LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER BY D.H. LAWRENCE (BOOK REVIEW AND RECOMMENDATION)

Hello, in this post I shall review Lady Chatterley's Lover. It used to be somewhat of a controversial book. Originally published in Italy almost a hundred years ago (in 1928), it had to wait for decades to be published in England. In fact, it wasn't until the 1960s, that the uncensured version of this novel wasn't published in English. When it was finally published as it was, it was put on a trial for obscenity in England! A trial it lost. Not surprisingly, if it is true that the prosecutor opening statement was: 'Is this a book you would want your wife or your servants to read?' Did somebody really think it was a good question to ask in the sixties? 

If you read it as a modern reader, you'll probably wonder what all the fuss was about. However, back in the day, this book caused quite a stir. A lot of fuss over nothing, really! It's a shame because it took away the attention from the novel itself. It really is a great novel in many ways. Perhaps you could say that it's a book that got famous for all the wrong reasons.  Lady Chatterley's Lover is not even a particularly erotic writing. Indeed, I cannot wonder whether the class question was the real controversy. You see the lady in the title has an affair with someone from the lower class. That could have been the real controversy, and not the few pages that talk about lovemaking! Before I get to my review, I'll just like to share a few more pieces of information about this interesting novel. 

THE BACKGROUND (SOME BASIC INFORMATION):

This is what Wikipedia has to say about the background of this novel and I found it fascinating: Lawrence's life, including his wife, Frieda, and his childhood in Nottinghamshire, influenced the novel.^[4] According to some critics, the fling of Lady Ottoline Morrell with "Tiger", a young stonemason who came to carve plinths for her garden statues, also influenced the story.^[5] Lawrence allegedly read the manuscript of Maurice by E. M. Forster, which was published posthumously in 1971. That novel, although it is about a homosexual couple, also involves a gamekeeper becoming the lover of a member of the upper classes and influenced Lady Chatterley's Lover.

What I found so fascinating was the life of the Lady Ottoline Morrell, the one that influenced this novel. Do give it a read if you like that sort of stuff. I have little to no interest in present day gossip, but somehow old scandals fascinate me.  Moreover,  I didn't know that this novel was possibly influenced by E.M. Forster's Maurice. While on the subject, I would also like to recommend Maurice. I read it back at University and I remember we had some good discussions about it. Like most classics, Lady Chatterley's Lover can be read online (on project Gutenberg and other places). 

Lady Chatterley's Lover

by

D H Lawrence

---

Contents

Chapter 1.
Chapter 2.
Chapter 3.
Chapter 4.
Chapter 5.
Chapter 6.
Chapter 7.
Chapter 8.
Chapter 9.
Chapter 10.
Chapter 11.
Chapter 12.
Chapter 13.
Chapter 14.
Chapter 15.
Chapter 16.
Chapter 17.
Chapter 18.
Chapter 19.

Do I reread the novels I'm reviewing? Often I do, even if I don't plan on it.  I just find it interesting to compare my old reviews with a new reading experience. When I opened my blog, I didn't originally post my book reviews here, but that changed with time. Still, I have a lot of book reviews I haven't shared yet and a lot of books I want to talk about. So, you could say I'm doing a lot of rereading for my blog and I love it. 

LADY'S CHATTERLY'S LOVER BY D.H. LAWRENCE, 4/5

 While I was writing this review, I read this novel again. You see, I had first read it quite a long time ago (13 years ago), and while I remembered it fondly, I wanted to refresh my knowledge about it. So, yesterday I followed the Gutenberg link and started reading. Now, I'm not even sure if the edition I read earlier was the same or the censored one because the Gutenberg one contains a lot of detail then I didn't remember. Moreover, I found an audiobook (narrated by Judi Dench!) on YouTube that also seemed a lot shorter than the Gutenberg version. So, I'm assuming that the Gutenberg version is the novel as it was first indented to look like! Let me know what version you have read. 

Rereading the novel again, I must admit I've experienced the writing a little differently. It was honestly more beautiful than I remembered. I have originally described the writing as more sensual than lyrical, more original than accomplished, but now I'm not so sure. I think some parts of this novel are definitely lyrical and accomplished. I will agree with my original conclusion of it being an unusual novel! 

