Lady Chatterley's Lover

By D H Lawrence

After her husband is injured in World War I, an English woman begins a torrid love affair with a gamekeeper in this classic novel, now a film on Netflix.

Once banned in several countries, D. H. Lawrence’s lyric and sensual final novel is one of the major works of fiction of the twentieth century. It is filled with scenes of intimate beauty that explore the emotions of a lonely woman trapped in a sterile marriage and her growing love for the robust gamekeeper of her husband’s estate. The most controversial of Lawrence’s books, Lady Chatterley’s Lover joyously affirms the author’s vision of individual regeneration through sexual love. The book’s power, complexity, and psychological intricacy make this a completely original work—a triumph of passion, an erotic celebration of life.

Praise for Lady Chatterley’s Lover and D. H. Lawrence

“Nobody concerned with the novel in our century can afford not to read it.”—Lawrence Durrell, author of the Alexandria Quarte

“The greatest imaginative novelist of our generation.” —E. M. Forster, author of Howards End

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9780795351532

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.

Book preview

Lady Chatterley’s

Lover

A Propos of

Lady Chatterley's Lover

D. H. Lawrence

Lady Chatterley's Lover

Cambridge University Press edition of the text copyright © 1993 the Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli.

Cover copyright © Netflix 2022. Used with permission.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the Publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Electronic edition published 2022 by RosettaBooks

ISBN: 978-0-7953-5153-2

www.RosettaBooks.com

CONTENTS

General editors' preface

Acknowledgements

Chronology

Cue-titles

Introduction

Lady Chatterley's Lover

1926–8 Composition

The three versions

1928–30 Publication, distribution, early reception

1930–72 History after Lawrence's death

The typing of the novel

Editorial procedures

Chapters I–V

Chapters VI–XII

Fragment of chapter XII

Chapters XII–XIX

Conclusions

A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover

Composition

Publication, distribution, reception

Editorial procedures

LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER

A PROPOS OF LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER

Explanatory notes

Dialect glossary

Appendix: Lady Chatterley's Lover and the landscape of the English Midlands

GENERAL EDITORS' PREFACE

D. H. Lawrence is one of the great writers of the twentieth century – yet the texts of his writings, whether published during his lifetime or since, are, for the most part, textually corrupt. The extent of the corruption is remarkable; it can derive from every stage of composition and publication. We know from study of his MSS that Lawrence was a careful writer, though not rigidly consistent in matters of minor convention. We know also that he revised at every possible stage. Yet he rarely if ever compared one stage with the previous one, and overlooked the errors of typists or copyists. He was forced to accept, as most authors are, the often stringent house-styling of his printers, which overrode his punctuation and even his sentence-structure and paragraphing. He sometimes overlooked plausible printing errors. More important, as a professional author living by his pen, he had to accept, with more or less good will, stringent editing by a publisher's reader in his early days, and at all times the results of his publishers' timidity. So the fear of Grundyish disapproval, or actual legal action, led to bowdlerisation or censorship from the very beginning of his career. Threats of libel suits produced other changes. Sometimes a publisher made more changes than he admitted to Lawrence. On a number of occasions in dealing with American and British publishers Lawrence produced texts for both which were not identical. Then there were extraordinary lapses like the occasion when a typist turned over two pages of MS at once, and the result happened to make sense. This whole story can be reconstructed from the introductions to the volumes in this edition; cumulatively they will form a history of Lawrence's writing career.

The Cambridge edition aims to provide texts which are as close as can now be determined to those he would have wished to see printed. They have been established by a rigorous collation of extant manuscripts and typescripts, proofs and early printed versions; they restore the words, sentences, even whole pages omitted or falsified by editors or compositors; they are freed from printing-house conventions which were imposed on Lawrence's style; and interference on the part of frightened publishers has been eliminated. Far from doing violence to the texts Lawrence would have wished to see published, editorial intervention is essential to recover them. Though we have to accept that some cannot now be recovered in their entirety because early states have not survived, we must be glad that so much evidence remains. Paradoxical as it may seem, the outcome of this recension will be texts which differ, often radically and certainly frequently, from those seen by the author himself.

Editors have adopted the principle that the most authoritative form of the text is to be followed, even if this leads sometimes to a 'spoken' or a 'manuscript' rather than a 'printed' style. We have not wanted to strip off one house-styling in order to impose another. Editorial discretion has been allowed in order to regularise Lawrence's sometimes wayward spelling and punctuation in accordance with his most frequent practice in a particular text. A detailed record of these and other decisions on textual matters, together with the evidence on which they are based, will be found in the textual apparatus or an occasional explanatory note. These give significant deleted readings in manuscripts, typescripts and proofs; and printed variants in forms of the text published in Lawrence's lifetime. We do not record posthumous corruptions, except where first publication was posthumous.

In each volume, the editor's introduction relates the contents to Lawrence's life and to his other writings; it gives the history of composition of the text in some detail, for its intrinsic interest, and because this history is essential to the statement of editorial principles followed. It provides an account of publication and reception which will be found to contain a good deal of hitherto unknown information. Where appropriate, appendixes make available extended draft manuscript readings of significance, or important material, sometimes unpublished, associated with a particular work.

Though Lawrence is a twentieth-century writer and in many respects remains our contemporary, the idiom of his day is not invariably intelligible now, especially to the many readers who are not native speakers of British English. His use of dialect is another difficulty, and further barriers to full understanding are created by now obscure literary, historical, political or other references and allusions. On these occasions explanatory notes or a dialect glossary is supplied by the editor; it is assumed that the reader has access to a good general dictionary and that the editor need not gloss words or expressions that may be found in it. Where Lawrence's letters are quoted in editorial matter, the reader should assume that his manuscript is alone the source of eccentricities of phrase or spelling. An edition of the letters is still in course of publication: for this reason only the date and recipient of a letter will be given if it has not so far been printed in the Cambridge edition.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

John Worthen contributed very substantially to the accuracy and completion of this edition. In its late stages he commented incisively on the introduction and on the textual apparatus, completed some of the notes and drafted the appendix and the dialect glossary. I thank him for his superb assistance and for his unfailing encouragement.

