THE PLUMED SERPENT

THE PUMED SERPTENT is a political, mythological, and romance novel by D. H. LAWRENCE. The novel was published in 1926 by MARTIN SECKER. Lawrence conceived the idea for the novel while visiting Mexico in 1923, and its themes reflect his experiences there. The novel's plot concerns Kate Leslie, an Irish tourist who visits Mexico after the Mexican Revolution. She encounters Don Cipriano, a Mexican general who supports a religious movement, the Men of Quetzalcoatl, founded by his friend Don Ramón Carrasco. Within this movement, Cipriano is identified with Huitzilopochtli and Ramón with Quetzalcoatl. Kate eventually agrees to marry Cipriano, while the Men of Quetzalcoatl, with the help of a new president, bring about an end to Christianity in Mexico, replacing it with pagan Quetzalcoatl worship. In March 1923, Lawrence, accompanied by the poet, Witter Bynner, and his lover, Willard Johnson, visited Mexico. There, according to the biographer Brenda Maddox, the "sight of Aztec ruins and the lush countryside outside Mexico City" gave him the idea for a book. Lawrence began writing The Plumed Serpent in May 1923. Maddox states that writing the novel was exhausting for Lawrence, and that it "nearly killed him", owing to the illness he contracted upon finishing it, which he did not expect to survive. She notes that the character of Owen Rhys was based on Bynner, and that the bullfight that occurs early in The Plumed Serpent was based on an actual bullfight Lawrence attended with Bynner and Johnson.