Lady Chatterley's Lover d.h.lawrence

If milestone books are a mark of the times, we have not moved on much; much of the issues brought up in LCL are still rampant now: Mammon or the worship of money, only of course, it has gotten worse now, the stigma of the lower or working classes, and the tension between industralization and nature.


In fact, one of my favourite passages from the book is this:

'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 on twenty-give shillings...they ought to learn to be naked and handsome, and to sing in a mass and dance the old group dances, and carve the stools they sit on, and embroider their own emblems'...

LCL can be considered a tirade against conspicuous consumerism and materialism brought about by the inevitable 'progress' of civilization, and which in the process neglected spontaneity and 'tenderness'. Even the derailment of education had been predicted by Lawrence, who hinted with vision that the best education is probably self-actualization, not education with the primary reason for economy, and less so, the deflation of the meritocratic dream.

Doris Lessing also wrote a lengthy reading of LCL for the Guardian,(http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/jul...) in which her main interpretation is that the book is a treatise against war, with its celebration of the human body, its sensuality and oneness with nature (as opposed to the destruction and dehumanization of the human body, and ravaging of nature which take place in war). Her theory utilizes the contextual background as key to understanding the book, and the intensity of the passion is a reflection of the desperation of the invalid Lawrence himself, as he suffered fom TB and was cuckolded by his own wife.

I love the celebration of sex in this novel. Ironic that it should be written by a man. I have not had such an experience that epitomizes sex, but I guess such is the function of literature: to take the idea of something and magnify it into the ideal. No doubt the sexuality in this book is overpowering; one of the most memorable scenes are when the physical parts are anthromorphizesd as 'Sir John Thomas' and 'Lady Jane', which further exemplifies the intimacy and tenderness which, in real life, could border on the comical, but which itself is like a secret only to be kept within the two giggling children.

Ultimately, this book is most criticized on the grounds that the sexual liberalization of the woman is depicted by a man, and hence needed the affirmation of the patriarchy. But it must be remembered that it came at no small cost to this man, and hence he does not really represent the patriarchy. And there is no doubt that the strong must first empower the repressed-there's no going about it. Even the whites had to lend support to the black to give it additional credibility. This is really a depiction of a male writer heralding the changing times: the passive dominance of women with their tenderness, nurturing quality and irresistible sensuality