Lindeth Vasey spent many valuable hours on the edition – checking collations, examining documents, helping both to formulate editorial policy and to shape the introduction and efficiently keeping the whole enterprise on course.

Michael Black and James T. Boulton provided penetrating comments at all stages of the project, from its inception in 1975 to its completion in 1989; raised critical questions at each stage; and shared the fruits of their long professional experience.

In the preliminary stages Carl Baron offered useful analyses of my proposals; Warren Roberts answered many queries about the manuscripts of Lady Chatterley's Lover, and Joseph Caruso meticulously assisted with textual collations and notes.

I wish to thank the following libraries and their staffs for making available materials in their care: the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, especially Ellen Dunlap, Cathy Henderson, Ken Craven and Pat Fox; Special Collections, the University of California at Los Angeles, especially James Davis; the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque; the University of Illinois; Northwestern University; and the University of Nottingham.

I also wish to thank the following individuals for their contributions: Antony Atkins, Derek Britton, Thomas B. Brumback, Hilbert H. Campbell, R. P. Carr, John Carswell, L. D. Clark, James C. Cowan, George Crofts, Keith Cushman, Simonetta de Filippis, Ornella de Zordo, Eve Doolan, Arthur M. Eastman, David Farmer, Kathy Fuller, Jay A. Gertzman, Charles Haney, Enid Hopkin Hilton, Dennis Jackson, Selwyn Jepsom, Dorothy Johnston, Craig Munro, Gerald Pollinger, Lawrence Clark Powell, Bette Rae, Charles Rossman, Cornelia Rumpf-Worthen, Paul Sorrentino, Fay and Arvilla Squires, Kelly and Cameron Squires, Lynn K. Talbot, William B. Todd, Jeremy Treglown, Frank and Mary Vass, Betsy Webb, Rosalind Wells and Leota Williams.

A grant from the Division of Research Materials of the National Endowment for the Humanities made possible a year's leave, for which I am most grateful.

M.S.

CHRONOLOGY

CUE-TITLES

A. Manuscript locations

B. Printed works

(The place of publication, here and throughout, is London unless otherwise stated.)

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

Lady Chatterley's Lover

Lady Chatterley's Lover, Lawrence's last novel, provides the final treatment of themes and motifs which had appeared in his work from the earliest period onwards. In his first novel The White Peacock, in the early short stories 'The Shades of Spring', 'Second-Best' and 'Daughters of the Vicar', and in The Lost Girl, Lawrence had introduced and reworked the theme of the well-bred girl, the lady or the woman of courage and character who loves – across a class barrier or a barrier of strangeness – a farmer, a working man or a foreigner, because she senses in him some quality that she lacks. In The White Peacock and 'The Shades of Spring', a gamekeeper is first a strong voice and then the object of love, preferred to an intellectual. In Sons and Lovers, 'Daughters of the Vicar', 'Odour of Chrysanthemums', to name only some important early works, Lawrence had recreated the mining countryside and the mining communities of his own childhood. In his early maturity, the period of The Rainbow and Women in Love, The Lost Girl, the first part of Mr Noon and Aaron's Rod, he returned to the same scenery, the same life, as the locus of a sharply felt tension. The industrial life he had known so intimately was not just 'background'; it was a set of determining forces which could undermine spontaneous life and create a mechanical social existence. Now, towards the end of his life, Lawrence turned once more to this set of preoccupations. In 1926, having travelled widely since the early twenties, he finally settled for some time at the Villa Mirenda, a few kilometres beyond the outer suburbs of Florence, and in October began his last – and most notorious – novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover. He spent the next three years writing its three versions, then publishing and distributing the final version.

1926–8 Composition

Tired, ill and recovering from the depression caused by his last visit to the English Midlands where he had spent his childhood and youth, Lawrence gladly returned on 4 October 1926 to Italy, where he and his wife Frieda savoured the last of vendemmia, the grape harvest going on around the Mirenda. Lawrence felt disinclined to work, telling his sister-in-law Else Jaffe on the 18th that he felt he would 'never write another novel',¹ but the journey to England and his boyhood haunts, as well as the vigour of the autumn harvest, roused him and stirred his creative flow. As the days cooled, suddenly, about 22 October, Lawrence began to write, steadily filling the two ruled manuscript notebooks that hold the first version of the novel.² By the 26th he had reached page 41, for at the top of that page he wrote, 'Smudges made by / John, the dog, near the / stream behind San Polo Mosciano! / 26 Oct 1926.' Analysis of his handwriting shows four earlier breaks – on pages 11, 21, 30 and 40 – so he probably started writing four days before the 26th, averaging 2,273 words per day. On the 28th he wrote to his niece Margaret King: 'the day has been perfectly radiant . . . I sat in the woods all morning, doing a bit of writing' (v. 564). Shrinking from sustained work, he at first thought of his narrative as 'shortish',³ but he appears to have written quickly, perhaps completing 150 pages in two weeks. On 15 November he told Martin Secker, his English publisher, that the new novel, set in the Derbyshire coal-mining districts, was 'already rather improper'.⁴ During the quiet November days Lawrence laboured, sometimes 'wish[ing] things were a little more convivial', as he confided to his old friend from New Mexico, Mabel Dodge Luhan, on the 23rd (v. 580). He soon finished the first version, having the novel's end already in sight by 25 November. Since the manuscript of version 1 (originally of 413 pages) reveals twenty-six 'certain' breaks and ten 'possible' breaks,⁵ each certain break and a few possible breaks probably representing a new day's work, then Lawrence appears to have averaged fourteen pages, or 3,200 words, per day.⁶ If he wrote six days a week, he would have finished the first version around the 25th, just before he began painting Boccaccio Story on the 27th.

