A Study of The Escaped Cock論文

A Study of The Escaped Cock:
D. H. Lawrence’s Quest for Pagan Harmony

YAMADA Akiko

要旨

英語題名を和訳すると「『逃げた雄鶏』研究── D. H. ロレンスの異教的均衡の希求」になる。ロレンスは，キリスト教に代わる宗教として古代
ギリシア・ローマ神話に登場したパン神信仰を，自分の作品において独自の存在として登場させている。それは，ギリシア・ローマ神話の彼の特徴を生かしながらも，キリスト教の一道に対して，全てを包含しながらもす
べてが均衡を保っている宇宙の在り方を希求する二道の思想の象徴として，パン神を描いていることである。パン神はこれまでロレンスの多くの作品に描かれてきたが，彼の最後の中編小説である『逃げた雄鶏』においても，パン神の象徴を力強く描いている。主人公である「死んだが甦った男」は固有名詞としてのキリストとは一度も書き表されていないが，読者には，その甦った状況の描き方からキリストを指していることが分かる。
ロレンスは，磔刑にされたが甦ったキリストを，彼が殺される前の生き方を否定してエルサレムからレバノンまで放浪した後，そこでエジプト神話に登場する殺されたオシリスを求めるイシスの女神に仕える巫女との出会
いにより，彼女と性的に交わることによって，異教に生きる人間として真に甦ったことを描く。
「甦った男」は，キリスト教の「ロゴス」を否定し，「肉と血」による生き方こそが人間にとって真のものだ，と悟る。この思
想を，自然における太陽や海，木や花の描写を溢れんばかりの生命力の表れとして描くとともに，生命力のシンボルとしての，「甦った男」のトー

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テムとしての百姓に飼われていた「逃げた雄鶏」を描いている。
ロレンスのパン神のこれまでの作品における重要性と，『恋する女たち』
において唱道されている「星の均衡」のテーマが『逃げた雄鶏』にも表れていることから，パン神及び均衡の主題が『逃げた雄鶏』において中心の主題であることを述べる。この主題は他の研究者によっては十分に分析されていない。
『逃げた雄鶏』において，この世界は，大宇宙と小宇宙が対応し，全てが均衡を保っていることを願うロレンスの新宗教の集大成の思想が描かれている。

キーワード：雄鶏，太陽，海，バラの花，大いなる日と卑小な日，夜の太陽

Introduction
The Escaped Cock was first written in 1927 and published in 1928 when the title of thisnovella was The Escaped Cock and included only part I. But after one year, part II was
added and published in 1929 when the title was changed to The Man Who Died, though
D. H. Lawrence, the author, preferred the title of The Escaped Cock.1 The Cambridge
Edition of the Works of D. H. Lawrence edited by M. Herbert, B. Jones and L. Vasey
was published with the title of The Escaped Cock in The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other
Stories including the novella in 2005.
Lawrence continued to write the theme of the God Pan2 from his first novel The
White Peacock to the last novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover as the alternative principle
to Christianity to revive our world. In The White Peacock, Cyril who is a spokesman
for Lawrence, longs for Anable, a gamekeeper, as if Anable were his father. Anable isdescribed as malicious Pan. In The Plumed Serpent Cipriano is depicted as “casting theold twilight Pan-power over her” (PS 311) and that power is expressed as “the ancientphallic mystery” (PS 311). Kate thinks that Cipriano is her demon lover3 and that he has“the face of the supreme God-demon; with the arching brows and slightly slanting eyes,
and the loose, light tuft of a goat-beard,” “the Master,” “the everlasting Pan” (PS 312). And
in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Mellors believes in the God Pan. He says in a letter to Connie“so I believe the little flame between us,” and “for me now, it’s the only thing in the world… we’ll really trust in the little flame, and in the unnamed god that shields it from being
blown out” (LCL 300–01). Mellors is related to many trees, especially, to a pine tree. In

