Lady Chatterley’s Lover
By DH Lawrence
Read: Feb/Mar 2009
Rating:a Romp
I wish I’d read this sooner. It’s so wonderful to read a book by a man, written decades ago, that basically asks the question, “Why shouldn’t this woman be happy?” Feminist, ho!
Connie is a product of the brief wave of feminism in the second quarter-ish of the 20th century. She was educated, given liberties, encouraged to think. She had her first lover at boarding school. She had a rich inner life going on. Then she met Clifford Chatterley, a wealthy British aristo and lord of Wragby, and agreed to marry him. Then he went off to WWI and was paralyzed from the waste down. Thus began the slow death of Connie’s enthusiasm for life. Confined to the family estate, first as caretaker and then security blanket to her wheelchair-ridden husband, Connie stagnates. She feels herself becoming thinner and haggard. It is a sorry way to live on the edge of the what was the mythic Sherwood Forest.
Then Clifford suggests that he would not be opposed to her having a child by another man, to be raised as the heir to Wragby. Just so long as there isn’t a fuss made and she doesn’t love the fellow.
Well, this is just enough to spark something in Connie. Naturally, she beds the groundskeeper, Mellors. He’s a rather nifty man. He’s educated, he’s been around the world in the army. And he appreciates a woman. He appreciates real companionship and sex that’s good for the both of them. Mellors reminds me of Dr. House, if he were less malicious and more just generally grouchy. He’s yummy, actually.
Of course, they’re both pulled deeper and deeper into this affair, and the consequences begin to take hold.
I really liked a good deal of the book. There were also things I didn’t like.
For instance, it’s a slow start. Well over a hundred pages slow. It’s necessary to set up Connie’s life both before marrying, and then at Wragby with Clifford. Mellors doesn’t make much of an impression on Connie for a long while–this isn’t a modern romance novel where their eyes lock for the first time and they’re both set aflame with passion. Remember, Connie’s dead inside. Mellors has to awaken something in her before she realizes what she has with him. …and that takes a long time. Push through, it’s worth it.
There’s also the talking. About the issues of the day. All the men are guilty of it. They expound on and on about the meaning of life, about the universe, about the meaning of love, about the mechanics of society. They do so at length–and when it comes to Clifford and his good old boys they do it right in front of Connie with never a word for her. They actually get embarassed if she joins in, so she doesn’t. (The woman has a mind? Wot? No, she can just sit there and sew. Never mind that she went to university.) Now, this is a deliberate strategy of Lawrence’s part. Talking directly about the things everyone is currently thinking about. But OH MAI GAWD MAKE IT STOP PLZ! Less is more, DH, I swear! These conversations go on for way too long, without enough repartee, just one person hearing themselves talk until they’re fully satisfied. It sounds rather contrived, by modern standards. Still, I could handle that if it just didn’t seem to happen so OFTEN. I really found myself wanting to skip pages, which is something I never do.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a review of Lady Chatterley’s Lover without mention of the language and sexual content. The sex really isn’t going to shock the modern reader. Romance readers may even be disappointed. It’s the word choice that made me look twice. I mean, I’ve performed in The Vagina Monologues and I still get a jolt when I see the word cunt. It’s not a word I particularly like, but Mellors certainly does. And it’s disconcerting to read something that is so clearly written in the 1920s with all the old styles intact… and fuck crops up all the time. It really makes me like Lawrence, and Mellors. But I can see why it’s not read in many classrooms.
By the way, I don’t know that I buy Connie–set up as a Forward Thinking Woman turned Deadened Housewife–becomes a simpering little heroine once she falls in love. I KNOW that’s how the ladies talked, or were protrayed as talking, but it’s annoying.
‘Say you’re glad!’ she pleaded, groping for his hand. And she saw a
certain exultance spring up in him. But it was netted down by things
she could not understand.‘It’s the future,’ he said.
‘But aren’t you glad?’ she persisted.
‘I have such a terrible mistrust of the future.’
Buck up, Connie.
This is coming off as a negative review, but I did like the book! I think I’m going to enjoy it even more when I reread it (you know, one day in the very distant future).
I read the surrounding materials as well, including the bio/forward and Apropos Of (well, most of it before I got sidetracked). It sounds like Lawrence was a really brilliant guy who was well ahead of his time socially and sexually. Other problems aside, I’d like to have met him. The tragedy is that he wrote Lady Chatterley in response to his own wife’s infidelity. But there’s something healing in giving his characters a happy ending.