All that is known about Lawrence's working practice supports the generalisation that he usually avoided detailed structural revision, and preferred rewriting, sometimes producing draft after draft until he was satisfied. From the beginning he had done so; and in 1920 he rewrote The Lost Girl, in 1921 'The Fox' and in 1924–5 The Plumed Serpent, in what he called his 'usual way' of composing.⁷ Although Lawrence's letters rarely comment on his new novel's early drafts, he apparently began the second version about 1 December. The interlinear revisions of version 1 are inserted in the same black ink that appears on the opening pages of version 2, suggesting the possibility of virtually continuous composition. If version I had flowed rapidly from his pen, version 2, inscribed in two ruled manuscript books containing together 580 pages, apparently demanded more intense imaginative concentration and greater rhetorical calculation. The manuscript shows sixty-six 'certain' breaks.⁸ On 14 December Lawrence told S. S. Koteliansky, one of his oldest friends, that he was 'patiently doing a novel' (v. 601). Five days later he wrote to Dorothy Brett, his loyal admirer who had remained in New Mexico: 'I sat out in the wood this morning, working at my novel – which comes out of me slowly, and is good, I think, but a little too deep in bits – sort of bottomless pools' (v. 605). As a diversion from concentrated work, Lawrence turned again to painting large, startling canvases. On 9 January 1927 he was still 'slowly pegging at a novel' (v. 620), he wrote to Nancy Pearn, who negotiated serial rights at Curtis Brown's in London, and on the 20th he told Koteliansky that, although he felt depleted, he continued to write 'in sudden intense whacks' (v. 628). By 6 February the novel was 'three parts done', he announced to his American friends Earl and Achsah Brewster, and 'so absolutely improper, . . . and so really good', he added with new enthusiasm, 'that I don't know what's going to happen to it' (v. 638). Then on the 25th he told Nancy Pearn: 'I've done all I'm going to do of my novel for the time being' (v. 647). It seems fairly certain that Lawrence thus announced the completion of version 2 in less than three months. He may have been dissatisfied with it, for a month later, on 22 March, he told her he 'must go over it again' (vi. 21).

But first he wanted a change of scene. Brewster having agreed to be his walking companion, Lawrence left the Mirenda on 28 March 1927 to spend a week or so exploring the Etruscan tombs and artifacts, in preparation for Sketches of Etruscan Places – and to decide the fate of his novel, which he was loath even to have typed. By 27 May he had resolved, he told Secker, not to publish Lady Chatterley's Lover 'this year' (vi. 68). The summer drowse soon fell over him, and he ceased to bother about his work. After a terrifying haemorrhage in July – and weeks of convalescence in Germany – Lawrence grew depressed: 'I'm not going to do much work of any sort this winter – ' he declared to his sister Emily on 17 October; 'that's a vow I make–' (vi. 192). And to Koteliansky he wrote on 31 October: 'I feel I don't want to work – don't want to do a thing – all the life gone out of me. Yet how can I sit in this empty place and . . . do nothing!' (vi. 204).

However, in a brief surge of vitality, Lawrence finally determined to rewrite the novel once more – and this time to publish it. For one thing, he needed money. But about this time, too, he recognised that if his publishers, Martin Secker in England and Alfred Knopf in the USA, shrank from the novel's 'improper' sexual detail, he would have to publish the book himself. The idea of private publication had occurred to him a decade earlier, when he had tried to interest Cyril Beaumont in publishing Women in Love and in printing 'little order-forms, saying the work was in hand' (iii. 220). Moreover, on 17 November 1927, when Lawrence went in to Florence, he met the author Norman Douglas and probably his bookseller friend Giuseppe ('Pino') Orioli, which may explain his remark to Curtis Brown on the 18th: 'friends in Florence urge me to print it privately, here in Florence, as Norman Douglas does his books . . . Production is cheap, and myself and a friend [Orioli] could easily do all the work ourselves. And I should make – with the gods – a few hundred pounds . . . a windfall for me' (vi. 222). That he lacked money is certain: 'I haven't got any', he had confided to Aldous and Maria Huxley on 30 October (vi. 202); and he had told Brewster on 8 November that money from his writing 'comes in slowly, much more slowly than anybody would imagine' (vi. 209). 'It is not cheap, being ill and doing cures', he reminded Curtis Brown on 18 November (vi. 222). By publishing his novel privately, he hoped to preserve both his artistic autonomy and his financial independence. He may also have realised that his failing health would leave him unable to write.

Ready at last to rewrite – the weather having cooled, a plan of publication having emerged – Lawrence probably began the third version around 26 November 1927, soon after a chance encounter with the immensely rich novelist Michael Arlen in Florence on the 17th;⁹ Arlen also visited him two days later. The meetings prompted Lawrence to transform Arlen into the playwright Michaelis, a character who appears early in the third version of Lady Chatterley. On the 16th he had written to his sister Emily that his health had improved temporarily: ' I . . . feel like getting a grip on life again' (vi. 215). And he wrote no letters from 23 to 30 November. The date 3 December 1927 appears on the fly-leaf of the manuscript notebook into which the first fifty-seven leaves of the final version were later set in;¹⁰ yet the ink on the fly-leaf, while not matching the ink on the first leaf of the manuscript, does match the ink on the first page (114) of the original notebook. Lawrence probably wrote the date 3 December when he continued the novel in the notebook;¹¹ and on 8 December he told Koteliansky in the first surviving reference to version 3, 'My novel I'm writing all over again' (vi. 233). Once he started, he wrote with extraordinary speed, almost without correction, filling two ruled notebooks having together 724 pages. But he was often ill, too. Norman Douglas remembers how bad he looked at the time – 'like a ghost'.¹² Although sometimes remaining 'in bed, and feeling limp' (vi. 236), he must have worked steadily throughout December, and on the 18th told his German friend Max Mohr: 'I have been very busy writing out my new novel, for the third time. I have done half of it now. It is so shocking, the most improper novel in the world! . . . As a matter of fact, it is a very pure and tender novel' (vi. 238).

