Lady Chatterley's Lover (Arcadia Classics)

By D H Lawrence

Lady Chatterley's Lover is D. H. Lawrence's controversial novel written in 1928, which tells the story of an aristocratic woman, Constance (Lady Chatterley), who has an affair with the estate's gamekeeper when her husband is paralyzed and rendered impotent. Central to the theme of the novel is the need for physical stimulation as well as mental stimulation in order to feel complete as a human being. Due to the offensive language and subject matter of the book a charge of obscenity was brought against it in a famous 1960 trial in the United Kingdom. The novel and Lawrence were cleared of the charges and for the first time the novel was allowed to be published without restriction. Presented here is the original unabridged version first published privately in Florence in 1928.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Herbert Lawrence
• Release date: Oct 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9788892511699

D H Lawrence

David Herbert Lawrence, (185-1930) more commonly known as D.H Lawrence was a British writer and poet often surrounded by controversy. His works explored issues of sexuality, emotional health, masculinity, and reflected on the dehumanizing effects of industrialization. Lawrence’s opinions acquired him many enemies, censorship, and prosecution. Because of this, he lived the majority of his second half of life in a self-imposed exile. Despite the controversy and criticism, he posthumously was championed for his artistic integrity and moral severity.

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lover

Chapter I

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

This was more or less Constance Chatterley's position. The war had brought the roof down over her head. And she had realized that one must live and learn.

She married Clifford Chatterley in 1917, when he was home for a month on leave. They had a month's honeymoon. Then he went back to Flanders: to be shipped over to England again six months later, more or less in bits. Constance, his wife, was then twenty-three years old, and he was twenty-nine.

His hold on life was marvellous. He didn't die, and the bits seemed to grow together again. For two years he remained in the doctor's hands. Then he was pronounced a cure, and could return to life again, with the lower half of his body, from the hips down, paralysed for ever.

This was in 1920. They returned, Clifford and Constance, to his home, Wragby Hall, the family 'seat'. His father had died, Clifford was now a baronet, Sir Clifford, and Constance was Lady Chatterley. They came to start housekeeping and married life in the rather forlorn home of the Chatterleys on a rather inadequate income. Clifford had a sister, but she had departed. Otherwise there were no near relatives. The elder brother was dead in the war. Crippled for ever, knowing he could never have any children, Clifford came home to the smoky Midlands to keep the Chatterley name alive while he could.

He was not really downcast. He could wheel himself about in a wheeled chair, and he had a bath-chair with a small motor attachment, so he could drive himself slowly round the garden and into the line melancholy park, of which he was really so proud, though he pretended to be flippant about it.

Having suffered so much, the capacity for suffering had to some extent left him. He remained strange and bright and cheerful, almost, one might say, chirpy, with his ruddy, healthy-looking face, and his pale-blue, challenging bright eyes. His shoulders were broad and strong, his hands were very strong. He was expensively dressed, and wore handsome neckties from Bond Street. Yet still in his face one saw the watchful look, the slight vacancy of a cripple.

He had so very nearly lost his life, that what remained was wonderfully precious to him. It was obvious in the anxious brightness of his eyes, how proud he was, after the great shock, of being alive. But he had been so much hurt that something inside him had perished, some of his feelings had gone. There was a blank of insentience.

Constance, his wife, was a ruddy, country-looking girl with soft brown hair and sturdy body, and slow movements, full of unusual energy. She had big, wondering eyes, and a soft mild voice, and seemed just to have come from her native village. It was not so at all. Her father was the once well-known R.A., old Sir Malcolm Reid. Her mother had been one of the cultivated Fabians in the palmy, rather pre-Raphaelite days. Between artists and cultured socialists, Constance and her sister Hilda had had what might be called an aesthetically unconventional upbringing. They had been taken to Paris and Florence and Rome to breathe in art, and they had been taken also in the other direction, to the Hague and Berlin, to great Socialist conventions, where the speakers spoke in every civilized tongue, and no one was abashed.

The two girls, therefore, were from an early age not the least daunted by either art or ideal politics. It was their natural atmosphere. They were at once cosmopolitan and provincial, with the cosmopolitan provincialism of art that goes with pure social ideals.

They had been sent to Dresden at the age of fifteen, for music among other things. And they had had a good time there. They lived freely among the students, they argued with the men over philosophical, sociological and artistic matters, they were just as good as the men themselves: only better, since they were women. And they tramped off to the forests with sturdy youths bearing guitars, twang-twang! They sang the Wandervogel songs, and they were free. Free! That was the great word. Out in the open world, out in the forests of the morning, with lusty and splendid-throated young fellows, free to do as they liked, and — above all — to say what they liked. It was the talk that mattered supremely: the impassioned interchange of talk. Love was only a minor accompaniment.

Both Hilda and Constance had had their tentative love-affairs by the time they were eighteen. The young men with whom they talked so passionately and sang so lustily and camped under the trees in such freedom wanted, of course, the love connexion. The girls were doubtful, but then the thing was so much talked about, it was supposed to be so important. And the men were so humble and craving. Why couldn't a girl be queenly, and give the gift of herself?

So they had given the gift of themselves, each to the youth with whom she had the most subtle and intimate arguments. The arguments, the discussions were the great thing: the love-making and connexion were only a sort of primitive reversion and a bit of an anti-climax. One was less in love with the boy afterwards, and a little inclined to hate him, as if he had trespassed on one's privacy and inner freedom. For, of course, being a girl, one's whole dignity and meaning in life consisted in the achievement of an absolute, a perfect, a pure and noble freedom. What else did a girl's life mean? To shake off the old and sordid connexions and subjections.

And however one might sentimentalize it, this sex business was one of the most ancient, sordid connexions and subjections. Poets who glorified it were mostly men. Women had always known there was something better, something higher. And now they knew it more definitely than ever. The beautiful pure freedom of a woman was infinitely more wonderful than any sexual love. The only unfortunate thing was that men lagged so far behind women in the matter. They insisted on the sex thing like dogs.

And a woman had to yield. A man was like a child with his appetites. A woman had to yield him what he wanted, or like a child he would probably turn nasty and flounce away and spoil what was a very pleasant connexion. But a woman could yield to a man without yielding her inner, free self. That the poets and talkers about sex did not seem to have taken sufficiently into account. A woman could take a man without really giving herself away. Certainly she could take him without giving herself into his power. Rather she could use this sex thing to have power over him. For she only had to hold herself back in sexual intercourse, and let him finish and expend himself without herself coming to the crisis: and then she could prolong the connexion and achieve her orgasm and her crisis while he was merely her tool.

Both sisters had had their love experience by the time the war came, and they were hurried home. Neither was ever in love with a young man unless he and she were verbally very near: that is unless they were profoundly interested, TALKING to one another. The amazing, the profound, the unbelievable thrill there was in passionately talking to some really clever young man by the hour, resuming day after day for months… this they had never realized till it happened! The paradisal promise: Thou shalt have men to talk to! — had never been uttered. It was fulfilled before they knew what a promise it was.