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A Study of The Escaped Cockhis essay “Pan in America,” Lawrence describes that “here, on this little ranch under the
Rocky Mountains, a big pine tree rises like a guardian spirit in front of the cabin where
we live … and the tree is still within the allness of Pan” (Ph 24). Lawrence thinks that as
mankind moved to cities more and more, they came to love empty words and ideas, and
old Pan died to change into the devil in Christianity (Ph 23), but he also writes “and yet
here, in America, the oldest of all, old Pan is still alive,” and that “when Pan was greatest,
he was not even Pan,” and that “he was nameless and unconceived, mentally” (Ph 24). In
St. Mawr Lou, the protagonist, finally arrives at the ranch in the Rocky Mountains. She
feels and aspires towards another god which is definitely different from the God of Love.
The ranch is related to goats, and so another god whom Lou aspires to seems to be the
God Pan. She waits for the strange man whom she can truly trust. This theme of the God
Pan and the new man is expressed in The Escaped Cock, too. The “Pan” means allness,and he is pagan and phallic. Lawrence sought the idea of “star-equilibrium” which is
described in Women in Love. It means the harmony of all things, which is also expressedin the world of The Escaped Cock. And the “cock” implies a man’s genitals. The themeof The Escaped Cock is the restoration of “flesh and blood” which Christianity ignored
when Lawrence lived. J. C. Cowan says about the scene of the sexual intercourse of a boy
slave and a girl slave in the Escaped Cock that “an aura of eroticism pervades the entire
passage. Sexuality emanates not only from the detailed description of the sex act but also
from the carefully chosen phallic symbols (the peninsula, the sun, the trees, the pigeons)and yonic symbols (the temple, the two bays, the sea), …” (D. Jackson and F. B. Jackson
180). The theme of harmony or balance of manyness is the main theme of Lawrence’s
works and in The Escaped Cock. This theme is presented together with the idea of pagan
God Pan. Some scholars mention about the idea of harmony in The Escaped Cock, butthey do it only briefly. I will present a comprehensive argument through the novella.

I The World of Variousness
In The Plumed Serpent Don Ramón says to the Bishop of the Mexican Catholic Churchthat “A Catholic Church is a church of all religions, a home on earth for all the prophetsand the Christs,” and “a big tree under which every man who acknowledges the greater
life of the soul, can sit and be refreshed” (PS 265). Don Ramón is a spokesman for
Lawrence who thinks that principle of the world is dual, that is, which is made up of

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No. 37light and darkness. Therefore, he quests for the harmony of variousness on earth. But the
Bishop of the Catholic Church believes only one God. In this point Lawrence is against
Christianity and he aspires towards another god. C. Pollntiz says that Dionysus is theclosest God whom Lawrence refers to in his works and also says that the God Pan is oneof the dark gods (Pollnitz 44). As I wrote in the introduction, he often writes about the
God Pan from The White Peacock to Lady Chatterley’s Lover, relating Pan to the darkgods, and I agree with Pollnitz in that Pan is one of the dark gods. “Pan” means all andvariousness. Of course this variousness has to be balanced.
In Mr Noon Gilbert, who is the spokesman for Lawrence, thinks German landscapeis beautiful because it has “glamorous vast multiplicity, all made up of differences,mediaeval, romantic differences” (N 107). On the other hand England seems to him justto have “its horrible oneness, uniformity, homogeneity” (N 107–08).
He loved the rich and free variegation of Europe, the manyness. His old obtuseness,
which saw everything alike, in one term, fell from his eyes and from his soul, and hefelt rich. There were so many, many lands and peoples besides himself and his own
land. And all were magically different, and it was so nice to be one among many,
to feel the horrible imprisoning oneness and insularity collapsed, a real delusion
broken, and to know that the universal ideals and morals were after all only local andtemporal. (N 108)
Mr Noon was written in 1920. It is a novel about Lawrence and his wife Frieda who
eloped in 1912 when Lawrence was 26 years old. Lawrence seems to be the model of Mr.
Gilbert Noon. Considering the above quotation, he began to think of the importance ofvariousness in the early time of his writing career. Gilbert Noon says later that the worldof mankind is made up of manyness and it has harmony.
Beautiful brindled creatures of fire and darkness, sun and smoke. What is yourdarkness but shadow, and what is your shadow but watery intervention, the cloud inthe sun, against the sun.—Beautiful brindled creatures, snakes and tortoises, fish
and wild-geese, tigers, wolves, trees. Only men are all white or all black. But thenmankind itself is brindled. Never forget it. (N 187)