On the same day he wrote to the Brewsters' daughter Harwood that he had spent 'yesterday and today doing a picture which I have just burnt' (vi. 240). By 23 December the novel was still 'half done' (vi. 247), and he and Frieda were busy buying gifts for the neighbouring peasants, decorating the Christmas tree and visiting friends. But by 6 January 1928 Lawrence had completed, he told Brett, 'all but the last chapter' (vi. 255); two days later he had finished the novel (vi. 260).

But even before Lawrence had completed the book, its troubles began. On 20 December 1927 he had approached Nellie Morrison, a fellow writer in Florence whom he had first met in 1921, asking her to 'consider typing' his novel; he had warned her that it might seem 'improper', insisted on paying 'regular rates' and pleaded, 'I should die if I had to do it myself now' (vi. 245). She had agreed but, shocked, felt by 8 January she could not continue past the fifth chapter (vi. 259). So Lawrence asked the novelist Catherine Carswell, an early admirer and a loyal ally in London, to help. She agreed, engaging several friends to assist her, while Maria Huxley typed 'the worst bits of the novel' (vi. 273), the last seven chapters, in Les Diablerets, Switzerland. (The 'Typing of the Novel' below analyses the typescript and its many difficulties.)

In Les Diablerets, Lawrence – with Frieda – joined the Huxleys for a holiday in the Alps, where Lawrence in late January and February 1928 spent his mornings correcting both Maria Huxley's typescript and, as batches arrived, the typescript from London. He also expurgated the two duplicate copies for publication by Secker and Knopf, leaving the unexpurgated typescript to serve as setting-copy for his private edition in Florence. 'I am determined to do it', he wrote to Orioli on 6 February about what he called 'our Florence edition': 'I hope you are still willing to help me' (vi. 289).

The three versions

By writing three complete and distinct drafts, Lawrence created for himself rich opportunities for reshaping scenes, adjusting narrative proportions, reconceiving characters and heightening central themes. A brief comparison of the versions shows their extraordinary reworking.¹³

To facilitate analysis, each version can be considered as having three major sections, which might be subtitled 'negation', 'regeneration', 'resolution and escape' and which correspond to chapters I–IX, X–XVI, XVII–XIX in version 3. In all three versions, the introductory section, 'negation', takes Connie Chatterley to the point where she finds refuge in the gamekeeper's hut. The long middle section, 'regeneration', begins in all versions when the keeper, after giving her a key to his hut, becomes her lover. The final section, 'resolution and escape', varies more between versions, but begins when she leaves Wragby for a holiday in London and then in France.

Lawrence greatly expanded the introductory section with each writing, from 51 to 160 to 277 manuscript pages – more patiently drawing together Connie and the keeper; dramatising the oppressive milieu that imprisons her; and adding new characters, notably Michaelis and Tommy Dukes, to make Connie's relationship with Mellors seem more inevitable. Connie's father, for example, added to version 2, advises his ailing daughter to meet people, and Clifford to help her. Although Lawrence condenses this material in version 3, he provides his own response to her father's advice by introducing Michaelis, thereby offering Connie a false sensual connection as a contrast to her fulfilment later in the novel. At the same time, by showing Clifford and his Cambridge friends intellectualising sex and by exposing Michaelis's emotional selfishness, Lawrence uses the theme of sexual exploitation to control his additions.

Many early scenes – Connie escaping to the wood and meeting the keeper and his daughter; Connie taking a message to the keeper; Connie examining her body in the mirror; Lady Eva advising Connie – follow Lawrence's usual pattern: origination in version 1, expansion in version 2, then condensation and expansion to create version 3. But within this pattern Lawrence introduces a slant that alters the novel's tone and texture. In the scene where Connie escapes to the wood (chap. VI), for instance, Lawrence adds to version 3 a seventeen-paragraph segment in which Connie meditates on her entrapment; the newly cynical tone deepens Connie's plight but also implies the narrator's own forceful stance. In the scene where Connie takes a message to the keeper (chap. VII), Lawrence gradually draws more attention to the gamekeeper (named 'Parkin' in versions 1 and 2, 'Mellors' in version 3) and then sharpens the additions to version 3: 'Suddenly she hated [the mental life] with a rushing fury, the swindle!' (71:4). Connie matures with each version, so that her realisations in version 3, reflecting her greater despair, naturally focus more criticism on her world.

Just as Lawrence unifies the early scenes in order to explore negation and its disintegrating effect on Connie's sensibility, so he makes a counterforce of tenderness and salvation inevitable. In version 3 he uses nature to hint at Connie's readiness for sensual regeneration when a young pine sways against her, 'rising up' (86:26). The phallic hunt is still only implicit when she stumbles into the keeper's secret clearing, itself a 'sanctuary' from Wragby Hall nearby (chap. VIII). Although the first section is complete, Lawrence chose to pause before dramatising Connie's regeneration, and so added, in versions 2 and 3, the narrator's exposé of misused power (chap. IX), creating a cultural nadir to parallel Connie's personal nadir when, after Michaelis, her 'whole sexual feeling . . . collapsed' (54:37–8). The novel here reaches its point of greatest moral and spiritual depression.