And if after the roused intimacy of these vivid and soul-enlightened discussions the sex thing became more or less inevitable, then let it. It marked the end of a chapter. It had a thrill of its own too: a queer vibrating thrill inside the body, a final spasm of self-assertion, like the last word, exciting, and very like the row of asterisks that can be put to show the end of a paragraph, and a break in the theme.

When the girls came home for the summer holidays of 1913, when Hilda was twenty and Connie eighteen, their father could see plainly that they had had the love experience.

L'amour avait passé par là¹, as somebody puts it. But he was a man of experience himself, and let life take its course. As for the mother, a nervous invalid in the last few months of her life, she wanted her girls to be 'free', and to 'fulfil themselves'. She herself had never been able to be altogether herself: it had been denied her. Heaven knows why, for she was a woman who had her own income and her own way. She blamed her husband. But as a matter of fact, it was some old impression of authority on her own mind or soul that she could not get rid of. It had nothing to do with Sir Malcolm, who left his nervously hostile, high-spirited wife to rule her own roost, while he went his own way.

So the girls were 'free', and went back to Dresden, and their music, and the university and the young men. They loved their respective young men, and their respective young men loved them with all the passion of mental attraction. All the wonderful things the young men thought and expressed and wrote, they thought and expressed and wrote for the young women. Connie's young man was musical, Hilda's was technical. But they simply lived for their young women. In their minds and their mental excitements, that is. Somewhere else they were a little rebuffed, though they did not know it.

It was obvious in them too that love had gone through them: that is, the physical experience. It is curious what a subtle but unmistakable transmutation it makes, both in the body of men and women: the woman more blooming, more subtly rounded, her young angularities softened, and her expression either anxious or triumphant: the man much quieter, more inward, the very shapes of his shoulders and his buttocks less assertive, more hesitant.

In the actual sex-thrill within the body, the sisters nearly succumbed to the strange male power. But quickly they recovered themselves, took the sex-thrill as a sensation, and remained free. Whereas the men, in gratitude to the woman for the sex experience, let their souls go out to her. And afterwards looked rather as if they had lost a shilling and found sixpence. Connie's man could be a bit sulky, and Hilda's a bit jeering. But that is how men are! Ungrateful and never satisfied. When you don't have them they hate you because you won't; and when you do have them they hate you again, for some other reason. Or for no reason at all, except that they are discontented children, and can't be satisfied whatever they get, let a woman do what she may.

However, came the war, Hilda and Connie were rushed home again after having been home already in May, to their mother's funeral. Before Christmas of 1914 both their German young men were dead: whereupon the sisters wept, and loved the young men passionately, but underneath forgot them. They didn't exist any more.

Both sisters lived in their father's, really their mother's, Kensington house mixed with the young Cambridge group, the group that stood for 'freedom' and flannel trousers, and flannel shirts open at the neck, and a well-bred sort of emotional anarchy, and a whispering, murmuring sort of voice, and an ultra-sensitive sort of manner. Hilda, however, suddenly married a man ten years older than herself, an elder member of the same Cambridge group, a man with a fair amount of money, and a comfortable family job in the government: he also wrote philosophical essays. She lived with him in a smallish house in Westminster, and moved in that good sort of society of people in the government who are not tip-toppers, but who are, or would be, the real intelligent power in the nation: people who know what they're talking about, or talk as if they did.

Connie did a mild form of war-work, and consorted with the flannel-trousers Cambridge intransigents, who gently mocked at everything, so far. Her 'friend' was a Clifford Chatterley, a young man of twenty-two, who had hurried home from Bonn, where he was studying the technicalities of coal-mining. He had previously spent two years at Cambridge. Now he had become a first lieutenant in a smart regiment, so he could mock at everything more becomingly in uniform.

Clifford Chatterley was more upper-class than Connie. Connie was well-to-do intelligentsia, but he was aristocracy. Not the big sort, but still it. His father was a baronet, and his mother had been a viscount's daughter.

But Clifford, while he was better bred than Connie, and more 'society', was in his own way more provincial and more timid. He was at his ease in the narrow 'great world', that is, landed aristocracy society, but he was shy and nervous of all that other big world which consists of the vast hordes of the middle and lower classes, and foreigners. If the truth must be told, he was just a little bit frightened of middle- and lower-class humanity, and of foreigners not of his own class. He was, in some paralysing way, conscious of his own defencelessness, though he had all the defence of privilege. Which is curious, but a phenomenon of our day.

Therefore the peculiar soft assurance of a girl like Constance Reid fascinated him. She was so much more mistress of herself in that outer world of chaos than he was master of himself.

Nevertheless he too was a rebel: rebelling even against his class. Or perhaps rebel is too strong a word; far too strong. He was only caught in the general, popular recoil of the young against convention and against any sort of real authority. Fathers were ridiculous: his own obstinate one supremely so. And governments were ridiculous: our own wait-and-see sort especially so. And armies were ridiculous, and old buffers of generals altogether, the red-faced Kitchener supremely. Even the war was ridiculous, though it did kill rather a lot of people.

In fact everything was a little ridiculous, or very ridiculous: certainly everything connected with authority, whether it were in the army or the government or the universities, was ridiculous to a degree. And as far as the governing class made any pretensions to govern, they were ridiculous too. Sir Geoffrey, Clifford's father, was intensely ridiculous, chopping down his trees, and weeding men out of his colliery to shove them into the war; and himself being so safe and patriotic; but, also, spending more money on his country than he'd got.

When Miss Chatterley — Emma — came down to London from the Midlands to do some nursing work, she was very witty in a quiet way about Sir Geoffrey and his determined patriotism. Herbert, the elder brother and heir, laughed outright, though it was his trees that were falling for trench props. But Clifford only smiled a little uneasily. Everything was ridiculous, quite true. But when it came too close and oneself became ridiculous too…? At least people of a different class, like Connie, were earnest about something. They believed in something.

They were rather earnest about the Tommies, and the threat of conscription, and the shortage of sugar and toffee for the children. In all these things, of course, the authorities were ridiculously at fault. But Clifford could not take it to heart. To him the authorities were ridiculous ab ovo, not because of toffee or Tommies.

And the authorities felt ridiculous, and behaved in a rather ridiculous fashion, and it was all a mad hatter's tea-party for a while. Till things developed over there, and Lloyd George came to save the situation over here. And this surpassed even ridicule, the flippant young laughed no more.

In 1916 Herbert Chatterley was killed, so Clifford became heir. He was terrified even of this. His importance as son of Sir Geoffrey, and child of Wragby, was so ingrained in him, he could never escape it. And yet he knew that this too, in the eyes of the vast seething world, was ridiculous. Now he was heir and responsible for Wragby. Was that not terrible? And also splendid and at the same time, perhaps, purely absurd?