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A Study of The Escaped CockAs seen above, this world is made up of variousness and they are beautiful because they
are balanced. He also says “Opposition! Wonderful Opposition! The whole universe restson the magical opposition of fire and water, sun and rain. Is not every plant brindled?—
dark damp below earth, sunny above” (N 186). Therefore his rainbow is not the Biblicalone but pagan. It has plural principle. He says that “we live, all of us balanced delicately
on the rainbow, which is born of pure light and pure water. Think, gentle reader: out ofthe perfect consummating of sun and rain leaps the all promising rainbow: leap also
the yellow-and-white daisies, pink-and-gold roses, good green cabbages, caterpillars,
serpents and all the rest” (N 186). In Kangaroo Somers’ wife Harriet adores the earlymorning sea.
The sun rose on the north-east—she could hardly see it. But she watched the firstyellow of morning, and then the strange, strong, smoky red-purple of floating piecesof cloud: then the rose and mist blue of the horizon, and the sea all reddish, smoky
flesh-colour, moving under a film of gold like a glaze; then the sea gradually goingyellow, going purple primrose, with the foam breaking blue as forget-me-nots or
frost, in front. And on the near swing of the bluey promrose, sticking up through themarvelous liquid pale yellow graze, black fins of sharks. (K 101)
The characteristic point of the above quotation is the appearance of sharks after themarvelously beautiful scenery of various colours of the sea which has the imagery offlowers. It is shocking to readers. But in the scene even the sharks are expressed as
beautiful things, we notice.
In The Escaped Cock this fertile beauty of nature is expressed in various colours.
First of all, a cock, which a peasant near Jerusalem acquired, is young whose appearance
is getting beauty “resplendent with an arched and orange neck” (VGO 123). Later thisgame-cock is expressed as having orange and black colour. “Cock” implies a man’s
genitals and this leads to the Man’s restoration as a risen man. In the story the Man who
died revives and He seems to be Christ, but Lawrence never gives Him a name. Scholars
and critics describe Him as “the Risen Man” or “the Man” or “Lawrence’s Christ” or “theunnamed Christ figure” or “the-man-who-died” and so on. I write Him “the Man,” whenI discuss the novella. The cock has “a special fiery colour” which connotes a phoenix,
which revives from fire according to a legend. This legend leads to the story that the

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Man who has died revives. Though the cock is tied by a string to the post by a peasantin his garden in Jerusalem, “one morning, just before the light of dawn, rousing fromhis slumbers with a sudden wave of strength, he leaped forward on his wings, and thestring snapped” (VGO 124). “At the same time, at the same hour before dawn, the same
morning, a man awoke from a long sleep in which he was tied up” (VGO 124), in the“narrow cell of rock” (VGO 125). The cock and the Man escape at the same time fromthe old bandage. In this point the cock becomes a totem of the Man. Outside fig-trees
are letting out leaves from their end-tips, and vines and olives and wheat are young andgreen. The Man faces “the animal onrush of light” (VGO 125). He sees the escaped blackand orange cock among the olive trees and catches it. He hands the cock to the peasant
who has come to catch it and He hides in the peasant’s house. In the natural world anightingale is coaxingly calling from the bushes near a stream, and silky, silvery-hairedbuds of the scarlet anemone are bending downwards. This world is full of life and it issexual. The sun sways him too. Cowan says that “In its suspension in the sky the sun has
phallic significance, thus foreshadowing the risen man’s subsequent identification with
Osiris,4 who is often represented as a sun-god” (D. Jackson and F. B. Jackson 178).
The man who had died looked nakedly on to life, and saw a vast resolutenesseverywhere flinging itself up in stormy or subtle wave-crests, foam-tips emerging
out of the blue invisible, a black and orange cock, or the green flame tongues out of
the extremes of the fig tree. (VGO 129)
As shown above, fire and greenness is outstanding. The greenness means youth and life,
and is depicted like “little jets of green leaf” (VGO 129) and “the green flame tongue outof the extremes of the fig-tree” (VGO 129). In Lady Chatterley’s Lover, when Mellors andConnie make love, nature around them sings greenness. And green rain pours on them.
They are sexual because as “cock” connotes manhood, so “fig” connotes womanhood.
Dervin argues that “the black-orange bird is also the micro-cosmic sun at dawn, the little
dark sun which must live at the center of one’s self” (Dervin 178–79).
It was not till evening again that the tide of life in him made him forget. Then
when his favorite hen came strong unconcernedly near him, emitting the lure, hepounced on her all his feathers vibrating. And the man who had died watched the6

A Study of The Escaped Cockunsteady, rocking vibration of the bent bird, and it was not the bird he saw, but one
wave-tip of life overlapping for a minute another, in the tide of the swaying ocean oflife. (VGO 130)
As noticed above, the imagery is full of fecundity in nature which Lawrence depicts
using trees, animals and imageries of fire and water. Humma tells that “this imagery
grows, or expands, as the man progressively sloughing off the spiritual-intellectual
aridity of his previous “life,” begins to grow in awareness of the emotions and the body.
As his awareness embraces larger and larger worlds, the imagery embraces wider andwider categories, extending from organic to inorganic, from terrestrial and solar tocosmic, interfolding these categories so that they become an integrated, natural whole”(Humma 102).
The Man gave a gold coin, which he got from Madeleine in the garden, to thepeasant and his wife for the cock which has the voice and eye of life, and he leaves them.