The regenerative section, which opens just before Connie and the keeper first make love and closes with their last mating in the wood, is the novel's longest and most stable section, comprising only a third of version 1 but about half of the later versions. Whereas the introductory section was steadily expanded from version to version, the regenerative section developed less consistently. Some scenes were eliminated or condensed; others remained; still others were enlarged or were altogether new. As Lawrence rewrote version 1 he organised his material so as to advance the relationship between Connie and the keeper in stages. The early stage leads to Connie's first 'natural' orgasm; the middle stage defines her affair against Clifford's sterility, Tevershall's ugliness and Mrs Bolton's memories, then culminates at the keeper's hut in rapturous sexual fulfilment for Connie; and the final stage advances the lovers beyond daytime love – to a night of intercourse, and finally to a nighttime episode of anal intercourse that makes Connie 'a different woman' (246:38–9). When the lovers express their full sexual selves, Lawrence brings the regenerative sequence to completion.

In expanding and condensing the scenes of this section, Lawrence typically progresses from statement (version 1) to fuller development (version 2) to a slanted reshaping (version 3). The powerful scene in chapter XIII where Connie and Clifford (he in his motorised chair) go to the wood illustrates the process. It fuses the themes of nature, the machine, verbal manipulation and sensual awareness as it records the failure of the chair and the frustration of Connie and the keeper. Version 1 develops the scene mildly, Clifford educating Connie, their philosophical disagreements marked by civility. In version 2 Connie challenges Clifford with her questions; he responds with irritation; their mask of propriety slips; and whereas in version 1 Connie simply walks behind Clifford's broken machine, in version 2 she helps the keeper push the heavy chair, touching his hand. Version 3, newly hostile in tone, reveals Clifford's vehemence, Connie's obstinacy and the narrator's antagonism. Lawrence intensifies the final version so as to alienate the reader from Clifford and to increase sympathy for Connie and Mellors.

The final section, 'resolution and escape', puts the earlier sections into perspective, drawing away from their intense immediacy. In all versions Lawrence divides the final section into two: Connie's departure from Wragby for a holiday, an episode which remains unchanged, and her return to England, which changes greatly. Once Connie has left Wragby she can reassess her commitment to the keeper, while their liaison, which becomes a Tevershall scandal, means that the lovers can no longer live on Clifford's estate. In detailing the scandal Lawrence gradually draws back from placing the keeper in a lower class, so that instead of physical violence, Lawrence adds to version 3 details that implicate Connie in the scandal and require her departure from Wragby. In the early versions Lawrence leads Connie only to the borders of a break with Clifford, but in the final version her strengthened commitment to the keeper justifies both her plea for a divorce and their eventual hope of living on a small farm. Once Lawrence imagines Mellors outside class boundaries, the novel's central struggle is no longer between Connie and the keeper but between their commitment to each other and the external forces that conflict with it. The class struggle in versions 1 and 2 yields to a divorce struggle in version 3-

The novel's final scenes are wholly transformed. The first version is episodic and uncertain; the second is truncated and anguished; the third integrates both the motifs of version 1 – such as the need for human contact – and the exchange of letters in version 2. In writing version 3, for example, Lawrence takes the scene in 1 where Connie tells Clifford about her pregnancy and vigorously reworks it so that, in version 3, she confronts Clifford with the news that she loves not Duncan Forbes, her alibi, but Mellors. By closing the final version with an eloquent letter from Mellors to Connie, Lawrence shapes both the opening and the closing of the novel into long, distancing perspectives. The closing letter, tentative yet hopeful, offers to resolve the novel's tensions.

Probably in proof, Lawrence continued to shape the narrative, making two major alterations. At the end of chapter XII Lawrence rewrote part of the description of Connie and Mellors's last lovemaking at the gamekeeper's hut, so that Connie now becomes 'deeper and deeper disclosed' until she is reborn 'a woman' (174:13, 20). In chapter XV Lawrence cancelled much of Mellors's visionary lecture to Connie about the workers' need to strive 'for summat else' (219:15), and eliminated such ideas as shared ownership of the mines and communal dancing and singing.

1928–30 Publication, distribution, early reception

Early in March 1928 Lawrence, roused by the challenge of getting Lady Chatterley's Lover into print, returned from Switzerland to Florence to begin the task of publishing the novel himself in a limited edition of 1,000 copies. Having revised and expurgated the two duplicate copies for Secker and Knopf, he had kept the revised but unexpurgated copy for his private Florence edition. On 9 March came the great moment: Lawrence and Orioli carried the unexpurgated typescript to an old-fashioned printer's shop, the Tipografia Giuntina, where the workmen, speaking only Italian, still set type by hand (vi. 314). The Giuntina also printed leaflets announcing the novel's title ('LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER /OR /JOHN THOMAS and LADY JANE'), its price (£2 for England, $10 for America) and its proposed publication date (15 May 1928). For less than £1 they also printed 1,500 order-forms, which Lawrence on 13 March began sending to his friends, stressing the novel's 'phallic reality'.¹⁴ But when Secker, who had received the typescript sent to Pollinger for him on 5 March (vi. 308), announced that he could not publish even an expurgated edition,¹⁵ Lawrence angrily realised that his own Florence edition, certain to be considered indecent by the authorities, would have to go into the world without legal protection of its copyright; he would be vulnerable to pirates.