Back when I read it (that is as a literature student), I was reading almost exclusively classics. Compared to the others book I was reading,  Lady Chatterley's Lover didn't seem like such a significant achievement of literature. However, reading it again, it kind of feels like it is! Well, I always thought it was literature, I just didn't think it was that significant. Now, I think it might be more serious and profound piece of writing that what I originally deemed it to be.

However, even on my first reading I noted that  it felt so fresh and unique, I simply couldn't help liking it.  I did have some complains, though. I deemed Lady Chatterley's Lover to be it's messy, disorganized and even probably a bit dated, even if there was definitely an authentic feel about it. I wouldn't agree with that critic anymore. It doesn't seem so messy and disorganized anymore. I'm really wondering whether it just felt that way because I read a shorter version of it or something. My conclusion when I reviewed it thirteen years ago was that it might not be a masterpiece, but that  was an original piece of writing nevertheless. How I feel about it now? Well, I think it might be a masterpiece, even if a slightly flawed one. 

When I spoke about the positives of this book, I said that it might not the best writing out there but there is substantial ambition and drive behind it that can't be missed. I agree with what I wrote back then. There is passion and authenticity in this novel, especially when it comes to the portrayal of its main characters.  I would say that the portrayal of the characters is one of its main literary merits. The setting feels very well drawn as well. The clash of classes was handled especially well. It really is a deeper book than it seems. It speaks a great deal about the society and the divisions caused by the class system. It describes different types of personalities and types. Lady Chatterley's Lover turns in a psychological study at times. I think those moments are those I liked the best in this novel.  

 I heard  Lady Chatterley's Lover described as one of those novels you skip the pages to get to the juicy parts, and I don't really agree with that description. As I wrote in my original review, for me personally those pages weren't particularly interesting (or juicy), so I there was no need to skip anything to get to them.  

Not that I wasn't tempted to skip a page or two from time time to time- the novel wasn't one of those that makes you clutch to every page- but I didn't skip anything and I'm glad I didn't because novel as whole works quite well, if not perfectly.

 I don't think most people would read it only for juicy pages nowadays. Really, for today standards, there is nothing shocking in this Lady Chatterley's Lover . However, I can see how for its time this novel must have been shocking and it must have seemed like something else.  Again, I think that was the most shocking was an occasional description of the act of lovemaking, but rather the fact that the novel's heroine cheated her husband with someone belonging to a lower class. 

The affair wasn't exactly all romantic, either. Throughout the novel, the class question comes up. The writer is quite keen as describing is a tangible thing. Possibly, it was this social realism that angered some people. 

 Lady Chatterley's Lover was an enjoyable read this time around as well. The plot itself was interesting enough to reread, and I noticed some other things while I was rereading this novel. The humour of this book is quite nice too, not pretentious at all, quite refreshing in fact. 

What I noticed while rereading it was how much the novel centred on descriptions of feelings of isolation and alienation. At times this novel feels like a study of loneliness: 

“It's no good trying to get rid of your own aloneness. You've got to stick to it all your life. Only at times, at times, the gap will be filled in. At times! But you have to wait for the times. Accept your own aloneness and stick to it, all your life. And then accept the times when the gap is filled in, when they come. But they've got to come. You can't force them.”

“All hopes of eternity and all gain from the past he would have given to have her there, to be wrapped warm with him in one blanket, and sleep, only sleep. It seemed the sleep with the woman in his arms was the only necessity.”

“Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass.”

This novel could be compared with Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Flaubert's Madame Bovary.  Both novels feature a heroine that married young and sought and/or found extramarital love. However, it actually reminds me the most of Kate Chopin's The Awakening. Chopin's heroine resembles Constance more than Anna or Emma. Constance seems to be more sensual and rational than Anna or Emma, who in comparison seem more romantic and sensitive. 