II

The Greater Day and the Little Day

The cock which the Man got from the peasant is full of life and brave, but the ass which
the peasant keeps is dull. The contrast between the cock and the ass is that of the Man
and other human beings. They have never died and never understand the meaning of life.
The Man’s colour is white which means His purification, that is, He is definitely different
from the person before He has died. The Man, now risen, quests another life.
“My triumph,” he said, “is that I am not dead. I have outlived my mission, andknow more of it. It is my triumph. I have survived the day and the death of myinterference, and am still a man. I am young still, Madeleine, not even come to my
middle age. I am glad all that is over. I had to be. But now I am glad it is over, andthe day of my interference is done. The teacher and the savior are dead in me; now I
can go about my own business, into my single life. (VGO 132)
Before He died He lived His public life. He was self-important. He wanted to be greaterthan the limits of His hands and feet. Now He knows His own limits.

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Risen from the dead, he had realized at last the body, too, has its little life, andbeyond that, the greater life. He was virgin, in recoil from the little, greedy life of the
body. But now he knew, that virginity is a form of greed; and the body rises again
to give and take, to take and give ungreedily. Now he knew that he had risen for the
woman, or women, who knew the greater life of the body, not greedy to give, notgreedy to take, and with whom he could mingle his body. (VGO 135)
He thinks “the Word5 is but the midge that bites in the evening” (VGO 137). Before He
died He just lived the world of words without flesh. He, in his mission, ran to excess. He
gave more than He took, and that was woe, and vanity. He was self-important.
And he thought of his own mission, how he had tried to lay the compulsion of loveon all men. And the old nausea came back on him. For there was no contact without
a subtle attempt to inflict a compulsion. And already he had been compelled eveninto death. The nausea of the old wound broke out afresh, and he looked again on theworld with repulsion, dreading its mean contact. (VGO 140)
Now He has understood that balance is important. Now He wants to take and give,ungreedily. It means equilibrium. The woman He wants to mingle with will definitely bea different woman from ordinary women. He says to Himself, “and perhaps one evening
I shall meet a woman who can lure my risen body, yet leave me my aloneness” (VGO
138). The life He has come back is not the same life as He left. He now lives in the otherlife, “the greater day of the human consciousness” and is “alone and apart from the little
day,6 and out of contact with the daily people” (VGO 148). The peasant and his wife will
never be reborn. They are greedy. Only persons in quest of truth of life like the Man or
the priestess of Isis7 will meet their true partners. The woman in “The Woman Who Ran
Away” or Lou in St. Mawr or Connie and Mellors in Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Juliet
in “Sun” are in the same group as the Man. The Man in part I likes a solitary life. He is ina single condition. “Single” connotes “separate, distinct from each other or from others”
and “undivided or unbroken” as well as “alone or solitary.”
There was nothing he could touch, for all, in a mad assertion of the ego, wanted
to put a compulsion on him, and violate his intrinsic solitude. It was the mania of

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A Study of The Escaped Cockindividuals, it was the mania of cities and societies and hosts,8 to lay a compulsion
upon a man, upon all men. For men and women alike were mad with the egoistic fearof their nothingness.
And he thought of his own mission, how he had tried to lay the compulsion of loveon all men. And the old nausea came back on him. For there was no contact without
a subtle attempt to inflict a compulsion. And already he had been compelled eveninto death. The nausea of the old wound broke out afresh, and he looked again on theworld with repulsion, dreading its mean contacts. (VGO 140)
Lawrence disliked cities because they wanted men alike. During World War I, he thought
the war made human beings mechanical taking away their intrinsic aloneness. Cities had
the mob during and after the War. He was killed and his body was hurt and damaged, thatis, he was broken like the Man who died in the story. Goodheart argues that “the effect ofLawrence’s contempt for “the idiotic foot-rule” that “man is the measure of the universe”
is a kind of misanthropy. In The Man Who Died, for instance, the repudiation of Christ’s
mission to convert men to the God of Love (“to lay the compulsion of love on all men”) is
accompanied by an intense hatred of the City of Man (Goodheart 150–51). Now the Man
is alive, He has to restore His broken body, making it perfect. He needs a woman who
will cure His wounds.
The Man and other people are definitely different. He experienced “the death,” butother people don’t know it. “The death” was a sacred one. He pursued his belief, though
He now understands it was wrong. Only a few people will have such a great death. The
Man has got “the greater day of the human consciousness.” And now He needs a woman
who will truly make Him risen.
In the peninsula where the temple of Goddess Isis stands, the Man feels malice inthe air. “Out of the little sacred world of the peninsula he looked on the common world,and saw it still hostile” (VGO 152). Except the priestess of Isis, all other people will behostile against Him. The Man “who had died heard the low buzz” (VGO 153) of theslaves’ chatter working on the beach. This chatter reminds the readers of Sir Clifford
Chatterley and his friends who chatter about many little things in Lady Chatterley’s
Lover.
It was the life of the little day, the life of little people. And the man who had died

