The great novels of sex of the nineteenth century were those of Thomas Hardy. By comparison, Lawrence's books are more subtle and ...more revealing. Hardy was interested in the results of the sex impulses as they display themselves in normal life. Sex wrecks Jude; sex ennobles and ruins Tess. Lawrence is not much interested in results. When sex is triumphant in Alvina, the lost girl, the story ends. Her story is just beginning, but the only aspect that interested Lawrence has concluded. Sex in itself and for itself is his fascination, and if this makes him narrow it also makes him shrewd.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now I must write personally; but I would not, if I didn't know that nothing we can say about ourselves is personal. I read the nov...el when I was fourteen or so; understanding very well the isolation described in it; responding to her sense of Africa the magnificent--mine, and everyone's who knows Africa; realizing that this was one of the few rare books. For it is in that small number of novels, with Moby Dick, Jude the Obscure, Wuthering Heights, perhaps one or two others, which is on a frontier of the human mind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And so, standing before the aforesaid officiator, the two swore that at every other time of their lives till death took them, they... would assuredly believe, feel, and desire precisely as they had believed, felt, and desired during the few preceding weeks. What was as remarkable as the undertaking itself was the fact that nobody seemed at all surprised at what they swore.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For a novel addressed by a man to men and women of full age; which attempts to deal unaffectedly with the fret and fever, derision... and disaster, that may press in the wake of the strongest passion known to humanity; to tell, without a mincing of words, of a deadly war waged between flesh and spirit; and to point the tragedy of unfulfilled aims, I am not aware that there is anything in the handling to which exception can be taken.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »