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(16) Granted as Schorer says that the characters function fully and the author allows them to speak for themselves. Yet, in the mind of an ordinary man it would have the effect of raising immoral thought. It is indeed very difficult to see much symbolism so far as Clifford is concerned, of which so much is said. It is not a sexual paralysis born of his high breed or his richness or the industrialization but paralysis due to injuries in the war. In him there is a clear physical incapacity. The author himself in his Essay "Apropos of Lady Chatterley's Lover" edited by Harry T. Moore, on the question as to whether the symbolism was intentional says:

"And when I read the first version, I recognised that the lameness of Clifford was symbolic of the paralysis, the deeper emotional or passional paralysis, of most men of his sort and class to-day. I realised that it was perhaps taking an unfair advantage of Connie, to paralyse him technically. It made it so 'much more vulgar of her to leave him'. Yet the story came as it did, by itself, so I left it alone."

No doubt, in the same essay the author asserts:

"Far be it from me to suggest that all women should go running after gamekeepers for lovers. Far be it from me to suggest that they should be running after anybody. A great many men and women today are happiest when they sustain and stay sexually apart, quite clean; and at the same time, when they understand and realise sex more fully."

On an ordinary man not initiated into the literary art, the effect would yet be quite the reverse. It would seem that an ordinary man who reads the book would feel that an ordinary man who reads the book would feel that the author is of the view that tenderness comes only after the fullest sensual satisfaction and not otherwise. He will also imagine that if Mellors after marriage sustained some accident and got paralytic as did Clifford, Constance might again leave him as well and would be justified in doing so since the tenderness born of an nourished by phallic love must end by his phallic paralysis. It is here that the danger lies. Besides, most of the passages which form the subject-matter of the charge would have the effect of raising lascivious thoughts in the mind of an ordinary reader of the book and would rudely shake his moral fabric so as to deprave and corrupt him. If this is the effect that can reasonably be said to be caused on the mind of those into whose hands the book is likely to fall, then clearly the book is obscene, within the meaning of S. 292 of the Penal Code.