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About The Plumed Serpent (Unabridged)

Lawrence wrote The Plumed Serpent between 1923 to 1924, a time when he was in ill health, living in Mexico, and becoming dependent on his wife Frieda. The plot revolves around a movement to replace the Christian God with the old pre-conquest gods, such as Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent of the title. Kate Leslie, an Irish woman, gets caught up in the movement and marries one of the leaders, but at the very end of the novel, is ambivalent towards the aims of the movement. Lawrence uses the story to propound his own views about religion and the need for woman to sublimate herself before man, and the need for a new political order. This all seems deliciously old-fashioned and misplaced now, but we forgive Lawrence because of the beauty of his writing and his ability to get beneath the surface of the country he describes.