SOURCE: "Sex and Language in D. H. Lawrence," in Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 27, No. 4, Winter, 1981, pp. 362-75.

In the following essay, Gordon comments on the tension between sexuality and language in D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love and Lady Chatterley's Lover.

It is a mark of sophistication among literary interpreters to recognize that the verbal medium they are governed by is a means as well as an end, that language is inherently so figurative that the meaning of a text is always a matter of self-conscious rhetoric as well as direct reference. Influenced by the current authority of linguistics, some critical theorists in recent years have even attempted to discard as naive the mimetic and referential functions of language. They would enclose us in a verbal world by declaring an impassable gulf between it and a world outside of words.

This new skepticism or linguistic autonomy can be...