Read from Thursday, February 10th to Tuesday, February 15th.
Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence. I've always been intrigued by this book, since it was banned in England for a long time because of its supposedly racy content, that was too hot for some. I picked up this used book once again in Asheville, NC and decided to give it a try.
The plot is pretty much a basic love triangle. Connie marries Clifford Chatterley in a haste before he ships off for WWI. However, he comes back handicapped and forever wheelchair-bound. Clifford has inherited a large estate in the Midlands of England, a place called Wragby Hall, and also a piece of the nobility. Connie and Clifford are essentially alone at Wragby, and Connie grows depressed. She has to dote on Clifford's needs, and he becomes a moderately successful writer. He has intellectual friends over to entertain every so often as well, and their conversations become increasingly boring and pedantic to Connie. She craves action and excitement, and not all that talk, talk, talk. Also, due to Clifford's injury, she is sexually frustrated. Connie has a brief affair with Michaelis, a writer come to visit one weekend, but she eventually loses interest.
Connie is in a funk, and Clifford thinks it is because she cannot have a child, an heir to Wragby Hall. He gives her permission to have an affair and become pregnant, so long as she returns to him in the end. He does not want to know who it is, just as long as he is an upstanding citizen. Connie eventually breaks down, and they hire a woman, Mrs. Bolton, to look after Clifford and take care of him. This gives Connie more freedom, and she takes long walks in the woods on the estate. There she meets Oliver Mellors, the gamekeeper hired by Clifford. He had spent time in the army in India, and he had a wife he was separated from. He is a smart, educated man from the local town, but he chooses to speak the local dialect (often confusing to read). He is quiet and strong, and very tender with Connie when they finally get together in his cabin in the woods.
Connie falls for Mellors, and he does as well. Connie becomes pregnant, and she plans to go away with her family to Italy for a month in the summer. There she can pretend to have an affair and come back pregnant to Clifford. Then her and Mellors can plan to run away together. However, plans often go awry. While Connie is away, Mellors' wife returns and wants him back. When he refuses, she goes crazy and spreads slander all over the town accusing Connie of sleeping with him. He is forced to resign from Wragby. When Connie returns, she tries to tell Clifford she had an affair with an artist in Venice, but her lie falls apart and she confesses that it was Mellors. Clifford is furious and refuses to divorce her, but Connie leaves anyway. The story ends with Mellors working on a farm while Connie is living with family, waiting until the time they can reunite and run off together after their divorces are finalized.
At times, it is a difficult book to get through. The affair with Mellors doesn't begin until almost halfway through. There are some long passages where the action is almost non-existent. However, the book isn't only a romance story; Lawrence talks at length about the class differences between the poor citizens and the aristocracy. Clifford believes that nobility is important, they need to lead the poor and uneducated. But Mellors does not fit that stereotype. He is his own, independent man, and he has been to school. Lawrence also discusses the importance of action, and a physical respect for the body, not just the mind. Clifford believes that the intellectual connection is all that's necessary in a marriage, and the sex stuff is something antiquated and we will eventually evolve out of. Connie knows that it is important to love the body as well.
The sex scenes are intense, but pretty mild compared to many contemporary subjects. Lawrence is not graphic, but he is realistic, and he portrays the act as it is felt by the two subjects; something intense and emotional and spiritual. I can see how in a post-Victorian England, that can be seen as something radical, but it is still a good piece of literature. Three out of five stars.
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