Sir Geoffrey would have none of the absurdity. He was pale and tense, withdrawn into himself, and obstinately determined to save his country and his own position, let it be Lloyd George or who it might. So cut off he was, so divorced from the England that was really England, so utterly incapable, that he even thought well of Horatio Bottomley. Sir Geoffrey stood for England and Lloyd George as his forebears had stood for England and St George: and he never knew there was a difference. So Sir Geoffrey felled timber and stood for Lloyd George and England, England and Lloyd George.

And he wanted Clifford to marry and produce an heir. Clifford felt his father was a hopeless anachronism. But wherein was he himself any further ahead, except in a wincing sense of the ridiculousness of everything, and the paramount ridiculousness of his own position? For willy-nilly he took his baronetcy and Wragby with the last seriousness.

The gay excitement had gone out of the war… dead. Too much death and horror. A man needed support and comfort. A man needed to have an anchor in the safe world. A man needed a wife.

The Chatterleys, two brothers and a sister, had lived curiously isolated, shut in with one another at Wragby, in spite of all their connexions. A sense of isolation intensified the family tie, a sense of the weakness of their position, a sense of defencelessness, in spite of, or because of, the title and the land. They were cut off from those industrial Midlands in which they passed their lives. And they were cut off from their own class by the brooding, obstinate, shut-up nature of Sir Geoffrey, their father, whom they ridiculed, but whom they were so sensitive about.

The three had said they would all live together always. But now Herbert was dead, and Sir Geoffrey wanted Clifford to marry. Sir Geoffrey barely mentioned it: he spoke very little. But his silent, brooding insistence that it should be so was hard for Clifford to bear up against.

But Emma said No! She was ten years older than Clifford, and she felt his marrying would be a desertion and a betrayal of what the young ones of the family had stood for.

Clifford married Connie, nevertheless, and had his month's honeymoon with her. It was the terrible year 1917, and they were intimate as two people who stand together on a sinking ship. He had been virgin when he married: and the sex part did not mean much to him. They were so close, he and she, apart from that. And Connie exulted a little in this intimacy which was beyond sex, and beyond a man's 'satisfaction'. Clifford anyhow was not just keen on his 'satisfaction', as so many men seemed to be. No, the intimacy was deeper, more personal than that. And sex was merely an accident, or an adjunct, one of the curious obsolete, organic processes which persisted in its own clumsiness, but was not really necessary. Though Connie did want children: if only to fortify her against her sister-in-law Emma.

But early in 1918 Clifford was shipped home smashed, and there was no child. And Sir Geoffrey died of chagrin.

Chapter II

Connie and Clifford came home to Wragby in the autumn of 1920. Miss Chatterley, still disgusted at her brother's defection, had departed and was living in a little flat in London.

Wragby was a long low old house in brown stone, begun about the middle of the eighteenth century, and added on to, till it was a warren of a place without much distinction. It stood on an eminence in a rather fine old park of oak trees, but alas, one could see in the near distance the chimney of Tevershall pit, with its clouds of steam and smoke, and on the damp, hazy distance of the hill the raw straggle of Tevershall village, a village which began almost at the park gates, and trailed in utter hopeless ugliness for a long and gruesome mile: houses, rows of wretched, small, begrimed, brick houses, with black slate roofs for lids, sharp angles and wilful, blank dreariness.

Connie was accustomed to Kensington or the Scotch hills or the Sussex downs: that was her England. With the stoicism of the young she took in the utter, soulless ugliness of the coal-and-iron Midlands at a glance, and left it at what it was: unbelievable and not to be thought about. From the rather dismal rooms at Wragby she heard the rattle-rattle of the screens at the pit, the puff of the winding-engine, the clink-clink of shunting trucks, and the hoarse little whistle of the colliery locomotives. Tevershall pit-bank was burning, had been burning for years, and it would cost thousands to put it out. So it had to burn. And when the wind was that way, which was often, the house was full of the stench of this sulphurous combustion of the earth's excrement. But even on windless days the air always smelt of something under-earth: sulphur, iron, coal, or acid. And even on the Christmas roses the smuts settled persistently, incredible, like black manna from the skies of doom.

Well, there it was: fated like the rest of things! It was rather awful, but why kick? You couldn't kick it away. It just went on. Life, like all the rest! On the low dark ceiling of cloud at night red blotches burned and quavered, dappling and swelling and contracting, like burns that give pain. It was the furnaces. At first they fascinated Connie with a sort of horror; she felt she was living underground. Then she got used to them. And in the morning it rained.

Clifford professed to like Wragby better than London. This country had a grim will of its own, and the people had guts. Connie wondered what else they had: certainly neither eyes nor minds. The people were as haggard, shapeless, and dreary as the countryside, and as unfriendly. Only there was something in their deep-mouthed slurring of the dialect, and the thresh-thresh of their hob-nailed pit-boots as they trailed home in gangs on the asphalt from work, that was terrible and a bit mysterious.

There had been no welcome home for the young squire, no festivities, no deputation, not even a single flower. Only a dank ride in a motor-car up a dark, damp drive, burrowing through gloomy trees, out to the slope of the park where grey damp sheep were feeding, to the knoll where the house spread its dark brown facade, and the housekeeper and her husband were hovering, like unsure tenants on the face of the earth, ready to stammer a welcome.

There was no communication between Wragby Hall and Tevershall village, none. No caps were touched, no curtseys bobbed. The colliers merely stared; the tradesmen lifted their caps to Connie as to an acquaintance, and nodded awkwardly to Clifford; that was all. Gulf impassable, and a quiet sort of resentment on either side. At first Connie suffered from the steady drizzle of resentment that came from the village. Then she hardened herself to it, and it became a sort of tonic, something to live up to. It was not that she and Clifford were unpopular, they merely belonged to another species altogether from the colliers. Gulf impassable, breach indescribable, such as is perhaps nonexistent south of the Trent. But in the Midlands and the industrial North gulf impassable, across which no communication could take place. You stick to your side, I'll stick to mine! A strange denial of the common pulse of humanity.

Yet the village sympathized with Clifford and Connie in the abstract. In the flesh it was — You leave me alone! — on either side.

The rector was a nice man of about sixty, full of his duty, and reduced, personally, almost to a nonentity by the silent — You leave me alone! — of the village. The miners' wives were nearly all Methodists. The miners were nothing. But even so much official uniform as the clergyman wore was enough to obscure entirely the fact that he was a man like any other man. No, he was Mester Ashby, a sort of automatic preaching and praying concern.

This stubborn, instinctive — We think ourselves as good as you, if you are Lady Chatterley! — puzzled and baffled Connie at first extremely. The curious, suspicious, false amiability with which the miners' wives met her overtures; the curiously offensive tinge of — Oh dear me! I am somebody now, with Lady Chatterley talking to me! But she needn't think I'm not as good as her for all that! — which she always heard twanging in the women's half-fawning voices, was impossible. There was no getting past it. It was hopelessly and offensively nonconformist.

