Just Finished Reading: Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D H Lawrence (FP: 1928)

It was the War. The damned war that ruined everything. Before Clifford Chatterley returned to the Front in 1917 everything was as it should be. He was young, handsome and with a bright future ahead of him. With a new young wife the Chatterley line was assured for another generation and beyond. But fate it seemed had other ideas. Clifford returned to England a shattered figure, unable to walk ever again and, almost unspoken, unable to have children. The Chatterley’s would effectively die with him. The strain on both Clifford and Constance Chatterley was immense. Both dived into depression and both responded in their own singular way. Clifford became obsessed with his coal mines taking great interest in their operation and their future. Constance took a lover, an Irish playwright, who wanted to marry her and take her away from her dreadful circumstance. She knew it would never have worked and stayed with Clifford. But their childlessness stood between them like a reproach. But then fate entered again in the guise of a returned soldier from India – Mellors who had recently become Clifford Chatterley’s gamekeeper. There was an instant spark between them. But the social gulf was just too great. Even as a casual lover such a thing could never be tolerated. As a surrogate father of the Chatterley line it was unthinkable – or was it? But things are never as simple as they seem and we do things we barely understand ourselves. For what world would ever allow Lady Chatterley and her lover to exist in peace for long?

I did start this classic novel with a fair bit of trepidation. I’d heard so much about it prior to turning the first page that I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t like it and that I would find myself slogging through something approaching an occasionally smutty love story. The introduction (in my 1971 edition) by Richard Hoggart assured me that this wasn’t smutty. So far so good. So I dipped my toe somewhat gingerly in Lawrence’s prose and let myself go. I was honestly surprised at the result. Now being the love story this is, with a somewhat deserved reputation of being a ground-breaking novel, there is a fair amount of sex in it (which I honestly skimmed over in the main) as well as a smattering of ‘F’ bombs and a sprinkling of ‘C’ words that must have been supremely shocking at the time. But, apart from the odd raised eyebrow, this hardly interested me at all. What I found most interesting was the window into late 20’s social culture and references – which the readers of the time did not need explaining – to the political happening of the day: basically industrial unrest and the fear of communism. This is hardly surprising considering that Lawrence would have been writing this in the shadow of the 1926 General Strike. Even more interesting was the attitude to class throughout the book. Clifford was pure upper class who despised the lower orders even when he depended on them. His various physical disabilities were, no doubt, metaphors for the moral and cultural weaknesses of his class. Connie’s sister, Hilda, was ridiculed as someone who spoke up for the working class and publically who praised them but who would never actually condescend to sit down and hold a real conversation with them because it would call into question her inadequate understanding of the working class condition and her beliefs about them. Conversely Connie had a far better understanding of the workers and a real, as opposed to ersatz, sympathy for their plight.

The most interesting character in the whole book, which really surprised me, was Mellors himself. From the bits of the movies I’ve seen he was essentially a stud – a bit of ‘rough’ – to engage with Lady Chatterley and allow her to escape her dreary life with Clifford. There is certainly that element going on in the narrative but there is much more too. Although from solid working class stock – his father being a miner – he won a scholarship to the local Grammar school and read extensively in his spare time. Eventually rejecting his new found life he re-trained as a blacksmith and gained status within his community because of that. Joining the army in WW1 to escape an unhappy marriage he travelled to South Africa and finally to India where we became an officer. Never really fitting into that life he returned to England to discover he no longer fitted in there either and struggled to ‘return to his place’ as Clifford would say. He was a complex, multi-layered and essentially tragic figure who I could help but feel for. Overall, putting aside the sex for a moment, I found this novel to be culturally very interesting indeed. Certainly much more than I thought I would. I’m not sure if I’d rush out to read any more of his works but this outing certainly hasn’t put me off the idea. Recommended but not for the reasons you might expect.