect and phallus and thus enables the shift from one mode of consciousness to the other. It is what Tommy Dukes calls "the whole corpus of consciousness," for it contains "real knowledge . . . out of your belly and your penis as much as out of your brain and mind" (37). The third union is narrated from Connie's bodily localization and centers on her sensual awakening. The principal vitalizing devices are the concretization of earlier concepts and the use of interlocking metaphors and phonic resonances. Mellors's sexual powers are only recently revived, and either because of anxiety or inactivity, be prematurely ejaculates, but his orgasm is strong enough to precipitate a rippling response in her that culminates in an unconscious orgasm - her first orgasm with him:

For a moment he was still inside her, turgid there and quivering. Then as he began to move, in the sudden helpless orgasm, there awoke in her new strange thrills rippling inside her. Rippling, rippling, rippling, like a flapping overlapping of soft flames, soft as feather, running to points of brilliance, exquisite, exquisite and melting her all molten inside. It was like bells rippling up and up to a culmination. She lay unconscious of the wild little cries she uttered at last. (141-42)

The "points of brilliance" in Connie are neither her eyes' single point of view, nor the sun's brilliant light, but her vital body's multiple, dynamic points of feeling and inner brilliance. The newness and strangeness of the thrills, coupled with the language of awakening, inform readers that a sacred experience is beginning. Earlier the newness and strangeness of the wood had been stressed. These rippling thrills are not the abstract, superficial "sex-thrills" that young Connie "took . . . as a sensation, and remained free" (5); they are particularized, embodied thrills concretely represented as the core of her unfolding bodily experience. The inner rippling suggests her body has become an ocean of life. This ocean metaphor is extended in the next sentence, which repeats "rippling" three times; the trinity suggests the body's divinity and the influx of divine, soulmaking energy. In that sentence the ocean metaphor is then linked to a bird simile, which in turn is linked to a fire simile; thus, the ocean waves resemble flapping wings that resemble flames. All the images are moving, as are the repeating words that signify them.(31)

The passage's phonic resonances can be expected to have a brief meditative effect on readers. The rhythmic repetition of sacred words, phrases, or sounds - as well as the use of highly emotive imagery - is a common meditative procedure.(32) Sound repetition can both stymie conceptual thought and stimulate the body's emotional centers.(33) Here the repetitions are polyphonic, not monotonous. They include various forms of exact and near repetition: consonance ("flapping"/"flames"/"feathers," "melting"/"molten," "rippling"/"running"), word repetition ("rippling," "exquisite," and "soft" are repeated), near rhymes ("melting"/"molten"), and phonemic iteration ("lapping" in "flapping"/"overlapping"). As the physical properties of these words reduplicate, paralinguistic units seems to copulate like bodies. One wor - "overlapping" - actually describes the process in which it participates. And the "lap" common to "flapping" and "overlapping" has a sexual connotation appropriate to the context: the overlapping of Connie and Mellors occurs in their laps. Moreover, "soft" qualifies flames and feathers, indicating that softness characterizes the evanescence and fragility of inorganic things as much as the vulnerability of organisms. In short, impermanence characterizes and links all created things.(34) Lawrence's use of multiple metaphors to represent diverse manifestations of divine energy is another way of acknowledging the impermanence of forms: each form expresses a unique but limited aspect of the divine; this form endures for only a period of time; when the form dissolves, a new finite form will be created to manifest a different aspect of the infinite divine force.