Clifford left them alone, and she learnt to do the same: she just went by without looking at them, and they stared as if she were a walking wax figure. When he had to deal with them, Clifford was rather haughty and contemptuous; one could no longer afford to be friendly. In fact he was altogether rather supercilious and contemptuous of anyone not in his own class. He stood his ground, without any attempt at conciliation. And he was neither liked nor disliked by the people: he was just part of things, like the pit-bank and Wragby itself.

But Clifford was really extremely shy and self-conscious now he was lamed. He hated seeing anyone except just the personal servants. For he had to sit in a wheeled chair or a sort of bath-chair. Nevertheless he was just as carefully dressed as ever, by his expensive tailors, and he wore the careful Bond Street neckties just as before, and from the top he looked just as smart and impressive as ever. He had never been one of the modern ladylike young men: rather bucolic even, with his ruddy face and broad shoulders. But his very quiet, hesitating voice, and his eyes, at the same time bold and frightened, assured and uncertain, revealed his nature. His manner was often offensively supercilious, and then again modest and self-effacing, almost tremulous.

Connie and he were attached to one another, in the aloof modern way. He was much too hurt in himself, the great shock of his maiming, to be easy and flippant. He was a hurt thing. And as such Connie stuck to him passionately.

But she could not help feeling how little connexion he really had with people. The miners were, in a sense, his own men; but he saw them as objects rather than men, parts of the pit rather than parts of life, crude raw phenomena rather than human beings along with him. He was in some way afraid of them, he could not bear to have them look at him now he was lame. And their queer, crude life seemed as unnatural as that of hedgehogs.

He was remotely interested; but like a man looking down a microscope, or up a telescope. He was not in touch. He was not in actual touch with anybody, save, traditionally, with Wragby, and, through the close bond of family defence, with Emma. Beyond this nothing really touched him. Connie felt that she herself didn't really, not really touch him; perhaps there was nothing to get at ultimately; just a negation of human contact.

Yet he was absolutely dependent on her, he needed her every moment. Big and strong as he was, he was helpless. He could wheel himself about in a wheeled chair, and he had a sort of bath-chair with a motor attachment, in which he could puff slowly round the park. But alone he was like a lost thing. He needed Connie to be there, to assure him he existed at all.

Still he was ambitious. He had taken to writing stories; curious, very personal stories about people he had known. Clever, rather spiteful, and yet, in some mysterious way, meaningless. The observation was extraordinary and peculiar. But there was no touch, no actual contact. It was as if the whole thing took place in a vacuum. And since the field of life is largely an artificially-lighted stage today, the stories were curiously true to modern life, to the modern psychology, that is.

Clifford was almost morbidly sensitive about these stories. He wanted everyone to think them good, of the best, ne plus ultra. They appeared in the most modern magazines, and were praised and blamed as usual. But to Clifford the blame was torture, like knives goading him. It was as if the whole of his being were in his stories.

Connie helped him as much as she could. At first she was thrilled. He talked everything over with her monotonously, insistently, persistently, and she had to respond with all her might. It was as if her whole soul and body and sex had to rouse up and pass into theme stories of his. This thrilled her and absorbed her.

Of physical life they lived very little. She had to superintend the house. But the housekeeper had served Sir Geoffrey for many years, and the dried-up, elderly, superlatively correct female you could hardly call her a parlour-maid, or even a woman… who waited at table, had been in the house for forty years. Even the very housemaids were no longer young. It was awful! What could you do with such a place, but leave it alone! All these endless rooms that nobody used, all the Midlands routine, the mechanical cleanliness and the mechanical order! Clifford had insisted on a new cook, an experienced woman who had served him in his rooms in London. For the rest the place seemed run by mechanical anarchy. Everything went on in pretty good order, strict cleanliness, and strict punctuality; even pretty strict honesty. And yet, to Connie, it was a methodical anarchy. No warmth of feeling united it organically. The house seemed as dreary as a disused street.

What could she do but leave it alone? So she left it alone. Miss Chatterley came sometimes, with her aristocratic thin face, and triumphed, finding nothing altered. She would never forgive Connie for ousting her from her union in consciousness with her brother. It was she, Emma, who should be bringing forth the stories, these books, with him; the Chatterley stories, something new in the world, that they, the Chatterleys, had put there. There was no other standard. There was no organic connexion with the thought and expression that had gone before. Only something new in the world: the Chatterley books, entirely personal.

Connie's father, when he paid a flying visit to Wragby, and in private to his daughter: As for Clifford's writing, it's smart, but there's nothing in it. It won't last! Connie looked at the burly Scottish knight who had done himself well all his life, and her eyes, her big, still-wondering blue eyes became vague. Nothing in it! What did he mean by nothing in it? If the critics praised it, and Clifford's name was almost famous, and it even brought in money… what did her father mean by saying there was nothing in Clifford's writing? What else could there be?

For Connie had adopted the standard of the young: what there was in the moment was everything. And moments followed one another without necessarily belonging to one another.

It was in her second winter at Wragby her father said to her: 'I hope, Connie, you won't let circumstances force you into being a demi-vierge².'

'A demi-vierge!' replied Connie vaguely. 'Why? Why not?'

'Unless you like it, of course!' said her father hastily. To Clifford he said the same, when the two men were alone: 'I'm afraid it doesn't quite suit Connie to be a demi-vierge.'

'A half-virgin!' replied Clifford, translating the phrase to be sure of it.

He thought for a moment, then flushed very red. He was angry and offended.

'In what way doesn't it suit her?' he asked stiffly.

'She's getting thin… angular. It's not her style. She's not the pilchard sort of little slip of a girl, she's a bonny Scotch trout.'

'Without the spots, of course!' said Clifford.

He wanted to say something later to Connie about the demi-vierge business… the half-virgin state of her affairs. But he could not bring himself to do it. He was at once too intimate with her and not intimate enough. He was so very much at one with her, in his mind and hers, but bodily they were non-existent to one another, and neither could bear to drag in the corpus delicti. They were so intimate, and utterly out of touch.

Connie guessed, however, that her father had said something, and that something was in Clifford's mind. She knew that he didn't mind whether she were demi-vierge or demi-monde, so long as he didn't absolutely know, and wasn't made to see. What the eye doesn't see and the mind doesn't know, doesn't exist.

Connie and Clifford had now been nearly two years at Wragby, living their vague life of absorption in Clifford and his work. Their interests had never ceased to flow together over his work. They talked and wrestled in the throes of composition, and felt as if something were happening, really happening, really in the void.

And thus far it was a life: in the void. For the rest it was non-existence. Wragby was there, the servants… but spectral, not really existing. Connie went for walks in the park, and in the woods that joined the park, and enjoyed the solitude and the mystery, kicking the brown leaves of autumn, and picking the primroses of spring. But it was all a dream; or rather it was like the simulacrum of reality. The oak-leaves were to her like oak-leaves seen ruffling in a mirror, she herself was a figure somebody had read about, picking primroses that were only shadows or memories, or words. No substance to her or anything… no touch, no contact! Only this life with Clifford, this endless spinning of webs of yarn, of the minutiae of consciousness, these stories Sir Malcolm said there was nothing in, and they wouldn't last. Why should there be anything in them, why should they last? Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Sufficient unto the moment is the appearance of reality.