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said to himself: Unless we encompass it is the greater day, and set the little life in thecircle of the greater life, all is disaster. (VGO 153)
“The little life” in the above quotation points to the life which pursues only money, as
written in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, as described by Mellors’ words “I’m frightened
really. I feel the devil in the air and he’ll try to get us. Or not the devil—Mammon: which
I think, after all, is only the mass-will of people, wanting money and hating life (LCL
300). The mother of the priestess of Isis is also an enemy to Him. “He knew her motherwould oppose her, and that the spirit of the little life would fight against the spirit of thegreater” (VGO 154). But His belief is so stable and He says to Himself.
At the same time, he was haunted by fear of the outer world.” “If they can, they
will kill us, “he said to himself. “But there is a law of the sun which protects us.”And he said again to himself: “I have risen naked and branded. But if I am naked
enough for this contact, I have not died in vain. Before, I was clogged.” (VGO 155)
The Man understands the true meaning of life after He made love with the priestess ofIsis. The sentence of “I have risen naked and branded” means He was reborn in the cavewhere He was lain because He seemed to have died perfectly. And wandering to thepeninsula, He comes to the temple of the priestess of Isis. The priestess who was seeking
her Osiris thinks the Man her Osiris and wants Him. He also wanted a woman who willlove Him and make Him be reborn. Before making love with her, He slept in the goats’
cave. This cave means a womb, which has given Him His true rebirth. This is a pagan
place where “the all-tolerant Pan watched over them. All tolerant Pan should be their god
forever” (VGO 151). Pan is the symbol of phallus.

III

The Priestess in Search of Her Osiris

He has to be single till he finds his eternal woman. “I can learn to be alone,” He says toHimself. He has risen for the woman, or women, “who knew the greater life of the body,not greedy to give, not greedy to take, and with whom He could mingle His body” (VGO
135). Before He wanted to be mixed up in the phenomenal world, and as a result He waskilled. Now He must return, “to be alone in the midst” (VGO 138). He wants to be apart

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A Study of The Escaped Cockfrom the phenomenal world because it is dirty and clean. Before He didn’t know the life
bubbles variously. These innumerable bubbles mean manyness of the world. Before He
died He wanted it to bubble all alike. He regrets that He preached to them all alike. The
phenomenal world is dangerous because it has a man of narrow belief who “denies theright of his neighbor to be alone” (VGO 139). He thinks that He shall meet a woman who
can lure His risen body, but leave Him alone. Here Lawrence’s idea of “star-equilibrium”(WL 152), which Birkin, spokesman for him advocates, is seen. Birkin tells Ursula about“freedom together.”
One must commit oneself to a conjunction with the other—For ever. But it is not
selfless—it is a maintaining of the self in mystic way and integrity—like a starbalanced with another star. (WL 152)
This idea of “star-equilibrium” is Lawrence’s unique thought, which means that the twopoles of man and woman can be accomplished by keeping their true self. Lawrence calls
this achievement of the true self “singleness.” In Kangaroo Somers, a spokesman for
Lawrence, also advocates “singleness.”
Now, all he wanted was to cut himself clear. To be clear of humanity altogether, to bealone. To be clear of love, and pity, and hate. To be alone from it all. To cut himself
finally clear from the last circling arm of the octopus humanity. To turn to the olddark gods, who had waited so long in the outer darkness. (K 265)
Kangaroo is the novel in which Lawrence wrote his experience of World War I though
he did not participate in it as a soldier but he suffered from it so badly. The escaped cockalso gleamed with “bright aloneness” (VGO 138).
The Man wanders in Lebanon and comes to a small peninsula where a temple stands
towards Egypt. In the temple a woman aged 27 serves Goddess Isis who is looking for thedead Osiris who was cut into fragments.
And through the years she found him bit by bit, heart and head and limbs andbody. And yet she had not found the last reality, the final clue to him, the genitals
that alone could bring him really back to her, and touch her womb. For she was Isis