On 1 April, Orioli brought the first of the proofs to the Villa Mirenda, and by the next day Lawrence had corrected forty-one pages; he reported that they were thick with error. The printer set 'dind't, did'nt, dnid't, dind't, din'dt, didn't like a Bach fugue', Lawrence told Huxley (vi. 353), and fifteen years later Frieda remembered the 'thousands and thousands of mistakes' that plagued the text.¹⁶

On 16 April Lawrence wrote to Orioli that he had 'done the proofs [of the first half] once – now am going over them again' and had done 'rather more than half' by the 24th (vi. 369, 377). Then came a troublesome delay. The specially made paper which Lawrence had chosen failed to arrive, and since the printer had only enough type to set half of the book at once, he could not break up the type and set the second half until the first half was printed. Lawrence became irritated: 'I can't get on with my novel and send it out', he complained to his former patroness Lady Ottoline Morrell on 8 May (vi. 394). When the special paper at last arrived in mid-May, the Giuntina printed one thousand copies of the first half, then two hundred more copies on ordinary paper. The printer 'really won't be long', Lawrence reported to Koteliansky on 16 May (vi. 401). By the 24th Lawrence had received 'the last of the proofs' of the second half (vi. 407), correcting some proofs twice; the printer, though inaccurate, was quick. Having received revised proofs by 31 May, Lawrence finished by 4 June (vi. 415, 418). By the 7th he had signed and numbered the thousand sheets for the limited edition (vi. 420), then departed with Frieda and Earl and Achsah Brewster for Switzerland. On the 25th he wrote to Brett that 'The first 200 copies of Lady C. are to be ready to be sent off today – ' (vi. 436). On the 28th his copy arrived, and Lawrence was delighted: 'I do really think it is a handsome and dignified volume – a fine shape and proportion', he wrote to Orioli (vi. 440).

Since 13 March, Lawrence and Orioli had been sending out announcements and order-forms to likely purchasers in Britain and the USA, collecting returned order-forms and cheques and sending receipts. Lawrence had also been coping with customers annoyed by the book's delay – the original announcement had promised 'Ready May 15th 1928'. By late May, however, he and Orioli had 'at least 450 orders from England . . . but not many from America' (vi. 408). Now, in Switzerland at the end of June, Lawrence confronted the problems of distributing copies, collecting money from bookshops (which, unlike individuals, did not pay in advance) and gathering new orders, all without awakening potential censors. The completed order-forms had been returned to Lawrence c/o Orioli's bookshop in Florence, but Orioli kept them as records of the person and address to whom he should send the book; he sent Lawrence the cheques, money orders and promises to pay. From the start, Lawrence had managed the financial side of the business, paying the printer, paper-supplier and binder, and at intervals passing on to Orioli his promised 10%. Lawrence kept a Memorandum Book of his accounts, with lists of the names (and banks) of those who had paid and those who had not, and the number of copies either ordered or paid for.¹⁷ The actual paying-in of cheques into Lawrence's Florentine bank account was usually done by Orioli; a stream of letters, names, cheques and paying-in slips ('bordereaux' Lawrence called them, e.g. vi. 420) flowed between them.

While Lawrence was at the Villa Mirenda during April and May, he had played an active part in the project; but having left in June, he had to work with Orioli entirely by correspondence: first from Switzerland, then from Baden-Baden and in the autumn from southern France. As copies came from the binder – about twenty a day – Orioli mailed them registered book post, first to the USA (from which many orders had been received in June) and then to Britain. Orioli sent, for example, two copies per parcel in early July to the London booksellers William Jackson (who had ordered seventy-two copies) and to the American library and literary agents Stevens & Brown, in London; individuals also began receiving their copies.

Before long, however, booksellers began to refuse their copies on the grounds that their orders had been 'provisional' or that 'it was a book which we could not handle in any way';¹⁸ and Lawrence was forced to ask London friends to help. Enid Hilton, the daughter of his old Eastwood friends Willie and Sallie Hopkin, collected the seventy-two copies from Jacksons and hid them in her guest room; Koteliansky (in spite of his dislike for the book) retrieved thirty-six copies from Stevens & Brown as well as six copies from Foyles. Koteliansky forwarded his copies to Richard Aldington who, living in the country, was less at risk of a police raid than Lawrence's London friends. Aldington also took over thirty-two copies from Enid Hilton; the others she managed to post or to deliver 'in the evening or at weekends',¹⁹ working like Aldington from lists of English purchasers. She also received help from Laurence Pollinger of Curtis Brown Ltd, Lawrence's London agent. 'You are a jewel distributing those books so well', Lawrence told her on 17 August 1928 (vi. 511).

Whereas the copies destined for England were getting through, with orders either filled directly or by Enid Hilton and Aldington, the USA Customs authorities were quick to confiscate many of those Orioli sent. To the Philadelphia area, for example, he had sent three copies on 7 July, three on the 10th, seven on the 25th and eleven on the 28th.²⁰ Friends cabled, however, that he should wait before sending more. 'But some copies have got in', Lawrence wrote to Koteliansky on 30 August: 'we know of about 14. But Orioli sent 140 or so' (vi. 530). Mabel Luhan had, for example, got her copy by late July (vi. 498), and the New York bookseller Lawrence Gomme (who had advised Lawrence to mail the books in individual parcels) received at least some of the ten copies he had ordered. But many copies were stopped and confiscated.²¹ By the end of August Lawrence believed that it was ''useless to mail copies to America' (vi. 525). He briefly contemplated the idea of authorising an edition photographically reproduced in the USA; then dropped the idea on the advice of the New York branch of Curtis Brown. Still, copies sold fast in Europe, and occasional copies (mailed with different wrappers and title-pages, vi. 525, 561) got through to America; though that offered small comfort to those American purchasers who had paid in advance for their copies but never received them. 'I think we shall fairly easily sell out the whole edition', Lawrence wrote to his bibliographer Edward McDonald on 6 September (vi. 549). Only two months after its publication, the novel had earned Lawrence nearly £700 ($3,500) after the payment of all expenses. With only two hundred copies of the edition of one thousand still unsold, Lawrence and Orioli (operating through the bookshop Davis & Orioli) more than doubled their price in mid-September to 4 guineas or $21.

