L'Amant de Lady Chatterley

For a novel that is purported to be of the “bodice-ripper” genre (ie chick lit) and was written almost 100 years ago, I can’t believe how forward thinking D.H. Lawrence is.

During the 1920s, feminism, female rights, and especially the female organism were new concepts that came about as a result of increased female independence during the Great War. Women had been called to the workforce to replace all of the men who were sent away to the battlefields of Europe, and even after the few remaining men of the Lost Generation returned to England women were not willing to back to being hausfraus. Lady Chatterly is definitely not one of these working women - her family are clearly minor aristocrats and she marries into the leisure class as well - but she personifies the increased intellectual and social freedoms that women of her station became accustomed to in parallel. Constance was given an extensive education during her family’s travels throughout Europe as a young woman and Lawrence makes it clear that she and her sister were given relative freedom to explore all of life that intrigued them. Both sisters had love affairs in their teens - a likely unheard of concept previously, and still likely uncommon - that are presented hand in hand with their highly developed intellect that in fact challenged the men of their circles to keep up or be left behind. This development of personality is one that was surely a shock to readers at the time of the book’s publication, as the idea that women could be seen as intellectual equals as men - and an even greater shock that these women had casual sexual encounters in which they proved to be the more emotionally removed sex of the two.

As the novel progresses, it seems for a moment or two that Constance will grow out of her adolescent behaviour when she marries Lord Clifford Chatterly during the course of the War. Even when Clifford returns home to his ancestral seat at Wragby Hall paralyzed from the waist down that Constance will buck up and be a dutiful wife, only allowing her intellect and true personality to show during conversations with Clifford and his group of intellectual friends. This is clearly not to last, though, as her introduction to this group of interesting men draws obvious comparisons to her youth in Germany surrounded by men of strong opinion and vocabulary. Inevitably, her instinct for sexual encounter is piqued by an Irish writer, Michaelis, who, while ultimately a disappointment to her emotionally and physically, begins her path to a true break from the hopelessly inadequate Clifford. Clifford, while a writer of popular fiction is technically of the intelligentsia that Constance craves as stimuli, he is highly traditional in his outlook on life (especially when it comes to the restrictions of class) which Constance begins to find constrictive in her more accepting views of people. His physical reliance on Constance for daily care is really just the final nail in the coffin of emotion, as she has no interest in being a glorified maid who gets nothing in return for her efforts.

It came as a bit of a shock to me that the person whom Constance finally falls in love with (and leaves Clifford officially for) is the Oliver Mellors, the game keeper of the Wragby Estate. The two of them are from incredibly different walks of life and at their initial encounters were incredibly tense, but their differences only seem to heighten their similarities. Neither are willing to go along with accepted societal norms, and both have a complete disregard for the fripperies of aristocratic privilege and the lack of practicality that it entails. The pair of them argue constantly about practically nothing, but Lawrence has tapped into the exact passion that comes from these types of relationships. They are based on passion, rather than rationality, and the people in them don’t give a damn about what society thinks - even if they make plans to be eventually accepted by this society. For a book published in 1928 that seems to be aimed at the accepted popular market in England, Lawrence is incredibly graphic in his description of sex between the couple. His scenes of “depravity” are of course tame in comparison to earlier authors like the Marquis de Sade, but what I expect caused so much outrage was that he published his novel for the English market (where society was still very closeted about sex in comparison to the Continental population) and was depicting sex between two consenting adults as normal rather than presenting the scenes as gross exaggerations and exceptions to the norm (as De Sade does in his novels). To modern readers who have access to a wide range of pornographic and erotic material (in addition to modern outlooks on sex and relationships between adults) Lawrence’s novel likely seem incredibly tame, but what we must remember is that it is this novel (and many others in between) that helped usher along modern viewpoints on these themes by exposing people to new ways of thinking about the reality of human relationships rather than chaste idealized fictions. ( )

This was a tough call for me. On the one hand, Lawrence does well to acknowledge that female sexuality and pleasure *exists.* On the other hand, the depiction of female sexuality is so...Freudian. So male-focused still. I don't know if I'd teach this book or not. I'm definitely glad to have read it, but I'm not sure this is going to remain on my shelves. ( )

This book is an interesting erotica and has poignant commentary on class and industrialization in England. Kinda sexist tho.

Listening to audiobooks really increases the number of 1001-books I finish.
This is another one.

Looking at it's first year of publication I can see why it's been banned 😂
When I started reading it, I had never thought it would be this explicit. It wasn't bad or vulgar, just unexpected. I'm glad there was also some kind of a story woven around Conny and her lover, even though those parts of the book were quite predictable.
All in all a nice read. ( )

This book, Lawrence's last, was published privately in Italy in 1928 and in France and Australia in 1929. It was banned in the US until 1959 and in the United Kingdom until 1960, at which time the publisher, Penguin Books was put on trial for obscenity. The verdict was "not guilty".
The book's vivid portrayals of adulterous sex, of people speaking about and enjoying sex are still controversial today, and in my opinion, overshadows what the book is really about- the conflict between the life of the mind and the life of the physical body.
Connie, aka Lady Chatterley, is married to Sir Clifford, a paraplegic WWI veteran. He has taken on, with gusto, the "life of the mind". Connie must attend to all his physical needs, type his papers, and may listen to but not participate in discussions among his cronies on subjects such as philosophy, religion and economics.
She meets Oliver Mellors, the game keeper, and they begin a passionate affair. Oliver has distanced himself from most of society and laments the state of humankind. He comments that people are only educated to spend money... but are not truly living. He despairs of the future.
As Connie observes, "the world is a vast and ghastly intricacy of mechanism, and one has to be very wary not to get mangled by it". There is nowhere to escape. There is no "ends of the earth".

The only hope of the future is regeneration through tenderness towards others. Connie tell Mellors that "the courage of your own tenderness" is the only thing that will make the future bearable.
He agrees...
"Sex is really only touch, the closest touch. And its touch we're afraid of. We're only half conscious, half alive."
The theme of personal regeneration through sexual contact is a recurring theme in Lawrence's novels. This novel is considered one of the greatest books of all time, but not recommended for those who are offended by explicit language or depictions of sexual acts. ( )