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
One morning in February, Clifford and Connie go for a walk through the park. A haze of sulfur hangs over the forest, and most of the birds have been killed off during the war. Still, Clifford loves these old oak trees, which have been around since Robin Hood’s time. With Connie guiding, Clifford rolls his wheelchair up a hill, coming to a clearing; this is one of the areas that Sir Geoffrey deforested to provide “trench timber.” The chopped-down trees always make Clifford angry.
This description contrasts the technological present (“a haze of sulfur,” Clifford’s mechanized wheelchair, the gaps where Sir Geoffrey cut trench timber) with the old oak trees and the romantic history they represent. In particular, the folkloric figure of Robin Hood—who wooed women courageously and redistributed wealth across the Midlands—throws into relief how much this place, now capitalist and unromantic, has changed.
Themes
Literary Devices
While Connie listens to the sounds of a nearby mine, Clifford muses that his forest is “really the heart of England.” Clifford admits that being in the forest, with its mysterious links to old England, always makes him want a son. Clifford desires continuity, seeing himself as “a link in a chain” of old traditions, though Connie does not like to view herself in this way. Still, Clifford presses on, even suggesting that Connie could have a child with another man if she would be willing to raise it as Clifford’s own.
Clifford’s determination to be “a link in a chain” ignores the “cataclysm” that the novel began with. The world Clifford longs for no longer exists; the nature has been torn down or polluted, and Clifford himself can no longer produce biological descendants. Even though Connie often yearns for tradition in her own way, she resents that Clifford is trying to force a continuous “chain” when such continuity is, after disaster, unnatural.
Themes
Connie is surprised that Clifford would condone an affair, but Clifford explains that what matters is “what endures”—the “lifelong” marriage they share, not an “occasional spasm.” Connie lets her mind wander to Michaelis. Though she is deeply attracted to him, she has never entertained the idea of leaving Clifford for Michaelis; now, she wonders about conceiving a child for Wragby with the Irish writer.
Just as Clifford downplays physical connection in favor of “the life of the mind,” he also downplays the momentary intensity of orgasm—a passing “spasm”—in favor of the things he sees as more “enduring” (namely his last name, his estate and his baronet title).
Themes
Literary Devices
Clifford pushes Connie to agree that casual sex is less important than years-long matrimony. But while Connie sees the logic, she struggles with the idea that she will be “pinned down” forever by her thoughts in a single moment. Just then, a brown spaniel runs by, followed by a man with a gun. The man surprises Connie, like “the sudden rush of a threat out of nowhere.” Connie learns that this is Oliver Mellors, Clifford’s new gamekeeper.
Though Connie’s first encounter with the gamekeeper and his dog seems innocuous, it is in fact foreshadowing things to come; while Clifford speaks about an endless, repetitive future, Mellors provides something “sudden” and intense, interrupting any commitment to Clifford that Connie might’ve been about to make. This interruption foreshadows the larger interruption Mellors will eventually pose to the Chatterley marriage.
Themes
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Though Mellors has been at Wragby for eight months, this is the first time he and Connie have met. When they make eye contact, Connie feels shy; there is something about Mellors that is difficult to pin down. Sometimes he presents himself as a gentleman, and sometimes he speaks with the broad dialect of country people. Connie cannot tell if Mellors is teasing her.
Mellors and Clifford quickly emerge as a study in opposites. For example, while Clifford does his best to reinforce class hierarchies, Mellors subverts them, even just in the way he speaks (the Midlands dialect was normally associated with working-class status) and holds himself.
Themes
Mellors begins pushing Clifford, in his wheelchair, back towards the house, and Connie runs ahead to open the gate. Though Clifford does not notice that anything is wrong, Mellors immediately sees how tired Connie looks. Connie is amazed by how Mellors seems to see “everything”; unlike Clifford, he is “aware of her.”
Since her Dresden days, Connie has prided herself on keeping her inner thoughts and feelings private in her romantic relationships. But though nothing is romantic with Mellors (yet), he immediately understands Connie better than any other man, including Clifford, ever has.
Themes
At lunch that day, Connie asks Clifford about Mellors. Clifford explains that Mellors was a blacksmith in town before joining the army during World War I. Connie asks if Mellors is married, and Clifford informs her that Mellors was married before his wife ran off with another man to Stacks Gate, a nearby village. Connie is disturbed that as he speaks, Clifford’s eyes mirror the atmosphere outside, “his mind filling up with smoky mist.”
Connie’s interest in Mellors’s marital status, along with her shyness, hints at her budding attraction to him. This description of Clifford's “smoky” mind is vital: while Connie often compares her inner life to the natural forest atmosphere around her, Clifford’s internal state is like the mines, mechanized and polluted.
Themes
Slowly, Connie realizes, the physical trauma Clifford suffered in the war is taking its mental toll. Though Clifford can sometimes seem sharp, “the bruise of fear and horror” is spreading within him—and worse, Connie feels that it is beginning to spread to her, too. Connie also sees this bruising in the colliers at Tevershall, who are threatening to strike not out of passion but out of despair. “It was words, just so many words,” she thinks; “the only reality was nothingness.”
In addition to losing the most men of any nation that fought in the war, World War I also marked the end of British dominance in the international sphere. It follows, then, that the malaise Connie notes in Clifford would be shared more broadly across the country. Tellingly, Connie summarizes this feeling of listlessness as a reliance on “words” instead of true, indescribable “reality”; in Connie’s nihilistic mindset, language has flattened and then replaced actual human experience.
Themes
Literary Devices
Connie begins to resent that Clifford’s obsession with “the bitch-goddess” of success has worked out so well for him: he is now a well-known intellectual, with his picture appearing in papers and his bust appearing in an art gallery. But Connie feels that it is all a “display,” that there is nothing substantive behind Clifford’s short stories or his ideas. Even Michaelis, who has begun to write a play in which Clifford is the central character, seems to lack substance.
If Connie has begun to associate “so many words” with her sense of despair, then Clifford—who has built his entire post-war life on language and “the life of the mind”—must become an emblem of his wife’s unhappiness.
Themes
When summer rolls around, Michaelis returns to Wragby with Act I of his new play. Everyone loves it, but Michaelis is unsatisfied—in part because Connie takes a while to come to his room, and in part because he craves even more effusive praise from her. Michaelis also wants Connie to divorce Clifford. But though he promises her a life of jewels and jazz clubs, Connie cannot feel anything but frustration that these men are “all the same,” each as self-absorbed and obsessed with success as the others.
Though Connie was initially attracted to Michaelis because of his apparent difference from Clifford, she now sees that they are the “same”: Clifford works to forget his pain with pompous intellectual conversation, while Michaelis does the same thing with his parties and fancy things. For both Clifford (with his fancy dinner parties) and Michaelis, money is an essential ingredient of this distraction.
Themes
That night, Connie finally does come to Michaelis’s room, and he is more excited than ever to have sex. But after Connie orgasms, Michaelis becomes cruel, criticizing her for orgasming after he has finished instead of at the same time as he does (and thus making him work to keep his penis erect). Connie is hurt by this sudden brutality, which she feels is “one of the shocks of her life”; “it killed something in her.” After this encounter, Connie feels that the only thing left for her to do is accept the total “nothingness” of life.
Earlier, Connie prided herself on her ability to turn sex into something almost transactional, keeping herself from orgasming at the same time as her partner. But now, Michaelis insults her for this practice, largely because it seems to wound his ego. The word choice here explicitly aligns Connie’s pain with Clifford’s experience in the war; Connie feels “killed” and “shocked,” just as combat decimated World War I soldiers.
Themes
