Page 392 - lady-chatterlys-lover

She could not help confiding a little in Duncan Forbes.
She didn’t say she had been the keeper’s lover, she only said
she liked him, and told Forbes the history of the man.
’Oh,’ said Forbes, ‘you’ll see, they’ll never rest till they’ve
pulled the man down and done him its. If he has refused
to creep up into the middle classes, when he had a chance;
and if he’s a man who stands up for his own sex, then they’ll
do him in. It’s the one thing they won’t let you be, straight
and open in your sex. You can be as dirty as you like. In
fact the more dirt you do on sex the better they like it. But
if you believe in your own sex, and won’t have it done dirt
to: they’ll down you. It’s the one insane taboo left: sex as a
natural and vital thing. They won’t have it, and they’ll kill
you before they’ll let you have it. You’ll see, they’ll hound
that man down. And what’s he done, after all? If he’s made
love to his wife all ends on, hasn’t he a right to? She ought to
be proud of it. But you see, even a low bitch like that turns
on him, and uses the hyena instinct of the mob against sex,
to pull him down. You have a snivel and feel sinful or aw-
ful about your sex, before you’re allowed to have any. Oh,
they’ll hound the poor devil down.’
Connie had a revulsion in the opposite direction now.
What had he done, after all? what had he done to herself,
Connie, but give her an exquisite pleasure and a sense of
freedom and life? He had released her warm, natural sexual
flow. And for that they would hound him down.
No no, it should not be. She saw the image of him, naked
white with tanned face and hands, looking down and ad-
dressing his erect penis as if it were another being, the odd

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