SpokenVerse | Figs by D H Lawrence (read by Tom O'Bedlam) @SpokenVerse | Uploaded November 2014 | Updated October 2024, 12 hours ago.
Lawrence is best known for Lady Chatterley's Lover, privately published in 1928 in Florence, Italy, by a local bookseller. It was banned in Britain but the ban was overturned in a celebrated court case in 1960. Lawrence never knew of the victory or how he opened the floodgates for pornography because he died in 1930.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Orioli
His portrayal of the sexuality of women in Lady Chatterley's Lover is, from the viewpoint of most women, either wrong, unhelpful or merely silly. That didn't matter because the majority of purchasers were men looking for excitement or enlightenment. . Not that there's anything particularly wrong with excitement or enlightenment.
At best, he reveals what men thought about women at a time when - because of censorship - there had been no reliable sources of information. At worst, he's a man writing about sex in the guise of a woman for reasons that he may not have been willing to admit to himself.
Its most famous predecessor in the pornography market was The Pearl, an unground Victorian magazine, and that didn't give a damn about how women felt. Similarly The Life and Loves of Frank Harris. Male pornography was about the 'art' of seduction.
Women had never been much inclined to talk about their sexuality and men have never been much inclined to pay attention anyway - or even notice signs of female approval or disapproval. In fact I don't know of any equivalent piece of literature written by a woman from a woman's viewpoint, not at that time, nor since then. Women are more interested in situations and feelings, they don't tend to care about the mechanical details or body parts. I'd guess that the sexiest writer for women is Jane Austen.
The problem of pushing a belief system is that it can do lasting harm. People will take up a set of concepts and adjust the world they "see" to fit the model. It's called 'confirmation bias'. It depends on the adoption of a set of beliefs and labels which have no real meaning outside the model. Morality is like that. So are many models of the human condition used by the medical profession. The labels have no referent - meaning they don't refer to anything but a conviction on the part of the user. Go back or forward fifty years and the concepts have changed and the labels mean something else.
Sure, this is a sexy poem but it's misogynistic too. It expresses both attraction and revulsion for the vagina, the woman's 'secret'. It criticises how women use their secret to gain advantage over men, saying that they're all whores. It ends with the notion that once a woman's secret is revealed it soon becomes overripe and passes its "use by" date. It would seem that this distaste is a projection of Lawrence's sexuality which was ambivalent and a source of inner conflict. It is certain that he did have homosexual feelings and experiences, he said so himself.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._H._Lawrence
The idea that certain objects look vaguely similar to genitalia is only of interest to somebody who doesn't know what the real thing looks like - and wants to visualise it. There are no useful inferences to be drawn from this accidental resemblance.
Lady Chatterley's Lover - you can read some of it here:
amazon.com/Chatterleys-Lover-Vintage-Classics-Promo-ebook/dp/B004OEIDNY
"From Twigs to Figs" - a gardening guide
figs4fun.com/basics2.html
A well-written essay about figs "every fruit has its secret" well worth reading. It also has the text of the poem.
gerryco23.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/first-fig-every-fruit-has-its-secret
Lawrence is best known for Lady Chatterley's Lover, privately published in 1928 in Florence, Italy, by a local bookseller. It was banned in Britain but the ban was overturned in a celebrated court case in 1960. Lawrence never knew of the victory or how he opened the floodgates for pornography because he died in 1930.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Orioli
His portrayal of the sexuality of women in Lady Chatterley's Lover is, from the viewpoint of most women, either wrong, unhelpful or merely silly. That didn't matter because the majority of purchasers were men looking for excitement or enlightenment. . Not that there's anything particularly wrong with excitement or enlightenment.
At best, he reveals what men thought about women at a time when - because of censorship - there had been no reliable sources of information. At worst, he's a man writing about sex in the guise of a woman for reasons that he may not have been willing to admit to himself.
Its most famous predecessor in the pornography market was The Pearl, an unground Victorian magazine, and that didn't give a damn about how women felt. Similarly The Life and Loves of Frank Harris. Male pornography was about the 'art' of seduction.
Women had never been much inclined to talk about their sexuality and men have never been much inclined to pay attention anyway - or even notice signs of female approval or disapproval. In fact I don't know of any equivalent piece of literature written by a woman from a woman's viewpoint, not at that time, nor since then. Women are more interested in situations and feelings, they don't tend to care about the mechanical details or body parts. I'd guess that the sexiest writer for women is Jane Austen.
The problem of pushing a belief system is that it can do lasting harm. People will take up a set of concepts and adjust the world they "see" to fit the model. It's called 'confirmation bias'. It depends on the adoption of a set of beliefs and labels which have no real meaning outside the model. Morality is like that. So are many models of the human condition used by the medical profession. The labels have no referent - meaning they don't refer to anything but a conviction on the part of the user. Go back or forward fifty years and the concepts have changed and the labels mean something else.
Sure, this is a sexy poem but it's misogynistic too. It expresses both attraction and revulsion for the vagina, the woman's 'secret'. It criticises how women use their secret to gain advantage over men, saying that they're all whores. It ends with the notion that once a woman's secret is revealed it soon becomes overripe and passes its "use by" date. It would seem that this distaste is a projection of Lawrence's sexuality which was ambivalent and a source of inner conflict. It is certain that he did have homosexual feelings and experiences, he said so himself.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._H._Lawrence
The idea that certain objects look vaguely similar to genitalia is only of interest to somebody who doesn't know what the real thing looks like - and wants to visualise it. There are no useful inferences to be drawn from this accidental resemblance.
Lady Chatterley's Lover - you can read some of it here:
amazon.com/Chatterleys-Lover-Vintage-Classics-Promo-ebook/dp/B004OEIDNY
"From Twigs to Figs" - a gardening guide
figs4fun.com/basics2.html
A well-written essay about figs "every fruit has its secret" well worth reading. It also has the text of the poem.
gerryco23.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/first-fig-every-fruit-has-its-secret