Clifford had quite a number of friends, acquaintances really, and he invited them to Wragby. He invited all sorts of people, critics and writers, people who would help to praise his books. And they were flattered at being asked to Wragby, and they praised. Connie understood it all perfectly. But why not? This was one of the fleeting patterns in the mirror. What was wrong with it?

She was hostess to these people… mostly men. She was hostess also to Clifford's occasional aristocratic relations. Being a soft, ruddy, country-looking girl, inclined to freckles, with big blue eyes, and curling, brown hair, and a soft voice, and rather strong, female loins she was considered a little old-fashioned and 'womanly'. She was not a 'little pilchard sort of fish', like a boy, with a boy's flat breast and little

Reviews for Lady Chatterley's Lover (Arcadia Classics)

[kemilyh1988 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Misogyny abound. Regardless, it's quite hilarious. The first time I read this all I remembered was sex and chickens. This time around I picked up on much more. The narration by John Lee was perfect.

[theampersand · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've loved modernist fiction for a long time, but I've had a love-hate relationship with D.H. Lawrence for about as long. Lady Chatterley's lover is the best Lawrence I've ever read. Yes, you can still find what I think of as his bad habits there: his tendency to describe everything using opposites, his obsession with vitality which often seems, as someone else put it, "a sick man's dream of health," his obvious disdain for many of his characters and their choices. But all of these tendencies are reined in here: even his tendency toward repetition comes off as lyrical rather than merely trying. I can enthusiastically recommend it to people who don't much like D.H. Lawrence. What's most delightful about "Lady Chatterley" is that, considering a book that's supposedly about an intense, erotic affair between two people, it's surprisingly wide-ranging. One of the things that makes this book work is, oddly enough, is how carefully Lawrence crafts its temporal and physical setting. Beyond Constance and Oliver's relationship, we get a clear-eyed description of the generalized despair that followed the end of the First World War, a pitiless description of the British artistic scene, a careful transcription of the Derby dialect, and a look destructive effects of the coal industry on Lawrence's beloved British countryside that's simultaneously regretful and buzzing with dark energy. His descriptions of both the main characters' erotic adventures and the lush woods that they have them in are truly beautiful, there are passages where everything in the book seems to pulse with sensuality and life. For all his opinions about the state in which he found the world, I can't think of too many writers who were more interested in writing the body than Lawrence was. This novel might owe its notoriety to its four-letter words and its explicitness, but it also communicates the physicality of both sex and mere being exceptionally well. The paralyzed Clifford is sort of given short shrift here -- one imagines that he's got a body, too, though Lawrence depicts him as largely inert. Also, even while he praises the joy of sexual congress, Lawrence seems to have a lot of ideas about exactly how men and women should and shouldn't have sex. In the final analysis, though, seeing as it was produced by a writer who sometimes comes off as bitter and spiteful about the modern world, "Lady Chatterley" seems like a surprisingly optimistic argument for romantic and physical love. This may be especially true of its lovely final pages, where Constance and Oliver plan out a future that emphasizes the rhythms of nature, their love, and their truest selves. A difficult book from a difficult writer, but certainly worth the effort.

[novelrdr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Considered pornographic at publication, mild by today's standards. Best Lawrence novel I have read.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

In vergelijking met de andere werken van Lawrence echt een afknapper, ondanks de taboedoorbreking. Het ligt er te dik op om te shockeren. Wel interessante sociale duiding: een verhouding binnen de eigen klasse is aanvaardbaar, erbuiten niet. Opvallende romantisch accent: afkeer van industrie en teloorgang van de oude wereld.

[chrisbookarama · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Finally done!

[shadowdancer_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

My daughter wanted to read it -- and so I thought I should finally get around to reading it myself first, if only to be able to give her a reasonable heads' up as to the level of sex scene she was getting into.
After the hype, and the banning, etc., I figured I might be reading a Fanny Hill sort of book. As it turns out, I was not. It was an interesting discussion on class, and women's roles etc. spiced up with a few not very titillating sex scenes.

[benuathanasia · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am shocked that I enjoyed this. My father - a non-reader - always held DH Lawrence as his standard for unreadable books. While I certainly love reading more than him, I tend to agree with his assessments to a less passionate degree (writes he says aren't half bad, I love, writers he's dislikes, I enjoy, writers he hates, I dislike, etc.). I really liked this though. It felt so oddly anachronistic - like a modern author *trying* to write a regency-era romance - it created a pleasantly jarring experience. I was so confused the first few scenes - I couldn't fathom when this book took place or was written. I was shocked to find it was in the early days of the Depression.

[jazmsngr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While I liked Lady Chatterley's Lover, it was difficult to keep it in context. The context of Lawrence's novel is 1920's England. The story by today's measure is still good-- it's a little steamy, a little saucy and a little tawdry. Though by 1920's British standards, it is nothing short of scandalous. Therein lies a bump-in-the-road to a full appreciation of the LCL's contribution to literature. Nevertheless, the story is still relevant on certain levels. Sexual expression by women is still something that is viewed with disdain. Differing levels of social acceptance towards female sexuality was one issue Lawrence was railing against-- men with mistresses in proper British society was acceptable, almost expected. But a woman who sought sexual satisfaction from anyone other than her husband was a completely different matter.
The novel is well written and makes the author's point eloquently. But still, I wonder what would have become of the exact same novel had a woman written it in the same time period.

[eillinora · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Still making my mind up about this, might change it to 3 stars later.

