By F. R. LEAVIS
aro make sure, in commenting briefly on the 1 court proceedings over Lady Chatterley's Lover, that the note one hits on won't lead to one's being misunderstood isn't altogether easy. If one says that the Prosecution failed because it was as inept as the Defence was ludicrous, one might be supposed to be wishing it had been less inept. And who could have hailed the success of the Prosecution as a good thing—a proof and promise of health and creative vitality in our civilisation? Yet I have to point out that the Prosecution was defeated, not by the present- ment of any sound or compelling case, but by its realisation that it was confronted by a new and confident orthodoxy of enlightenment—that the world had changed since the virginal pure policemen came and hid their faces for very shame. And one has to recognise that, if there had to be, as the upshot of a court trial, a definitive registration of this change in society, the thing could hardly have occurred in any essen- tially different way from that which has its record in the new Penguin Special.* I mean, in any way less disturbing to the literary critic, and admirer of Lawrence.
I express here, of course, my conviction that the outcome of the trial cannot at best be seen as pure gain from the point of view I have just indicated. A fair appraisal of the probable conse- quences would' be a delicate matter. But this is certain: a real advance, in the sense represented by Lawrence, depends upon the existence of a body of genuinely enlightened opinion, ensuring that the nature of Lawrence's genius and achieve- ment shall he widely understood, so that these may have their proper force. Lady Chatterley's Lover, then—it is important that this Obvious enough truth should be recognised--is a bad novel. Moreover,'to assert, as was done again and again during the trial, and made a major point in the final speech for the Defence, that without having read it one cannot truly appreciate Lawrence's .other work;, and so cannot have received. what the great and salutary creative writer of our time has to give, is to betray and further an alarming misconception of his genius and what he actually achieved; IA is to misrepresent this disastrously. For the experts did not mean by .their testimony that Lady Chatterley's Lover, in giving us some- thing that violates Lawrence's , own essential canons as an artist, serves as a foil to his success- ful and great art, and in that way may be used as an 'aid to its critical appreciation. The book . should be current as an unquestioned literary classic- -this was essential to the case for the Defence.
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