Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Intellect vs. Bodily Experience
Nature vs. Machinery
Class, Consumerism, and Money
Gender and Sexuality
Catastrophe, Continuity, and Tradition
Summary
Analysis
When Connie and Clifford moved in, Emma Chatterley left, not wanting to interact with her new sister-in-law. So now, it is just the young couple in this big, dreary house. Worse still, Wragby is adjacent to the Tevershall mine, which produces constant smoke, stinking of sulfur and coal. And Tevershall village is no better, with its small, cramped colliers’ houses turning black from the haze. At night, Connie can see the mine’s furnaces glowing.
The mechanized mines around Connie and Clifford now come to seem threatening; indeed, the sulfur smell and furnace lights suggest that Wragby is a literal hellscape. It is also important that the mines’ lights disrupt the natural rhythm of day and night, hinting at just how deeply mining culture has thrown nature off its course. A collier is a British slang word for a miner.
Themes
Still, Connie does not protest her new circumstances, as she knows there is no getting out of them. Instead, she learns to accept the strange separation between Tevershall village and Wragby: there is no contact between the two groups except mutual resentment, not because of any personal slights but because of a general sense that the people have nothing in common with each other. Even when the local women pretend to fawn over Connie, she can feel their disdain.
Though Connie was raised on her mother’s socialist ideas, in practice, she seems—at least at this point in this novel—to take no real issue with being at the top of this unequal class hierarchy. Instead, Connie at first treats class as an immutable divide, more a character trait than a result of circumstance.
Themes
Clifford does his best to avoid the townspeople, treating them only with contempt whenever he sees them. At the same time, despite his haughty outward manner and his expensive clothes, Connie can tell that Clifford is deeply ashamed of his wounded body. And though Clifford bonds with Connie (and depends on her completely), he struggles to forge relationships with other people; the miners are effectively his employees, but he views them as “parts of the pit rather than parts of life.”
Whereas Connie accepts class as a neutral fact, Clifford uses his high status and wealth to compensate for his physical insecurities. On the one hand, Clifford dresses in expensive clothes, as if to distract from his wounds; on the other hand, Clifford denies humanity to the miners whose physical strength makes him wealthy. In other words, Clifford works to define power not as bodily but as financial, elevating himself above all the unwounded, working-class men in “the pit.”
Themes
To alleviate his boredom, Clifford starts writing sharply observed, emotionally detached short stories. His stories appear in the best magazines and garner a mix of praise and criticism, though Clifford only wants praise. Clifford talks about his stories in detail with Connie, who loves these conversations—so much that they almost replace sex for her. Connie cares more about these conversations than other elements of life at Wragby, so she declines to make any renovations to her new home (much to Emma’s delight).
Connie’s interest in Clifford’s short stories parallels her relationship with her Dresden lover, in which she prioritized talk over all physical intimacy. Though Connie’s lack of interest in renovating Wragby pleases Emma, it also demonstrates her lack of interest in building a real future for herself at this estate.
Themes
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When Sir Malcolm comes, he points out that Clifford’s stories are empty of emotion or real weight, which upsets Connie. Malcolm also tells Clifford he does not want Connie to become a “demi-vierge”: a half-virgin. Clifford resents this comment, even as he knows there is some truth in it. Still, try as he might, he cannot bring himself to have an honest conversation with Connie about their sexual predicament.
Clifford’s stories are verbose and impressive, but as Sir Malcolm—himself a greatly respected artist—notes, these stories lack true feeling. And similarly, though Connie and Clifford talk endlessly about fictional phrases and plot structures, they cannot address the most intimate, bodily realities of their situation with each other.
Themes
To pass the time, Connie goes for walks in the park, taking in the autumn leaves and the flowers in spring. She plays hostess to the intellectual men that Clifford invites to Wragby, all of whom like Connie but refuse to take her seriously because of her curvy, “feminine” body, unusual for the fashions of her era. Clifford’s older relatives are kind, if sometimes condescending. So, time goes on “as the clock does, half-past eight instead of half-past seven.”
The curves of Connie’s body are important: the novel is set at the height of 1920s flapperdom, when thin, androgynous body types were considered stylish, so Connie’s frame marks her as belonging to an earlier time, which embraced different gender norms. This striking closing line hints at how devoid of meaning Connie’s life is: time is passing, but the only thing different in Connie’s life is the position of the clock hands.
Themes