Now, what follows is a more detailed review of Lady Chatterley's lover. If you don't want any spoilers, I suggest you to skip this part: 

THE PLOT- THE STORY OF LADY CHATTERLEY

Chapter one is all about introducing us to  principal characters in Lady Chatterley's Lover. As soon as I started reading it, I knew that this was one of those novels that draws the reader in. It opens up with a philosophical passage:

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

After this philosophical passage, we are introduced to the main character of the novel: Constance. We don't learn too much about her at the very moment, because the author quickly jumps to her husband. We'll learn a lot more about Constance before the end of the first chapter. However, this initial sequencing is important. The author first mentions tragic times, implies we must live on and confirms such was Constance's position: 

This was more or less Constance Chatterley's position. The war had brought the roof down over her head. And she had realized that one must live and learn.

She married Clifford Chatterley in 1917, when he was home for a month on leave. They had a month's honeymoon. Then he went back to Flanders: to be shipped over to England again six months later, more or less in bits. Constance, his wife, was then twenty-three years old, and he was twenty-nine.

The author wastes no time. We are introduced to our heroine:  Constance, a young woman who realized that she must live and thus married Clifford. Well, the wording certainly implies that their love wasn't up for the most romantic start. D.H. Lawrence proceeds to inform us about Clifford's title and his health state. Why is title so important? Well, because the class question is a part of this novel. Why is the health important? Because the marriage itself will be questioned. What else do we learn about the couple? That they return to his ancestral home, so that he could keep the family name alive for a while.  What does this mean? Well, that the Sir Clifford shall not be able to sire any offspring. 

His hold on life was marvellous. He didn't die, and the bits seemed to grow together again. For two years he remained in the doctor's hands. Then he was pronounced a cure, and could return to life again, with the lower half of his body, from the hips down, paralysed for ever.

This was in 1920. They returned, Clifford and Constance, to his home, Wragby Hall, the family 'seat'. His father had died, Clifford was now a baronet, Sir Clifford, and Constance was Lady Chatterley. They came to start housekeeping and married life in the rather forlorn home of the Chatterleys on a rather inadequate income. Clifford had a sister, but she had departed. Otherwise there were no near relatives. The elder brother was dead in the war. Crippled for ever, knowing he could never have any children, Clifford came home to the smoky Midlands to keep the Chatterley name alive while he could.

What else does the author says? He gives us a real insight into Clifford's character, explaining how he was relived and glad to be alive, but at the same time there was a sadness in him. This is all very relevant for understanding both Clifford and Constance character: 

He was not really downcast. He could wheel himself about in a wheeled chair, and he had a bath-chair with a small motor attachment, so he could drive himself slowly round the garden and into the fine melancholy park, of which he was really so proud, though he pretended to be flippant about it.

Having suffered so much, the capacity for suffering had to some extent left him. He remained strange and bright and cheerful, almost, one might say, chirpy, with his ruddy, healthy-looking face, and his pale-blue, challenging bright eyes. His shoulders were broad and strong, his hands were very strong. He was expensively dressed, and wore handsome neckties from Bond Street. Yet still in his face one saw the watchful look, the slight vacancy of a cripple.

He had so very nearly lost his life, that what remained was wonderfully precious to him. It was obvious in the anxious brightness of his eyes, how proud he was, after the great shock, of being alive. But he had been so much hurt that something inside him had perished, some of his feelings had gone. There was a blank of insentience.

Once we get a good description of Clifford, the author gives us more insight into Constance's character. Lawrence describes Constance's appearance, education and background. 

Constance, his wife, was a ruddy, country-looking girl with soft brown hair and sturdy body, and slow movements, full of unusual energy. She had big, wondering eyes, and a soft mild voice, and seemed just to have come from her native village. It was not so at all. Her father was the once well-known R. A., old Sir Malcolm Reid. Her mother had been one of the cultivated Fabians in the palmy, rather pre-Raphaelite days. Between artists and cultured socialists, Constance and her sister Hilda had had what might be called an aesthetically unconventional upbringing. They had been taken to Paris and Florence and Rome to breathe in art, and they had been taken also in the other direction, to the Hague and Berlin, to great Socialist conventions, where the speakers spoke in every civilized tongue, and no one was abashed.

The two girls, therefore, were from an early age not the least daunted by either art or ideal politics. It was their natural atmosphere. They were at once cosmopolitan and provincial, with the cosmopolitan provincialism of art that goes with pure social ideals.