[bradsimkulet · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

**WARNING: This review contains a discussion of the c-word, and I plan to use it. Please don't read this if you do not want to see the word spelled out. Thanks.**This is less a review than an homage to my crazy mother (now I have you really intrigued, don't I?)It was 1983, and I was in my first Catholic school. I'd spent my first six years of school in a public school, but my "behavioral issues" coupled with my lack of growth made me a target for bullies, so my parents were advised to move me to another school where no one knew me.So off I went to the home room of a fallen nun, who'd given up her habit for a family. She wasn't much of a teacher. She was an old school Catholic educator who practiced punitive teaching, which included kicks to the shins, yanking of ears, pulling of hair, and screaming from close range.I kept my head down and tried to blend in with my new surroundings, but my Mother made that difficult from the get go. I was a voracious reader, and she passed on the disease to me. From grade two on she had been recommending great books to me. I was reading everything before most everyone else, but my Mom's recommendation of Lady Chatterly's Lover in my first month of Catholic school was probably her most outrageous and unforgettable recommendation. She bought me a copy at the book store in the mall, and that's where I met one of my favourite words of all time -- cunt. Back in 1983, cunt was not a word in your average child's vocabulary. Sure we'd heard it, and maybe even seen it, but it was not something that was regularly used by kids, and its usage was pretty vague to every 13 year old I knew.But there it was in Lady Chatterly's Lover. It was all over the place. So as I read the story and absorbed the way Lawrence used cunt, his usage became my usage. Lawrence used cunt beautifully; it was not a term of denigration; it was not used to belittle; it was not an insult nor something to be ashamed of; cunt was lyrical, romantic, caring, intimate. And I came to believe that cunt was meant to be used in all these ways. That the poetic use of cunt was the accepted use of cunt, the correct use of cunt, and suddenly cunt was part of my vocabulary. I was thirteen.Now I didn't just start running around using cunt at every opportunity. I did what I always did with new words that I came to know and love. I added them to my vocabulary and used them when I thought it was appropriate.And when I whispered it to Tammy, the girl I had a crush on, a few weeks later, thinking that it was the sort of romantic, poetic language that made women fall in love with their men (I can't remember what I said with it, but I know it was something very much like what Mellors would have said to Constance), she turned around with a deep blush, a raised eyebrow and a "That's disgusting" that rang through the class (I can still see the red of autumn leaves that colored her perfectly alabaster skin under a shock of curly black hair, aaaah...Tammy. Apparently she had a better sense of cunt's societal taboos than I did). Mrs. C--- was on her feet and standing parallel to the two of us in a second, demanding to know what was going on.To her credit, Tammy tried to save me -- sort of. She said "Nothing." Then Mrs. C--- turned on me; I was completely mortified (I'd obviously blown it with the first girl I loved in junior high school), and while I was in this shrinking state, Mrs. C--- demanded to know what was happening and what I had said. I tried to avoid repeating what I had said. I admitted I shouldn't have been talking. I admitted that I should have been working. I tried to divert her attention. But she was a scary lady, and I couldn't help myself. I repeated what I had said -- as quietly as I could -- but as soon as Mrs. C--- heard "cunt" I was finished. That was the moment I knew "cunt" was the catalyst for the whole debacle. Now...I'd known before that the word was taboo, but I didn't think it would generate the response it did. I really thought that Tammy would be flattered. And I certainly didn't expect that I would be dragged to the office by an angry ex-nun. Silly me. I got the strap. It was the first time (although there would be another). Three lashes to the palm of the hand.I didn't use "cunt" in public or private for a long time after that, but my punishment couldn't diminish my love for the word. Lawrence made such and impression on my young mind that neither humiliation nor physical pain could overcome my appreciation of cunt's poetic qualities. To me the word is and always will be a beautiful and, yes, gentle thing.Every time that event was recounted at the dinner table over the years, whether it was amongst family, or with my girlfriends or my future wife, my Mom always got this sly little grin on her face and indulged in a mischievous giggle before refusing to take the blame for me getting the strap. After all, "Who was the one who was stupid enough to use the word, Brad? Not me."I love her response as much as I love the word. And in case you were wondering, my Mom never stopped recommending books to me. She was an absolute kook. I miss her. I can't wait to pass on Lady Chatterly's Lover to my kids...but I think it's going to have to be in grade three if it's going to have the same effect it had on me...hmmm...I wonder how that will go over.

[ajbraithwaite_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I found this an interesting piece of social history, more than anything else: the conditions of the miners of the East Midlands and their uneasy relationship with the owners of the mines as the countryside got increasingly taken over by industry. It really was a time when the landed gentry were losing their grip over the government of the country; a time of great social and economic change.The book is famous for being the subject of a trial relating to obscenity in 1960 and I was actually expecting it to be more explicit than it is, as a consequence of that. It uses explicit words, to be sure, but not in a particularly titillating way. The focus is on the complexity of the Chatterly's relationship, Connie's confused feelings for Mellors and Mellors' own uncertainty about his place in the world. The style is very literary and as I read, I imagined the reactions of lots of disappointed people who would have bought the book on the strength of the trial and would probably been rather disappointed in its contents.I found the discussions of Clifford and his male friends rather tedious, in the first half of the book, but enjoyed the second half more. Lawrence did a good job of portraying the depth of the various relationships. I did rather wonder about Mellors' relationship with his daughter: he seemed to move on with little thought of her. But I don't think Lawrence had children of his own, so perhaps this wasn't a big deal for him.Mellors' despair over the miners' striving after cash touched a chord with me. My favourite quotations was: "If you could only tell them that living and spending isn't the same thing! But it's no good. If only they were educated to live instead of earn and spend, they could manage very happily...".

[helenliz_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

 This wasn't quite what I expected. It is certainly difficult to see what made it quite so controversial when first published; the sex is by no means explicit and is dealt with briefly. Maybe the fact the lady of the house had an affair with the gamekeeper worried the solid men who argued against it...



I thought it was a good read, as the characters evolve throughout the book. Connie grows as Clifford withdraws from her and life. The whole thing balances on several axes.

[blake.rosser · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I picked it up because I was curious to see what one of the so-called sexiest books ever could have going on with it. I was more impressed with the actual story than I was with the sex. It had an excellent running commentary about the destruction of tradition and humanity through industrialization.

[mahallett · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

don't quite know what lawrence was trying to do. ok story but not presented in a very interesting way.

[sophiejf-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I remember attempting to read this book when I was about 20, I thought it was the most depressing thing and I abandoned it completely. However I re-read this book recently, and now consider it a masterpiece. What I find so fascinating about this book now is the view that romantic love and sexuality are intrinsically linked; that love is felt within physical embodiment, that feelings are generated from and by the body. The character of Clifford Chatterley appears to be symbolic of a man divorced from his own body on many levels. He represents a de-sexualisation of the male body by the war and disability. But he also represents a mind/body split via intellectual disembodiment. The emotional and sexual nothingness of Clifford Chatterley seems to infect Constance with depression. She then finds self-discovery and expression through her affair with Mellors, and through a connection with nature. I think that the contrast between Constance and Chatterley teases out larger dichotomies and tensions between the personal and social/political spheres. I suppose in the character of Mellors, Lawrence was trying to define a sort of archetypal male. However I’m not sure that Lawrence quite gets that right. I don’t believe in a post-feminist era, that Mellors appears in a good light, nor do I agree with Constance’s acceptance of the very little he offers her in terms of emotional support or responsibility.There’s a lot more that can be said about this book, it’s incredibly rich. It is of course remembered for the controversy it inspired, and by today’s standards, the content of the novel is pretty tame. What I find still so fresh and remarkable is how brave this is in its attempt to understand the sexualisation of romantic love. I think it’s a remarkable attempt by Lawrence to understand a subject so mysterious and yet so embedded and fundamental to the human condition.