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No. 37of the subtle lotus, the womb which waits submerged and in bud, waits for the touchof that other, inward sun that stream its rays from the loins of the mail Osiris. (VGO
143)
The priestess is alone and virgin. She is also looking for her own Osiris. The templeof Isis looks like a lotus flower because it has “wooden pillars rising like stems to theswollen lotus-bud of Egypt at the top” (VGO 143) and is painted all pink and white andblue. The Man and Osiris have the same special feature in being killed and cut apart.
Though the Man was not cut apart in His body, He is symbolically separate in His bodyand mind. They must be gathered together and restored. The priestess shall meet the Man
who will be her Osiris. The peninsula is covered with trees, especially pine trees. The sun
shines brilliantly. This sun is pagan like that of “Sun,” Lawrence’s short story, in which
Juliet meets a farmer, embodiment of the Mediterranean sun. She recovers from her
mental illness, bathing in sunshine. The Mediterranean sun is depicted like the beautiful
God Apollo. R. Owen tells the importance of the sun to Lawrence, “The South, theMediterranean, the ancient Greek landscape of southern Italy, all hold out the promise of
re-birth. When the sun shines, Lawrence wrote, even death ‘does not have many terrors.
In the sunshine, even death is sunny.’ And in his poem The Sun in Me he wrote: ‘A sun
will rise in me, I shall slowly resurrect’” (Owen 164).
Various colours like gold, white, yellow, black, green, pink and indigo are used
to express the peninsula, the woman, slaves. The woman looks like a winter narcissus,
yellow and white. The priestess is an embodiment of a narcissus. Symbolically narcissuses
express fertility and have ambivalent meanings of death, sleep and rebirth. The priestessseems to be in the condition of sleep till she has intercourse with the Man. She waits forthe dark sun because she is like a lotus submerged in water. In Egyptian iconography theCreator and the sun appear from the heart of the flowering lotus. The lotus is the symbolof eternal birth and rebirth, and therefore the vagina. A philosopher once told her asfollows:
Rare women wait for the re-born man. For the lotus, as you know, will not answer
to all the bright heat of the sun. But she curves her dark, hidden head in the depths,
and stirs not. Till, in the night, one of those rare invisible suns that have been killed
and shine no more rises among the stars unseen purple, and like the violet, sends its

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A Study of The Escaped Cockrare, purple rays out into the night. To these the lotus stirs as to a caress, and rises
upwards through the flood, and lifts up her bent head, and opens with an expansion
such as no other flower knows, and spreads her sharp rays of bliss, and offers her
soft, golden depth such as no other flower possesses, to the penetration of theflooding, violet sun that has died and risen and makes no show. (VGO 144–45)“The flooding, violet sun” means “the dark sun,” which Lawrence thinks as the symbolof instinct of human beings. He sometimes describes it as snakes. It sleeps under theearth. Lawrence thought mankind had forgotten their dark portion, that is flesh andblood. He tried to recover it, expressing it the dark sun in his works.

IV

The Rebirth of the Man

The Man asks the priestess to rest Him at her home one night. She allowed Him to stay athers, but in the cave. A slave guides Him there. The cave hints that the place is where the
God Pan once stayed because it “was a small cave, with a litter of the tall heaths that grewon the waste places of the coast, under the stone-pines. The place was dark, but absolutely
silent from the wind. There was still a faint odour of goats” (VGO 146). Lawrence writes
in his essay “Pan in American,” the pine tree is Pan’s guardian tree and Pan has the lower
half of a goat. And also it lives in the dark place. The Man who sleeps there is also related
to Pan. He has “the black pointed beard” (VGO 147) which also suggests Pan’s goatee.
In the morning the slave tells the priestess that the Man is an escaped malefactor, so shecomes to see the sleeping Man. She notices the scars in the palms of His hands. But she isa true priestess. She sees “the other kind of beauty in it, the sheer stillness of the deeper
life” (VGO 147), though His sleeping face is worn and rather ugly. There can been seen“a sort of majesty” (VGO 147), and “his dusky skin had the silvery glisten of youth still”(VGO 147). Only a few human beings can notice the inner beauty of a man who has ashabby outer appearance. Alvina in The Lost Girl can notice Ciccio’s beauty though he isordinary in his outer appearance. The priestess sees the Man as follows:
There was a beauty of much suffering, and the strange calm candour of finer lifein the whole delicate ugliness of the face. For the first time, she was touched on thequick at the sight of a man, as if the tip of a fine flame of living had touched her. It