It seems that Constance's education and upbringing was quite liberal and happy. Both of her parents seem to encourage her to live her life. Her family will continue to play a part in the novel. 

They had been sent to Dresden at the age of fifteen, for music among other things. And they had had a good time there. They lived freely among the students, they argued with the men over philosophical, sociological and artistic matters, they were just as good as the men themselves: only better, since they were women. And they tramped off to the forests with sturdy youths bearing guitars, twang-twang! They sang the Wandervogel songs, and they were free. Free! That was the great word. Out in the open world, out in the forests of the morning, with lusty and splendid-throated young fellows, free to do as they liked, and--above all--to say what they liked. It was the talk that mattered supremely: the impassioned interchange of talk. Love was only a minor accompaniment.

There is a mentioning of love affairs, something everyone seemed to approve of. The writers emphases how for the girls, love was more about talking then about the actual act of love making. Well, this makes sense, because as we know for women (young and old) communication is really important.

Both Hilda and Constance had had their tentative love-affairs by the time they were eighteen. The young men with whom they talked so passionately and sang so lustily and camped under the trees in such freedom wanted, of course, the love connexion. The girls were doubtful, but then the thing was so much talked about, it was supposed to be so important. And the men were so humble and craving. Why couldn't a girl be queenly, and give the gift of herself? So they had given the gift of themselves....

 Women like to be heard. It's said that women are more audio types, while men are visual ones. It's not a strict division, I would say, but there is truth in that. I'd say that the author showed some good understanding of the female psychology. Lawrence's portrayal of Constance might not be as elaborate and detailed as the one of Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina but it is certainly a very successful one. We can see Lawrence wants to give us a detailed view of Constance's upbringing by the amount of text he devotes to it in the first chapter: 

When the girls came home for the summer holidays of 1913, when Hilda was twenty and Connie eighteen, their father could see plainly that they had had the love experience.

L'amour avait passe par la, as somebody puts it. But he was a man of experience himself, and let life take its course. As for the mother, a nervous invalid in the last few months of her life, she wanted her girls to be 'free', and to 'fulfil themselves'. She herself had never been able to be altogether herself: it had been denied her. Heaven knows why, for she was a woman who had her own income and her own way. She blamed her husband. But as a matter of fact, it was some old impression of authority on her own mind or soul that she could not get rid of. It had nothing to do with Sir Malcolm, who left his nervously hostile, high-spirited wife to rule her own roost, while he went his own way.

So the girls were 'free', and went back to Dresden, and their music, and the university and the young men. They loved their respective young men, and their respective young men loved them with all the passion of mental attraction. All the wonderful things the young men thought and expressed and wrote, they thought and expressed and wrote for the young women. Connie's young man was musical, Hilda's was technical. But they simply lived for their young women. In their minds and their mental excitements, that is. Somewhere else they were a little rebuffed, though they did not know it.

...

I'm quite impressed with how much detailed the author put into Constance's backstory. It makes her seem so much more real. Lawrence tells us how the girls lost their first lovers, their mother and peace they enjoyed. Lawrence proceeded to give us more information about the social classes Connie and Clifford belonged to, how they came to be together, how Clifford was a light sort of rebel and so on. I admire how Lawrence gets straight to the point in this chapter. There's no extra information, the writing simply flows, explaining the history of our main characters and proving us with intelligent remarks about the society in the process. 

However, came the war, Hilda and Connie were rushed home again after having been home already in May, to their mother's funeral. Before Christmas of 1914 both their German young men were dead: whereupon the sisters wept, and loved the young men passionately, but underneath forgot them. They didn't exist any more.

Both sisters lived in their father's, really their mother's, Kensington house, and mixed with the young Cambridge group, the group that stood for 'freedom' and flannel trousers, and flannel shirts open at the neck, and a well-bred sort of emotional anarchy, and a whispering, murmuring sort of voice, and an ultra-sensitive sort of manner. Hilda, however, suddenly married a man ten years older than herself, an elder member of the same Cambridge group, a man with a fair amount of money, and a comfortable family job in the government: he also wrote philosophical essays. She lived with him in a smallish house in Westminster, and moved in that good sort of society of people in the government who are not tip-toppers, but who are, or would be, the real intelligent power in the nation: people who know what they're talking about, or talk as if they did.