Responses to the novel were beginning to appear. Although Koteliansky thought it 'a pity I ever published such a book' (vi. 469), friends such as Arabella Yorke, Aldington, David Garnett and Alfred Stieglitz all sent letters of praise. On 1 September Herbert J. Seligmann published a laudatory review in the New York Sun's first edition, calling the book 'daring beyond all description', its achievement 'magnificent beyond praise'.²² The editors expunged the review from later editions. John Rayner reviewed the novel in the English magazine T. P. 's Weekly, for the week ending 29 September; he admired its prose, defended its realism and found it 'a fine novel' (p. 683). Lawrence wrote to Enid Hilton about the review: 'Imagine T. P. 's coming out so comparatively bravely!' (vi. 576). As summer ended, Lawrence – despite his failing health – went to the island of Port-Cros on the French Riviera, to stay with friends. About 30 October a bundle of violent press clippings arrived from England, assailing Lady Chatterley. The Sunday Chronicle (14 Oct. 1928) called the novel 'one of the most filthy and abominable ever written' (p. 1). More outraged, John Bull (20 Oct. 1928) called it an 'evil outpouring': even the 'sewers of French pornography' could not match its 'beastliness' (p. 11); on 19 January 1929 the same journal, roused to a frenzy by the novel's 'indescribable depravity', would exhort the British customs to impound 'such trash' (p. 9). Lawrence responded with a symbolic burning of his attackers: as his friends, amused, read him each review, he piled more and more branches on the fire. 'Nobody likes being called a cesspool', he exclaimed.²³ Not long after, he experienced two days of heavy haemorrhaging.

A vicious press and ill health were not his only problems. He soon heard that pirated copies of Lady Chatterley's Lover had surfaced in Philadelphia and London. Fear that they might endanger the sale of the 200 copies on ordinary paper quickly gave way to anger that the pirated editions – which were very expensive – made the author not a penny: Lawrence felt 'done in the eye'.²⁴ 'We must sell the two hundred at a guinea, to undersell them', he wrote to Orioli on 5 December. 'If only, if only we had 2000 of the cheap edition . . . to cut out the pirates!' he lamented on 10 December. Needing a new strategy, he determined to issue an inexpensive edition of the novel in Paris – 'a good centre owing to absence of censor-nonsense and presence of large numbers of English and Americans', his friend Aldous Huxley had advised him. Huxley also made enquiries for him about the necessary photographic process.²⁵ But for some time Lawrence tried without success to find someone to handle the cheap edition – Sylvia Beach (whose bookshop had produced and now sold Joyce's Ulysses), the Pegasus Press, Nancy Cunard, the Librairie du Palais Royal. His frustration, and his anger with the pirates, were matched only by his rage at the news that copies of the second impression of 200 – as well as the manuscript of his poems Pansies – had not arrived in England. On 19 January 1929 Pollinger wrote that Scotland Yard officials had, the previous day, seized the six copies of the novel addressed to him from Italy.²⁶ Lawrence was furious and insulted: 'the brutes are putting their ridiculous foot down', he remarked to Enid Hilton on the 21st.

Desperate for a publisher, Lawrence travelled to Paris early in March 1929, and persuaded Edward Titus to undertake a photographic reprint bound in paper covers, to sell for only sixty francs, about 12/- or one-fifth of what the pirates charged. Lawrence supplied a spirited introduction, called 'My Skirmish with Jolly Roger', which became the first part of A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover (see below); and early in May Titus began printing. Within months he had sold 3,000 copies, and began to reprint. By 31 December 1929 he had paid Lawrence 41,352 francs: roughly what Lawrence had earned from the whole Florence edition.

About this time appeared three important reviews of the novel. Writing in the January 1929 Dial, Raymond Mortimer argued that, despite splendid passages, 'the book is a hymn of hate against the intellect' (p. 138). John Middleton Murry, once Lawrence's closest male friend, reviewed the novel in the Adelphi (June 1929), calling it 'a cleansing book', one that offered 'the courage of a new awareness' (pp. 368–9). In the New Republic (3 July 1929), which Brett mailed to Lawrence, Edmund Wilson found the book one of Lawrence's 'most vigorous and brilliant', a parable of modern England. Although Wilson criticised the narrator's jeering tone, he concluded that 'Lawrence has written the best descriptions of sexual experience which have yet been done in English' (p. 184).

A year later, as Lawrence's critical reputation grew, important essays and

Reviews for Lady Chatterley's Lover

[allison7sivak · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The last DH Lawrence book I read was Sons & Lovers, a required novel for my grade 12 english class. At the time, I remember saying that I liked it, but found the surface of Lawrence's writing impenetrable (a nice irony for a man so concerned with sexual freedom). I always think kids reading this novel for the sexy bits; but I have to say that once Lady Chatterly actually got with the gamekeeper, that's when I lost interest. I found the negotiations and tension leading up to it more interesting; the post-coital dialogue becomes more pedantic.

[libraryofus · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

(Alistair) Unfortunately for such a well-known and historically important book, _Lady Chatterley's Lover_ posesses the dubious distinction of simply not being very good.Or, to make no bones about it, of being just plain bad.

[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.

[trinity_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

There are a few things you need to get past in order to truly enjoy this book. It was banned and controversial, the book also focuses explicitly at times on the sexual relationships of the characters. You have to look beyond those things to truly understand what this book is about. Its about relationships but it more focuses on women's struggle with their own sexuality and being a good wife. As women we are taught to be dutiful wives, to worry more about our husbands and families than ourselves. Our sexuality is dirty or shameful. The book explores Constance's struggle against what she should do and her need to follow what she wants to do. I loved this book and could really identify with Constance's dilemmas throughout this book. I gave it 5 stars.

[poetontheone · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is not the sort of pornographic screed that so many imagine it to be, though I had not expected it to be from having read other works of a similar reputation and finding them to have an altogether different purpose than titillation. Lawrence's goal here is to sound the battle cry of the body against the cold machinery of industry and privileged intellectualism. He makes this evident multiple times in both narration and dialogue. He eventually makes this Connie's cause celebre, but it is not always believable given her upper crust naivete, which moves in and out of her personality like the flicker of a faulty candle. That is to say nothing about Mellors' apparent indifference to Connie throughout much of the work. Despite some thin characterization, Lawrence crafts a lyrical and readable prose and paints a celebration of the body and its passions. All the while, the reality of an increasingly soulless and mechanized world lurks in the background as a phantasmal antagonist.