[thewasp_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Clifford Chatterley returns from WW1 wheelchair bound, and with his young wife Connie goes to manage Wragby, the family estate, in an industrial area in the english midlands. While initially happily married, Connie's desire for a child gains tacit approval from the sexless Clifford. An unexpected meeting with the estate's game keeper and the ensuing affair awakens Connie to a sexuality she did not know existed.I did not immediately take to the book, but enjoyed it more once the rythm of the story was established It is certainly easy to understand why it created such a stir when originally published

[zhenlee · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I heard, it's a book of fame for its sensuality. But in my opinion, rather, it's a book of escaping the despair of the rotten world. Through the world of sensuality, they saw hope.The book starts with rather dismay or low situation, makes you think, the ending has to be lifted up, 'cause the chances are just higher at the other half. Clifford and Connie both were struggling in their settings, or in the chasm between their idealisms and their realities. Both painfully realized how repulsive or disgusting the reality was, both pursuing their ideal "kingdom". Though Clifford started out actively, Connie passively. She was doubting from beginning (not very beginning though, otherwise she wouldn't marry him) that his effort could get him anywhere. At the end, Clifford sank hopelessly in his own helplessness, which was reflected by his strange relationship with Mrs. Bolton. Connie, though, wakened by the ecstasy of sensual world, actively sought after the new relationship between her and Mellors.In one way, Lawrence definitely expressed his view of pure intellectual - cold, dry, lifeless and hopeless - in the character of Clifford, who was intelligent in many ways but totally disconnected from the sensual world, because of his disability. I don't think he meant that a person with disability would lead a lifeless life. He just used Clifford as an experiment to test out his theory, that pure intellectual can't save a wrecked life. Especially, at later part of the book, it described more of Clifford's vacancy of his soul. Like Connie's father said "there is nothing in it". Later he invested his intellectual power into coal mining, despite the success, but it can't even be used to maintain his class "dignity" (What a blow to learn that Connie preferred Mellors to him!)Connie with her instincts, eventually penetrated his intellectual nothingness. Her attitude toward him changed from a little fear and admiration at the beginning to despise and hate at the end. She had much richer world of consciousness than Clifford's, which situated her at superior position at the end (she understood the world of Clifford but not vice versa). The world of consciousness is the spiritual world in my opinion. Though religion wasn't even touched in the whole book. I wonder what was Lawrence's view regarding spiritual and religion.The consciousness of characters in the book was expressed mostly in form of narratives. The narrator penetrated the characters' consciousness in way of omnipotence. The characters themselves sometimes are not even aware of his/her own limitations. This is probably the details I enjoyed the most. The subtleties of every turn of human thoughts, naturally flow with the characters, each in its own cunning way, and inevitable by their circumstances.Example 1:Clifford - "You and I are married, no matter what happens to us, We have the habit of each other. And habit, to my thinking, is more vital than any occasional excitement. The long, slow, enduring thing ...""Connie sat and listened in a sort of wonder, and a sort of fear...The long slow habit of intimacy, formed through years of suffering and patience..."At intellectual level, Clifford probably believed such thing. But at deeper level, he himself was not sure. This was the product of his brain during the moment of its peak performance, which can't be maintained. Connie's reaction was unpredictable, at least to me, until it was spelled out so naturally by the narrator.Example 2:"He thought how handsome she looked, but also he shrank from her...He sat square and well-groomed in his chair, his hair sleek and blond, and his face fresh, his blue eyes pale, and a little prominent, his expression inscrutable, but well-bred. Hilda thought it sulky and stupid, and he waited. He had an air of aplomb, but Hilda didn't care what he had an air of;..."How beautifully the narrator drew the image of Clifford: confident appearance, though low self-esteem inside; longing to impress Hilda, though really afraid to get closer...There were hundreds of these subtle details, sometimes I do feel I had the exactly the same inner workings. Lawrence definitely studied the psychology of his character carefully, since they were so real, and falling to their places so naturally. It was one of the true treasures of the book.Mellors had a pessimistic view of the world through his own sufferings. Connie had an apparent optimistic view of the new relationship. Conflicts would be inevitable, but they were no longer Lawrence's concern. His job was done: raising their hopes. If that hope is another illusion, or isn't strong enough to uphold life's many tragedies, then that's up to other authors to prove or disprove it.But how did the sensual experience change Connie's perspective of life? I still don't have a convincing answer. The best I can get is: people's warmheartedness is just appearance, when relationship is getting closer, more and more ugliness would sink any naively conceived relation-ship, then how do you know the true noble heart? the warmhearted to the core? I guess, through the most intimate act - sex.

[schmerguls · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I did not approve of the morals of the characters in the book.

[hadriantheblind · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Oh boy. More sex and mildly interesting musings on society. I've read fanfiction with better sex in it. I kept chuckling at the penis nicknaming.

[jmoncton_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Constance Chatterley has entered in a traditional marriage with Clifford Chatterley, a minor nobleman. But her life is turned around when her husband returns from the war paralyzed from the waist down and impotent. Her role in her young marriage shifts to being a caregiver for her demanding husband. She finds comfort from a dreary existence in an affair with the estate’s game keeper. My preconceived ideas about this book is that it is famous and interesting because of the explicit sexual content but there isn’t much more beyond that. Boy, was I wrong. The book is very explicit which caused it to be banned for many years (and continues to be listed on man banned book lists). But although the mechanics of sex is described, it didn’t come across as pornographic. The writing isn’t steamy and doesn’t seem to be written with an erotic intent. I was also surprised by how good the story was. The big taboo for Constance Chatterley isn’t that she is having an affair and cheating on her invalid husband, but that she has chosen someone who belongs to a much lower class.Very interesting story – worth the read!

[lisa.johnson.james · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am thrilled that I finally got a chance to read this book. I have heard many mixed reviews over the years, some appalled at the language the author uses, some at the um, expressiveness & offensiveness of his terminology, & some about how dry some of the book is compared to the more intimate scenes.I found it to be charming, even if some of the vernacular writing of how the Derbyshire accent is written, & I too found myself skimming the dryer parts. I was quite surprised at the terminology used, & the expressiveness of the intimate scenarios between Connie & Mellors. For the time in which it was written, it's quite "racy", although quite tame by today's steamy standards!There's a reason this classic has stood the test of time :)

[glennbell_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a well written book. The characters are believable and the story line is logical. I would be surprised if the events were not based on a real story. The discussions include opinions on society, happiness, pain, the future, and the relations of men and women including sex. I think the frankness is refreshing and is to be commended. I recommend the book but the timid or prudish need not bother.

[capiam1234 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I read this for the 1001 books to read before you die group challenge. The book was known for it's discussions on class systems and social conflict, and not to forget the challenge on censorship. But despite all that I just couldn't find myself liking this one that much.

[knightlight777 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Wanted to see what all the excitement was about, I found out. I had a back and forth experience with this book, wanting to just finish it to wanting to see what would happen next. It was ho hum from on the sexual narrative at first but it turned into one of the racier novels I have read. But then again I don't read a lot of novels. But for its time, 1928, even in the jazz age it had to be simply sensational, and certainly labeled as pornography.Aside from the sexual side the story itself had a few messages to deliver also. Lawrence seemed to want to say a lot about the classes and aspects of socialism. The ending came rather abrupt and made me wanting to know more about how things turned out. But alas, no sequel to ruin those things.