Connie did a mild form of war-work, and consorted with the flannel-trousers Cambridge intransigents, who gently mocked at everything, so far. Her 'friend' was a Clifford Chatterley, a young man of twenty-two, who had hurried home from Bonn, where he was studying the technicalities of coal-mining. He had previously spent two years at Cambridge. Now he had become a first lieutenant in a smart regiment, so he could mock at everything more becomingly in uniform.

Clifford Chatterley was more upper-class than Connie. Connie was well-to-do intelligentsia, but he was aristocracy. Not the big sort, but still it. His father was a baronet, and his mother had been a viscount's daughter.

But Clifford, while he was better bred than Connie, and more 'society', was in his own way more provincial and more timid. He was at his ease in the narrow 'great world', that is, landed aristocracy society, but he was shy and nervous of all that other big world which consists of the vast hordes of the middle and lower classes, and foreigners. If the truth must be told, he was just a little bit frightened of middle-and lower-class humanity, and of foreigners not of his own class. He was, in some paralysing way, conscious of his own defencelessness, though he had all the defence of privilege. Which is curious, but a phenomenon of our day.

Therefore the peculiar soft assurance of a girl like Constance Reid fascinated him. She was so much more mistress of herself in that outer world of chaos than he was master of himself.

Nevertheless he too was a rebel: rebelling even against his class. Or perhaps rebel is too strong a word; far too strong. He was only caught in the general, popular recoil of the young against convention and against any sort of real authority. Fathers were ridiculous: his own obstinate one supremely so. And governments were ridiculous: our own wait-and-see sort especially so. And armies were ridiculous, and old buffers of generals altogether, the red-faced Kitchener supremely. Even the war was ridiculous, though it did kill rather a lot of people.

In fact everything was a little ridiculous, or very ridiculous: certainly everything connected with authority, whether it were in the army or the government or the universities, was ridiculous to a degree. And as far as the governing class made any pretensions to govern, they were ridiculous too. Sir Geoffrey, Clifford's father, was intensely ridiculous, chopping down his trees, and weeding men out of his colliery to shove them into the war; and himself being so safe and patriotic; but, also, spending more money on his country than he'd got.

The third chapter introduces us a new unhappy Constance. She's feeling trapped, living in a big house, separated by everyone else by the class distinction. 

Connie was aware, however, of a growing restlessness. Out of her disconnexion, a restlessness was taking possession of her like madness. It twitched her limbs when she didn't want to twitch them, it jerked her spine when she didn't want to jerk upright but preferred to rest comfortably. It thrilled inside her body, in her womb, somewhere, till she felt she must jump into water and swim to get away from it; a mad restlessness. It made her heart beat violently for no reason. And she was getting thinner.

Constance father advises her to get a lover and when there is a visiting Irishman, Constance actually takes his advice. The Irishman shares her isolation perhaps. He can never truly be a part of English society. This alienation brings them together. 

Connie was in love with him, but she managed to sit with her embroidery and let the men talk, and not give herself away. As for Michaelis, he was perfect; exactly the same melancholic, attentive, aloof young fellow of the previous evening, millions of degrees remote from his hosts, but laconically playing up to them to the required amount, and never coming forth to them for a moment. Connie felt he must have forgotten the morning. He had not forgotten. But he knew where he was...in the same old place outside, where the born outsiders are. He didn't take the love-making altogether personally. He knew it would not change him from an ownerless dog, whom everybody begrudges its golden collar, into a comfortable society dog.

Chapter four introduces us to Constance's life of the mind. She is aware that her affair with the Irishman is doomed. She spends her time with her husband and his friends, living a life of the mind: 

Connie quite liked the life of the mind, and got a great thrill out of it. But she did think it overdid itself a little. She loved being there, amidst the tobacco smoke of those famous evenings of the cronies, as she called them privately to herself. She was infinitely amused, and proud too, that even their talking they could not do, without her silent presence. She had an immense respect for thought...and these men, at least, tried to think honestly. But somehow there was a cat, and it wouldn't jump. They all alike talked at something, though what it was, for the life of her she couldn't say.

