"We ought to be able to arrange this sex thing as if we were going to the dentist."
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A book which has achieved more notoriety for its sex scenes (shocking in 1930, when the book was written) than for its character studies, Lady Chatterley's Lover focuses on the affair between Constance, the "sturdy" young wife of Clifford Chatterley, and the gamekeeper of the Chatterleys' estate in the remote midlands. Constance, who married Clifford a month before he left for World War I, has become his caretaker since his return from the war, paralyzed from the waist down and impotent. A writer who surrounds himself with intellectual friends, Clifford regards Connie as his hostess and caregiver and does not understand her abject yearning for some life of her own.
The distance between Constance and Clifford increases when Mrs. Bolton, a widow from the village, becomes his devoted caretaker, and he becomes increasingly dependent upon her. In a remarkable scene, Clifford finally tells Connie that he'd like an heir, and he does not care whom she finds to be the father of "his" child. He believes, in fact, that he could treat her affair as if it were a trip to the dentist. Connie, yearning for an emotional closeness which she has never experienced before, soon becomes involved with Mellors, the estate's gamekeeper. Crude and anti-social, Mellors has an honesty and lack of pretension which Connie finds refreshing.
Throughout the novel, Lawrence creates finely drawn characters whose interactions and gradual changes are explored microscopically. The growth of love between Connie and Mellors is complicated by the increasing self-centeredness of Clifford, whose outrage at rumors of their affair is motivated by Connie's choice of someone so far beneath her. To Clifford, the separation of the social classes is an integral and inevitable part of life. Devoted to achieving financial success even at the expense of his workers, the paralyzed Clifford is depicted as a symbol of unfeeling aristocracy and government. Mellors, by contrast, is vigorous and full of life, a strong man of character who obeys his instincts and stands up for what he believes.
Dealing with themes of love, passion, respect, honor, and the need for understanding, Lady Chatterley's Lover is a complex, character-driven novel which, though dated, celebrates the driving passions which can make life worth living. The romantic scenes and language here are tame by modern standards, and the extreme behavior and willingness to flout convention by Connie and Mellors may be less realistic, psychologically, than what would make sense to a modern reader. Firmly rooted in the 1930's, the novel shows an insensitive Clifford adhering to outdated values, based on outdated economic structures, while Connie and Mellors, freed from these conventions, explore their inner natures and their humanity. Mary Whipple
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Lady Chatterley's coarse and humourless lover
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D H Lawrence's most notorious novel is basically a straightforward love story with the emphasis on sex, overlain by an interesting delineation of early twentieth century class relationships. Constance Chatterley has married into minor aristocracy but her husband, disabled during the Great War, is incapable of giving her any kind of human warmth or love. He dotes on her only in her role as carer/domestic and is an extraordinarily selfish and cold man. With the arrival of Mrs Bolton from the village as her husband's full-time carer Lady Chatterley finds her life utterly empty. Sexually frustrated, she embarks on a love affair with her husband's gamekeeper, the coarse and humourless Mellors. It is a somewhat implausible cross-class relationship between a flighty young upper-class woman and a rather bitter and unpleasant working-class man. Despite Lawrence's attempt at coaxing us to believe that Lady Chatterley had found true love and tenderness, the reality is that her relationship with Mellors appears to be based on a clandestine behind-the-bike-sheds kind of sex. Because of this there is little real warmth in the book.
Of course, since the 1960s it has become fashionable to ask what all the fuss was about, but anyone with even a notion of English social history could see why the book would have caused a furore at the time: a period when illegitimate children were being removed from their mothers who in turn were often committed to institutions. To be fair, Lawrence has tried his hardest to explore the nature of human sexual relationships and you can almost feel his mind at work, but the sexual passages and language still come across as forced, crude and curiously prurient. The English have never really got to grips with sex.
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Don't Read The Back!
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I loved this book, which is essential to any student studying modernism as it is actively concerned with many of the major issues and feelings of the time. The novel itself is definately a 5 star-er for me! BUT this edition (the Wordsworth Classics) is clearly aimed at people who are reading the book for the literary merit or who have already read it before, as the entire plot (which is admittedly quite simple) is outlined on the back cover, including the ending (although, bizarrely enough they get part of the ending wrong anyway!!)! Now although I was reading it for university, and the literary side of it, I was still quite dissappointed at being given the plot's ending before i had even read the first page! So get another edition, or beware the back cover!
At least Lawrence is such a great writer that I enjoyed the book immensely despite knowing the outcome!
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audio-book read by Emilia Fox
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I didn't like too well the way Ms Fox read this book. She did the women rather well, especially Connie and her sister, but her attempts at assuming a Scottish accent while doing Connie's father, an italian accent while doing the gondoliers, and especially the gamekeeper's Northern England dialect, are quite a failure.
I can't assume local accents either, but I think CSA should have chosen a reader who could mimic them to perfection, or hire another actor to give a more genuine rendering of the Midlands' dialect. It's half the interest of the book for me. I've bought "Three Men in a Boat" read by Martin Jarvis, and he's a virtuoso at assuming all kind of accents.
Disappointed
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"We ought to be able to arrange this sex thing as if we were going to the dentist."
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A book which has achieved more notoriety for its sex scenes (shocking in 1930, when the book was written) than for its character studies, Lady Chatterley's Lover focuses on the affair between Constance, the "sturdy" young wife of Clifford Chatterley, and the antisocial gamekeeper on the Chatterleys' estate in the remote midlands. Constance, Lady Chatterley, who married Clifford a month before he left for World War I, becomes his caretaker when he returns from war paralyzed from the waist down and impotent. A writer who surrounds himself with intellectual friends, he regards Connie as his hostess and caregiver and does not understand her abject yearning for some life of her own.
The distance between Constance and Clifford increases when Mrs. Bolton, a widow from the village becomes his devoted caretaker, and he becomes increasingly dependent upon her. In a remarkable scene, Clifford finally tells Connie that he'd like an heir, and he does not care whom she finds to be the father of "his" child. Connie, yearning for an emotional closeness which she has not experienced in a previous affair, soon becomes involved with Mellors, the estate's gamekeeper. Crude and anti-social, Mellors has an honesty and lack of pretension which Connie finds refreshing.
Throughout the novel, Lawrence creates finely drawn characters whose interactions and gradual changes are explored microscopically. The growth of love between Connie and Mellors is complicated by the increasing self-centeredness of Clifford, whose outrage at rumors of their affair is motivated by Connie's choice of someone so far beneath her. To Clifford, the separation of the social classes is an integral and inevitable part of life. Devoted to achieving financial success even at the expense of his workers, Clifford is depicted as a symbol of unfeeling aristocracy and government. Mellors, by contrast, is a strong man of character who stands up for what he believes, obeying his best instincts.
Dealing with themes of love, passion, respect, honor, and the need for understanding, Lady Chatterley's Lover is a complex, character-driven novel which, though dated, celebrates the driving passions which can make life worth living. The romantic scenes and language here are tame by modern standards, and the extreme behavior and willingness to flout convention by Connie and Mellors may be less realistic psychologically than what would make sense for a modern reader. Firmly rooted in the 1930's, the novel shows an insensitive Clifford adhering to the outdated values, based on outdated economic structures, while Connie and Mellors, freed from these conventions, explore their instincts and their humanity. Mary Whipple
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