From JOHN THOMAS AND
LADY JANE (the second version of Lady Chatterley's Lover) by
D.H.Lawrence
. . . .
his hand came with a strange blind instinct and gathered her breast and
held it as in a cup, in sleep. If she moved, and shifted his hand away, it
came back by itself, stirring, groping, till it had her breast again
softly enclosed, while he slept. And she lay encircled in his arm, feeling
as if her very soul were cupped in the soft hollow of his hand.
It was
a kind of prison: a prison! Yet she knew she could break it. So she lay
perfectly still, as in a kind of inertia, in the circle of his arm,
letting her breast rest like an egg in the strong, warm cup of his hand.
Her heart was sad, and wouldn't let her sleep. And something
flickered like a spark of irritation in her mind.
It was
what he had told her, about Bertha Coutts and about himself. She found
nothing extraordinary in it. Yet her heart hurt her, because she had felt
the bitterness and the hate of him. His desire for sex intercourse, and
his hatred of sex! His desire for woman, and his hatred of women! This
made a gnawing soreness in her heart.
Now, he
slept absolutely motionless, keeping her within the circle of his arm, her
breast like a fruit on the tree, in the hollow of his hand. And now he
seemed really at peace, he seemed to have achieved his own peace, perhaps
at the expense of her own. While she would lie still and submissive in the
circle of his enclosing arm, he was at peace, and his wounds were closed.
But the moment she broke away, he would wake, and memory would open like a
wound.
She
could feel the slow, strong thudding of his heart, as he held her against
him. And it made her think of that other strange creature in him, the
erect, sightless, overweening phallus. A little frightening that had been,
in its erect, blind overweening. And somehow she realised that it was the
soul of his phallus, the overweening blind male soul in him, that had been
wounded all his life, wounded through his mother and his step-father from
the beginning of his days, and whose wound gaped with the pain and hatred
of sex. Because, his phallus was rooted in his soul, and rose erect from
the soul's deeps, in naive pride of creation. And it was this queer,
sightless, mindless phallic nature that had been hurt in him all his
life, and whose wound only closed now, in sleep, while she lay submissive
in the circle of his flesh.
Vaguely, she realised for the first time in her life what the
phallus meant, and her heart seemed to enter a new, wide world. . .
"...let the mass be forever
pagan..." ~Oliver Mellors