Chapter five is centred around an interesting conversation between Constance and Clifford. Constance is somewhat surprised when her husband speaks of wanting an heir in a rather impersonal way, but when she says she is sorry they don't have a child, he shocks her even more with his proposal: 

'It would almost be a good thing if you had a child by another man, he said. 'If we brought it up at Wragby, it would belong to us and to the place. I don't believe very intensely in fatherhood. If we had the child to rear, it would be our own, and it would carry on. Don't you think it's worth considering?'

Connie looked up at him at last. The child, her child, was just an 'it' to him. It...it...it!

'But what about the other man?' she asked.

'Does it matter very much? Do these things really affect us very deeply?...You had that lover in Germany...what is it now? Nothing almost. It seems to me that it isn't these little acts and little connexions we make in our lives that matter so very much. They pass away, and where are they? Where...Where are the snows of yesteryear?...It's what endures through one's life that matters; my own life matters to me, in its long continuance and development. But what do the occasional connexions matter? 

I feel like the fifth chapter is where the novel really starts. It includes a lot of foreshadowing. Constance sees her husband in another light. He speaks of having a child, but not of out love, but rather duty.  Moreover, the way he speaks about the marriage seems a bit cold. 

CONCLUSION

In my original chapter, I stressed how I really liked the character of Constance. On a reread I liked her even more. I was touched by how caring, independent and openminded she was. A curious mix of feminine qualities! There was something very lively about her.

Again, I have to stress that the class gap was well handled. In some cultures, belonging to different classes is like belonging to different worlds. The society the novel describes was multicultural in the sense of classes being like different cultures. 

In my first review I felt like Lawrence was getting at something universal (perhaps even wise) in his exploration of characters but I wasn't certain he had come full circle. Now, I think he actually has.

While reading this novel for the second time,  the characters seemed less unfinished and more carefully drawn. I really sympathized with all of them. I felt like not revealing everything about them was the point. I think that as readers we're supposed to guess what they were really feeling.

However, there were still things I didn't like. I feel like the author doesn't have a good understanding of feminine desire and sensuality. So, I can understand why some female readers are put off by this book.

Another thing that impressed me (both the first time around and now) were the touches of philosophy. It was lovely to read most of those philosophical passages. All in all, this is a fascinating and beautifully written novel. I immensely liked it. So, I do recommend it!

BUSINESS CHIC OUTFIT PROPOSAL : INTERNATIONAL MOSTAR FAIR 2019

SUSTAINABLE FASHION FILES

This is an outfit I wore for work and I good representation of how I usually dress for school. This year we have gotten a black and white dress code. While I love the timeless elegance of black and white, I find myself missing colour. I'm trying to sneak up some colour with scarves. I also wear grey because  it is (when you think about it) just a shade of black and white.

THE BW PEPITA JACKET: VINTAGE. It was bought years ago at a second hand in Split. Honestly, it's one of the hardest working pieces in my closet. It's perfect for creating office and professional looks.

See how I styled it in the past:

- with black jeans and white sneakers for a smart casual hiking outfit.

- with a LBD dress and a straw hat for a chic office styling. 

- with jeans, a braided hairstyle and a statement belt for a more interesting look,

- with a white lace dress and a white vintage shawl for a romantic and feminine styling, 

- with a denim skirt, a turtleneck and Mary Jane heels for a pretty nerd look, 

- with a pair of white jeans, a pair of sneakers and a baker boy hat for a tomboy look. 

- and layered with a camel coat and striped skirt for a winter styling.

THE WIDE TROUSERS: WAIKIKI (I bought them for work and I've worn them a lot for work, just not for the blog). 

THE WHITE SHIRT- borrowed from hubby. 

THE GREY STRIPED TIE: VINTAGE. I borrowed it from my husband years ago. See how I styled this tie with shorts and a blazer here.

THE HIGH BROWN BOOTS - Well, you cannot see this pair of boots well, but they are very old. I must have worn them a thousand times, most recently here with a blue SH printed dress, more ideas HERE & HERE & HERE!

As always, thank you for visiting and/or commenting! Take care.