This week's review is another book review. Lady Chatterley's Lover, by DH Lawrence. A book which has, in its time, caused such scandal that it resulted in its publisher being taken to court for obscenity.
Lady Chatterley's Lover was written in the early 1920's and published in 1928. It is one of those books that everyone has heard of, but not that many have read. Having done so, I can now understand why.
Lady Constance Chatterley is a bright young thing whose liberated sexual liaisons are interrupted by World War I. Although she comes from a middle-class Scottish family, that you would think would be very conservative, her father encourages Constance and her sister Hilda to travel around Europe, screwing those who appeal to them. The war puts a stop to their fun in Germany and in 1917, Constance marries Clifford Chatterley. He returns from the war alive, but so damaged that he is unable to walk or perform any other physical activity below the waist.
Now while the sisters had affairs, on Constance's part at least, sex was something used to keep men interested. She was interested in intellectual conversations instead. So she wasn't all that fussed when Clifford couldn't perform any more. The trouble was, his father had died, and Clifford was the last Chatterley. Not being able to procreate meant that there could be no heir to the Chatterley acres and coal mines.
Clifford pours his soul into becoming a successful author and businessman. He convinces Constance that if she has a discreet affair and falls pregnant, she could provide him with an heir to the estate. She dallies with a few people, but eventually falls for her husband's gamekeeper, Mellors. This is where the trouble arises. Mellors isn't the same social standing as Constance, even though he had held a position of rank in the British army in India. She falls in love with him, eventually he loves her and she falls pregnant. During the course of their affair, she learns to enjoy sex.
Eventually the sisters travel to Venice for a holiday, with Clifford's tacit approval to an affair and pregnancy. Unbeknownst to him, she already is. While she is away, Mellors' estranged wife turns up and causes trouble, resulting in him being kicked off the estate.
Divorce laws being what they were at that time, no mention of Constance can be risked in Mellors' divorce. In due course, she asks Clifford for a divorce and when he becomes difficult, she reveals that Mellors is the father of her baby. He gets nasty and the book concludes with Mellors working as a farm labourer, learning the trade so that he can support them, and Constance living with her sister in Scotland until the baby is born. She is left with the hope, but no certainty, that Clifford will eventually free her to marry Mellors.
So where's the sex that makes this a classic and a book that people snigger about? Well, it's there, but you have to wade through so much social commentary, that it is difficult to get to. The sex is incidental to the novel, and not a feature of it. The Victorians were far more graphic in their descriptions (such as in Fanny Hill and The Oyster etc) than the Edwardians, so what is there isn't even particularly graphic. What made this book so scandalous was that it was titled Lady Chatterley shagging the gamekeeper and running off with him. If it had been Lord Chatterley knocking up the kitchen-maid, no-one would have batted an eyelid. Because she gives up her privileged life, she is breaking down the social structure of her time. This book was contemporary to the time it was written, and gives an insight to the social conventions in place at that time amongst the middle and upper classes. Prior to the Great Depression, the characters are scarred by their experiences during the War, but also by the social unrest taking place amongst the miners and other members of the working class. Read 90 years later, and in a different hemisphere, the class struggle and social conventions are pointless.
Is it interesting from an historical perspective? Maybe, if you can get through the overly wordy descriptions. Tighter editing wouldn't have gone astray. The characters can, at times, be downright unpleasant, but I guess that makes it more realistic. I don't think that DH Lawrence had a very high opinion of women's intellectual capacity, whatever he thought of them physically. Although, from his descriptions, he quite liked curvy figures, and not the stick figures that were so fashionable in the early 1920s. So, is it a great read for the sex? Frankly, no. I'm glad I picked it up cheap, because I won't be bothering to wade through it again.
