“Suns”and“Flowers”in The Escaped Cock

Abstract

The imagery of“suns”and“flowers”is too manifest in The Escaped Cock to ignore. In the second part of the book the author compares men to suns, and women to flowers; we may say that there are in the story two kinds of formula-«woman=flower»and«man=sun». What has to be noticed here is that the images are not isolated but interrelated. Why and how did Lawrence adopt suns and flowers as key images?
I survey in Chapter I how the protagonist and the priestess are depicted according to the formula mentioned above.
The formula, however, does not remain fixed. In a certain scene the imagery reverses itself-«man=flower»and«woman=sun». I consider in Chapter II what the reversal means.
In the final chapter I deal with“the great rose of Space, ”in which the floral imagery in the story culminates. This cosmic rose deserves explicit emphasis, for it seems to represent Lawrence's own religion.
In conclusion, the imagery of suns and flowers serves to render his own ideal of religion effectively and aesthetically.