[philsyphe · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I added this over a year ago but for some reason it's recently disappeared from my "read" list!Anyway, I read this twice because one of my modules at university was about D. H. Lawrence. First read was for class, second read was for essay preparation.Found out during the module that I'm not a Lawrence fan, though of all the works of his I read, "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was the best of the bunch.

[chrisbookarama · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Finally done!

[hlselz · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very sexy, and very raw. Not written with pretty words or to many analagies or any type of fluff. This book is just about the amazing passion and sensuality that exists within us.

[terrapinjetta_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Up until I read this, I hadn't imagined that any 'older' books could tackle the sort of topics that Lawrence tackles in Lady Chatterly's Lover. His insights made me look out especially for his other books.

[naoskopi · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The least execrable of Lawrence's work but still the most easily parodied. At least it's short, which is more than one can say for 'The Rainbow'.

[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.

[jtho_3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While at first I was impressed by Lady Chatterley's independence, half-way through the novel she reminded me of a needy teenager in lust. It was an easy read with a fairly interesting plot, but several of the characters are annoying. I understand why it was banned from the US for as long as it was: there were words in print here that I still rarely see now. The sex scenes are also fairly explicit, but written in a style that now seems hilarious.

[fothpaul · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Took me a while to get through this one, some chapters faster than others. I wanted to know what happened in the end but wasn't that invested in the characters. Lots of postulating about mean being real men and the working and middle classes after the end of WW1. Pleased I read it so I could see what all the scandal was about. Mainly interesting as a piece of cultural history.

[nevusmom · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Why do I feel so naughty for having read this?

[ericquill · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow...D.H. Lawrence's descriptive talent is alive in this novel. The sexual content, that was so controversial shortly after it's publication, is woven within the story with good taste and is, by no means, smutty or offensive. Like John Travolta said in "Phenomenon"...it is a guide to a woman's heart and emotions.

[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.

[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.

[gracez-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Very mixed feelings about this book.

At first I really didn't like it that much. I found Lawrence's writing to be a bit repetitive. He would come up with a nice way of describing something, and then use the same description over and over - for example "broad dialect" - and I hate when writers do that.

I loved the way this book seemed to slow down. When I started reading, I felt everything about me calm down, my eyes relax and move more slowly across the page as I sank into it. So it was a really nice way to relax.

By the end (last 50 pages or so), I was pretty hooked. I found the ending extremely unpredictable. The Mellors character was also. So all in all, a favorable finish.

[26kathryn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book. It wasn't what I was expecting at all. Obviously the book has a reputation, which is why I wanted to read it, to see what all the fuss was about. But it's not as scandalous as it's made out to be, not by today's standards anyway.The story is a bit of a cliche now, lady of the house is bored with married life so has an affair with a servant. But I could put up with that because this book is beautifully written.I enjoyed reading the political opinions of the characters, even though I didn't understand a few things they mentioned. I also really enjoyed seeing the relationship of Connie and Mellors develop. It was really easy to get sucked into the characters' minds and understand how they were feeling.

[epictale · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed the story for its depiction of Connie's journey and, to a lesser extent, Mellors's as well. I also thought Lawrence's depiction of Sir Clifford "Life of the Mind" Chatterley was masterful. The author allowed Sir Clifford to reveal his blind spots and psychoses without being preachy or patronizing. I might have titled the book "Lady Chatterley's Cuckold".

[macescamilla · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This classic novel is more than just an outrageous accounting of one couple's sexual adventures; it's a commentary on the British class system, the role of women in this system, and yes, the unromanticized sexual appetites of the fairer sex. While some believe that Lawrence didn't understand these appetites and that his approach to Lady Chatterly was sexist, I feel that he was being sarcastic in his interpretation of events, trusting the reader to understand that he disagreed with how she was being treated. Good (and steamy!!) read. :)

[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.

[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.

[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.

[marysgirl · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I can see why this was so controversial in the past, but the language and images are definitely mild by today's standards. A lyrical story of sexual awakening. I would recommend reading this back-to-back with [Their Eyes Were Watching God] by [[Zora Neale Hurston]], another excellent story of sexual awakening.

[dele2451 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A young woman is torn between the man she married who is disabled by war early after their union and the virile gamekeeper who relieves her from her desperate loneliness. A familar theme, but this version is told impeccably well. Definitely worth the read, but I can't help wondering what happened to the baby.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Read this way back in 2010. It is a story of an illicit love affair. This book was censored for many years and was first published in Italy and not England and was a subject of an obscenity trial. The affair is between Lady Chatterley and a working man (games keeper) which is one of the themes; unfair rule of intellects over working class. Lady Chatterley discovers she must love with her body as well as her mind. Love and personal relationships are the threads of the novel. A variety of relationships are explored including; bullying and perverse maternal.Themes:mind/bodyclass industrialization/nature

[evanaizabely_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Translation by Martin Claret. There are some translation errors that should be revised asap.

[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.

[jpsnow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

At the end of the first page, you already have an appreciation for Lawrence's talent as a writer. This work is a classic because he applies that talent to convey both the stark reality and the subtle nuances of human relationships - even our human state in modern times (e.g, "And that is how we are. By strength of will we cut off our inner intuitive knowledge from our admitted consciousness. This causes a state of dread, or apprehension, which makes the blow ten times worse when it does fall."). Lawrence wrote a propos that explains his intent and expands on his points. He believed that modern man and woman had lost touch with their real emotions, especially about love. They were instead getting by on counterfeit feelings, almost to the point of completely obliterating the real human sense. And this played out in marriage more significantly because of the role of marriage in society.