Quote:
Juliet had ceased to trouble about anything. Now, most of the day, she and the
child were naked in the sun, and it was all she wanted. Sometimes she went
down to the sea to bathe: often she wandered in the gullies where the sun
shone in, and she was out of sight. Sometimes she saw a peasant with an ***,
and he saw her. But she went on simply and quietly with her child; and the
fame of the sun's healing power, for the soul as well as for the body, had
already spread among the people; so that there was no excitement.
The child and she were now both tanned with a rosy-golden tan all over. 'I am
another being !' she said to herself, as she looked at her red-gold breasts
and thighs.
The child, too, was a another creature, with a peculiar, quiet, sun-darkened
absorption. Now he played by himself in silence, and she hardly need notice
him. He seemed no longer to know when he was alone.
There was a breeze, and the sea was ultra marine. She sat by the great silver
paw of the cypress tree, drowsed in the sun, but her breasts alert, full of
sap. She was becoming aware that an activity was rousing in her, an activity
which would carry her into a new way of life. Still she did not want to be
aware. She knew well enough the vast cold apparatus of civilisation, so
difficult to evade.
The child had gone a few yards down the rocky path, round the great sprawling
of a cactus. She had seen him, a real gold-brown infant of the winds, with
burnt gold hair and red cheeks, collecting the speckled pitcher-flowers and
laying them in rows. He could balance now, and was quick for his own
emergencies, like an absorbed young animal playing silent.
Suddenly she heard him speaking: 'Look Mummy ! Mummy, look !' A note in
his bird-like voice made her lean forward sharply.
Her heart stood still. He was looking over his naked little shoulder at her,
and pointing with a loose little hand at a snake which had reared itself up a
yard away from him, and was opening its mouth so that its forked, soft tongue
flickered black like a shadow, uttering a short hiss.
'Look, Mummy !'
'Yes, darling, it's a snake !' came the slow, deep voice.
He looked at he, his wide blue eyes uncertain whether to be afraid or not.
Some stillness of the sun in her reassured him.
'Snake !' he chirped.
'Yes, darling. Don't touch it, it can bite.'
The snake had sunk down, and was reaching away from the coils in which it had
been basking asleep. and slowly was easing its long, gold-brown body into the
rocks, with slow curves. The boy turned and watched in silence. Then he said:
'Snake going !'
'Yes ! Let it go. It likes to be alone.'
He still watched the slow, easing length as the creature drew itself apathetic
out of sight.
'Snake gone back,' he said.
'Yes, it's gone back. Come to Mummy a moment.'
He came and sat with his plump, naked little body on her naked lap, and she
smoothed his burnt, bright hair. She said nothing, feeling that everything was
passed. The curious soothing power of the sun filled her, filled the whole
place like a charm, and the snake was part of the place, along with her and
the child.
I think everything important to the story is in this passage. The place that Lawrence presents is a heaven, a place where snakes slither harmlessly away and civilization is vague and have no sway. The sun is a diety and it soothes and heals.