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was the first time. Men had roused all kinds of feelings in her, but never had touched
her on the yearning quick of her womb, with the flame-tip of life. (VGO 147)
When reading this passage, we notice the famous passage in Lady Chatterley’s Lover
when Connie saw Mellors washing his body. It was so white and pure and she wasshocked in her womb. In the above quotation the word “flame” is important. It is thesource of life. Also we notice the similarity of the priestess and Connie. Both are likevulnerable flowers and tender. Connie is like a hyacinth and the priestess like a spring
crocus. The priestess ponders that the Man is the lost Osiris. So she asks Him to look on
Isis. He feels the sun in her. It will heal His wounds. He follows her into the inner shrine
and looks at the statue Isis. Outside the temple He wonders if He will get into touch withher.
Shall I give myself into this touch? Men have tortured me to death with their touch.
Yet this girl of Isis is a tender flame healing. I am a physician, yet I have no healing
like the flame of this tender girl. The flame of this tender girl! Like the first palecrocus of the spring. How could I have been blind to the healing and the bliss in the
crocus-like body of a tender woman! Ah tenderness! More terrible and lovely thanthe death I died— (VGO 150)
As mentioned above, “tenderness” of a flower is very important in the relationship ofman and woman in Lawrence. It is the nature of touch in sexual intercourse. Mellors andConnie can accomplish this touch of tenderness in their relationship. The priestess says
to Him to stay one more night. And that night in the inner shrine she heals His wounds
by chafing all His body with oil. He recovers in His soul “unbroken dark stillness,wholeness” (VGO 159). Symbolically in the Mediterranean region, offering oil means theworship of unseen gods. The priestess maybe uses olive oil because in the Mediterranean
region they can get it abundantly. And oil has a similar colour to the sun. Oil is the
symbol of the sun and vital power. So after the priestess chafes His body He feels Himself
recovered.
Then slowly, slowly, in the perfect darkness of his inner man, he felt the stir ofsomething coming: a dawn, a new sun. A new sun was coming up in him, in the14

A Study of The Escaped Cockperfect inner darkness of himself. He waited for it breathless, quivering with fearful
hope. “Now I am not myself. I am something new—” (VGO 159)
“A new sun” in the quotation means the Man’s genital organs, that is, “the cock.”
And his death and his passion of sacrifice was all as nothing to him now, he knew
only the crouching fullness of the woman there, the soft white rock of life. “On thisrock I build my life!”9 —The deep-folded, penetrable rock of the living woman!—thewoman, hiding her face. Himself bending over, powerful and new like dawn.
He crouched to her, and he felt the blaze of his manhood and his power rise up
in his loins, magnificent. “I am risen!”—magnificent, blazing indomitable in thedepths of his loins, his own sun dawned and sent its fire running along his limbs, sothat his face shone unconsciously. (VGO 159)
“I am risen!” in the quotation means the Man’s sexual rebirth. The Man once died bybeing crucified and has risen bodily but His inner self was not revived. But by making
love with the priestess He has risen completely. “His own sun” also means His sexualorgan. So the title of the novella “the Escaped Cock” means the Man’s new pagan life
which loves a pagan woman, although real Christ was virgin. The preaching He madebefore He died was wrong.
Suddenly it dawned on him: I asked them all to serve me with the corpse of theirlove. And in the end I offered them only the corpse of my love. This is my body—take and eat10 —My corpse—A vivid shame went through him.—After all, hethought, I wanted them to love with dead bodies. (VGO 157)
The priestess is mentioned as “the heart of the rose” (VGO 160). “So he knew11 her andwas at one with her” (VGO 160). His wounds no longer hurt and they are sunny touchedby her. He says to her, “they are my atonement12 with you” (VGO 160). Here appears
Lawrence’s new Christ.

