ABSTRACT
Mr. D. H. Lawrence finds himself in agreement with other writers in one important respect. He, too, like the vast majority of fictionists of all time, looks upon the successful mating of his characters as the fundamental problem of his story. And however much we may sometimes tire of the conventional 'and they lived happily ever after', we must admit that novelists are right in focusing attention upon this point. Whether for good or evil, almost every mature fantasy about life pr<?bably has an erotic core, so that we are hardly capable of thinking it through without including a marriage idyl by means of which we unconsciously strive to recall that secure haven oflove which we dimly associate with our childhood. The melodramatic novelist naively looks upon all obstacles to mating as coming entirely from without. More mature writers realize subtler difficulties and put their emphasis almost entirely upon the inner conflicts, but they usually manage to end with a successful mating.
