It is no paradox that D. H. Lawrence, one of our greatest analysts of true and false feeling, should often have stumbled into falsity himself. But if it is not surprising in a general way that he should have done so, it remains important to understand why and how. For this throws a defining light on the nature of his positive achievement. More than with most writers his failures have an intimate bearing on his successes. This is partly because of the often hair's-breadth relation, in his case, between success and failure, which reveals the risks habitually taken. It is also because his ‘failures’ are not typically the product of a merely routine professional competence.

His creative commitment even to a misguided theme would turn it into an unwitting parody, rather than a vapid imitation, of his best self.

The Plumed Serpent is ambitious to the point of risk. It tells of a postrevolutionary revival of the pre-Columbian religion of Mexico by an anthropologist and a soldier. When Lawrence's interest in the theme is appreciated, the project is less unlikely than it sounds. Even so, despite its fitful brilliance, and the quizzical arena of consciousness provided by the Lawrencean heroine, Kate Leslie, the novel has almost universally, and rightly, been seen as artistically unsuccessful and misguided in its central ambition. Indeed, it is the most striking and extended instance of Lawrence's unwitting self-parody. None the less, it is a peculiarly complex and illuminating failure.