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Conclusion
In their intercourse, the Man thinks that Isis is full of tenderness and after He was at one
with the priestess of Isis, He looks at the vivid stars before dawn and thinks the space isfull of manyness like the petals of a rose.
How plastic it is, how full of curves and folds like an invisible rose of dark-petalled
openness, that shows where dew touches its darkness! How full it is, and great
beyond all gods. How it leans around me, and I am part of it, the great rose of space. I
am like a grain of its perfume, and the woman is a grain of its beauty. Now the worldis one flower of many-petalled darkness, and I am in its perfume as in a touch—(VGO 160)
The reader notices here again that this story is full of many kinds of flowers and trees
and birds. They have a lot of fragrance and colours. The world and space is made up ofvarious kinds of things and in the Man’s eyes they are in harmony and balance. Thisis the pagan world. The perfume integrates the space perfectly which has the rose as asymbol of integration. The rose looks like a lotus in the shape. The symbol of a rose isalso manyness, life, soul, heart and love. He thinks “I have sowed the seed of my life andmy resurrection, and put my touch forever upon the choice woman of this day, and I carryher perfume in my flesh like essence of roses” (VGO 163). And it also seems to be mystic
rebirth. The Man got His woman and the woman got her Osiris. She becomes pregnant
with Man’s child. The Man has to leave her and go on his journey alone because hermother and the slaves will tell the Roman overseer that the Man is a malefactor.
So he knew the time was come again, for him to depart. He would go alone, withhis destiny. Yet not alone, for the touch would be upon him, even as he left his touchon her. And invisible suns would go with him.
Yet he must go. For here on the bay the little life of jealousy and property was
resuming sway again, as the suns of passionate fecundity relaxed their sway. In thename of property, the widow and the slaves would seek to be revenged on him forthe bread he had eaten and the living touch he had established, the woman he haddelighted in. But he said: Not twice! They shall not twice lay hands on me. They16

A Study of The Escaped Cockshall not now profane the touch in me. My wits against theirs. (VGO 162)
Lawrence’s Christ is not Him of Christianity. The Man who died once has risen as a paganman. Therefore the world where the Man lives is not of the combination of Christianity
and Paganism as some scholars suggest. In the Escaped Cock Lawrence presents his new
religion of love.
Notes
1.

Lawrence, D. H. The Virgin and The Gipsy and Other Stories. Ed. M. Herbert, B. Jones and L.
Vasey. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), “Introduction” pp. xxxv–xlii.
2. Pan is a god of forests, shepherds and domestic animals in Greek mythology with horns, ears andlegs of a goat. Lawrence adapted this god for his works for his own phallic God, and therefore He
is anti-Christian.
3. In Women in Love Birkin who is a spokesman for Lawrence is described as “a demon lover.”4. Osiris is a god of the underworld in Egyptian mythology who was murdered by his younger
brother Set and reborn by his sister and wife Isis. Lawrence adapted this god for his novella.
5. See John 1. (‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word with God, and the Word was God’)in The Holy Bible Revised Standard Version. New York and Glasgow: Collins’ Clear-Type Press,
1971. Lawrence argues that the Flesh is more important than the Word (Mind).
6. See ‘Explanatory Notes’ (The Escaped Cock) p. 278.
7. Isis was Goddess in Ancient Egyptian mythology who was Osiris’ wife and depicted a figure
with horns of a cow. See ‘Explanatory Notes’ (The Escaped Cock) pp. 277–28.
8. See ‘Explanatory Notes’ (The Escaped Cock) p. 277.
9. See ‘Explanatory Notes’ (The Escaped Cock) p. 279.
10. See ‘Explanatory Notes’ (The Escaped Cock) p. 279.
11. See ‘Explanatory Notes’ (The Escaped Cock) p. 280.
12. See ‘Explanatory Notes’ (The Escaped Cock) p. 280.

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Jackson. Critical Essays on D. H. Lawrence. Boston, Massachusetts: G. K. Hall and Co., 1988.
Dervin, D. A “Strange Sapience”: The Creative Imagination of D. H. Lawrence. USA: The Universityof Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1984.
Goodheart, E. The Utopian Vision of D. H. Lawrence. Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press, 1963.
Humma, J. B. Metaphor and Meaning in D. H. Lawrence’s Later Novels. Columbia and London:

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University of Missouri Press, 1990.
Lawrence, D. H. Kangaroo. Ed. Bruce Steele. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. (K). Lady Chatterley’s Lover & A Propos of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Ed. Michael Squires.
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Owen, R. Lady Chatterley’s Lover: DH Lawrence on the Italian Riviera. London: The Armchair
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