[k8seren · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

So this book I loved at first, then it got rather dry and depressing in the middle, but the end makes up for it.
At first I loved Connie for being a sort of modern, uninhibited, sexually-aware woman. And then she got besotted with Mellors and I was angry at her because she wasn't modern and free at all, and Mellors didn't seem to be anything special as a man. but in the end you do see them as a nation unto themselves, seeing their sad industrial world for what it is and living for love anyway.
Mellors final letter, which ends the book, is enough to merit 4 stars on its own.

I did a lot of underlining in here, because despite my annoyance with the characters, Lawrence says very beautiful and true things through them. I recommend this.

[aaronbaron_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

D.H. Lawrence is such an interesting writer that even his failures are worth reading, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover is a bit of a failure. Today, with virulent pornography always a click away, I expected the famous sexy bits of this book to lose their shock, but I did not expect them to be comic. Yet they were, unless you do not find tropes such as “mound of Venus” rather funny. Still, these howlers came as a relief, because Lady Chatterley’s Lover is starkly humorless. Whether describing the miasma of industrialization or the rapacious drive of the clitoris, D.H. Lawrence is in deadly earnest. He shouts from the pulpit, and righteousness can never afford much laughter. So why read it? First and least, the text is an historical landmark in development of the English novel, both for it’s famous sexual content and the even more famous censorship battles it inspired. But historical landmarks are often bores to read, and Lady Chatterley Lover, for all it’s flaws, still engages. Much of it’s allure stems from the profound and maverick strangeness of the author’s mind. By the time Lady was written, decrying the evils of industrialization was common practice. But Lawrence surpassed all his peers in pure rage. Unlike the well-to-do members of the Bloomsbury group, Lawrence was a coalminer’s son who personally witnessed the mines physically and mentally cripple the community of his childhood. Add to this fact his atavistic love of nature, rarely shared by his modernist colleagues, and imagine him watching factories level the forests and pollute the air. It was a shock to me to discover that a seemingly erotic novel turned out so unconditionally angry. And this anger explains in part why Lady still has an edge; the sex may seem silly and tame, but the molten rage beneath it continues to unnerve. Much to his credit, Lawrence did not merely condemn industrial society, he proposed an alternative. Now, his solution, taken in the extreme manner in which he believed in it, is where the book shows its age. “Organic Fucking” is the best summary I can give his vision of redemption. It is the fierce ancestor of the milk toast “Make Love Not War” ethos of the 1960s. “Mound of Venus” references aside, I believe Lawrence would ultimately reject the willed naiveté of the hippy movement; he was too discerning, too acquainted with struggle and sacrifice, to merely hold up the flower and bliss out. But both Lawrence and the flower children drew on adolescent fantasies in order to overthrow grim realities. Like all utopian visions, it ultimately failed. Lawrence shares this fate with another articulate and outraged enemy of industrialization, John Ruskin. Yet while their respective solutions failed, Lawrence and Ruskin’s fiery salvos against modernity cannot be easily dismissed, nor can their willingness, at great personal sacrifice, to try and build a better world than the one they saw around them. But Lawrence’s fighting spirit does not mark the beginning and end of his appeal. While even in his more successful works his writing is uneven, with clods of purple pose choking the flow of the page, at is best it is nigh perfect: sensuous yet limpid, reaching depths of emotion that seldom surface on the cool waters of English prose. At times he manages to combine dazzling complexity of language with a irresistible primitivism of feeling, like a frightening ancient and barbaric statue wrapped in exquisite lace. Once more, his insight into the relationships of men and women are unsurpassed in all of English literature. No one has written on that ancient subject with such honesty, observation, and intelligence. And this is the real reason that I still enjoy Lawrence, for all of his flaws. As I write this I have been married to a woman for five years, and I hope for many years to come. Lawrence helps me make sense, and ultimately helps me better appreciate, this wonderful, frightening, protean, beloved, despairing, baffling, joyous, mercurial bond that is a cornerstone of my life.

[yooperprof · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sir Clifford Chatterley (partially a self-portrait of author D.H. Lawrence) is a frustrated writer who thinks he knows Everything about Everything, but he is actually an embittered and impotent World War I veteran suffering from PTSD. His wife Connie finds solace in his gamekeeper's hut and in the gamekeeper's bed, discovering The Joy of Sex decades before Alex Comfort coined the term.Here, the prose of Lawrence is occasionally purple, it is occasionally profane, it is occasionally full of nearly incomprehensible dialect. But it's never dull. However, if you laugh whenever you see the words "loins" or "bowels" in connection with human intercourse, you might want to avoid this book!!!

[justmerosalie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really loved this book, although it's been years since I read it. I loved the romance and the setting. Risky for it's time, the subject of sexual incompatibility was addressed and the need for a healthy marital realtionship, something polite society did not "talk about" when if first published. I'm glad it survived being banned in so many places and can be read with better thought and tolerance today. This aside, it's a lovely story and a beautiful read....very romantic.

[ganeshaka · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'm a babe in the world of D.H. Lawrence. I was assigned Lady Chatterley's Lover as a college assignment in Brit Lit 203. I read the Cliff Notes. I got a B-minus in the course. And that was forty years ago.Yes, I was the guy who never showed for morning classes, and closed the student pub. And at times, I was even the night watchman. So it should come as no surprise that when I finally got around to reading the book, last week, it was already the next century . A bit late. But better than never. Maybe even a form of a haute snobisme, my preferring to read dead authors AND be taught by dead professors?But now at least I have an authentic and passionate opinion on the novel. D.H.Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover is punk rock, in the finest sense. Sex pistols indeed. Anarchy in the UK - turn it up!. The book had me, using just three power chords: the conflict between classes, the barriers to sexual honesty, and the profound exploitation of the environment by capitalism.These were issues, for Lawrence, in England after the Great War of 1914. They remain issues world-wide to this day. Lawrence, speaking sometimes through the character of Mellors, and sometimes through Lady Chatterley, is prophetic in his pessimism. The gap between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, has not been addressed by a rise in the overall standard of living in the West. Global consumerism is laying waste to the Arctic, Africa and the Amazon. And, ironically, enormous technical advances in communications media, have only added barriers to honest conversation. Like OMG how much of yourself should you reveal if it might be texted, myspaced, youtubed and there for all, on Google, in perpetuity?It's hard not to love this novel for its underlying courage and outrage. And, its wit. I'm glad I never read it until 2008. In 1968, all my peers were rebelling, each to his or her own banner. Lawrence would have elicited a "So?" from me then. Now, many of my peers drive SUVs, live in McMansions, vote Republican, and kow-tow to evangelicals. Now I understand better, what a rare and brave cri de coeur this novel is.

[kenand66 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The quintessential banned book and more brilliant, warm, tragic and beautiful for being so. A landmark in English literature.