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
That night, Connie strips naked and inspects her body in the mirror. But she is upset to see that she is flattening, losing her womanly curves and turning into something “meaningless.” She feels much older than 27, her actual age, and she reflects regretfully on the German boy’s appreciation of her body. Connie still feels confident about her back side, but her front makes her despair.
Importantly, Connie’s curves—the thing that, in the novel, mark her as conforming to traditional standards of female desirability—seem to be the only antidote to the modern “meaninglessness” she struggles with. Connie feels that her life is most worthwhile when she is appreciated for her body and for her femininity, one of the many times the narrative directly links Connie’s personal happiness to her conformity to traditional gender roles.
Themes
Even as her world feels constricting, however, Connie knows that she has to stay at Wragby at all times, since Clifford depends on her for all of the simplest and most intimate tasks. Connie thus begins to resent Clifford, not only for the obligation he poses but for the lack of warmth he shows her. Connie wants to rebel against the injustice—though Clifford and his friends have all the power, Connie thinks that they are actually “as corrupt as any low-born Jew.” Connie misses Michaelis, who is flawed but at least livelier than her own husband.
On the one hand, Clifford’s lack of appreciation for Connie’s body makes her feel less like a woman. On the other hand, Clifford’s physical dependency on Connie makes him—in the novel’s framing—less manly and therefore less desirable to her. It is important to note the authorial prejudices that creep in through this passage: not only does Lawrence condemn Clifford for his disability, one of many examples of the novel’s ableism, but he also casually inserts anti-Semitism into Connie’s voice. This anti-Semitism is a hallmark of Lawrence’s writing, and it has been the subject of much the recent scholarship around his work.
Themes
One of Clifford’s aunts comes to the house, along with Tommy Dukes and a few other guests. The dinner conversation turns to the possibility of breeding babies in bottles, and most of the guests agree that the point of civilization is to put as much distance as possible between people and their bodies. Connie and Dukes are horrified at this, pleading for “the democracy of touch” instead of “the democracy of pocket.”
Months ago, Dukes argued that both Bolshevism and capitalism were mechanical—alienating people from their labor (as Marx put it) and from their bodily instincts. But Dukes and Connie, echoing the perspective of the novel, argue for a different kind of “democracy”: one guided by natural passions and feelings instead of wealth and industry.
Themes
Connie’s plight gets worse and worse—she becomes afraid of the graveyard on the Wragby property, and she starts losing weight at an alarming rate. Hilda, concerned about her sister, comes to visit. When she sees how ill Connie looks, she scolds Clifford for not taking better care of his wife. Hilda is definitive: it is time for Clifford to hire a servant to relieve Connie of some of her responsibilities. But Clifford, his pride wounded, staunchly refuses.
Connie’s fear of the graveyard, like her belief that the trees are awaiting death, signals her anxiety that her life is passing her by. Clifford’s refusal to hire a servant suggests that though he does not take the time to make Connie feel cared for, he nevertheless wants her to be solely responsible for taking care of him.
Themes
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Hilda brings Connie to London, where they go to a doctor; he advises that all Connie needs to get well is to be entertained. Michaelis also hears that the sisters are visiting, and he tries to convince Connie to come to Sicily with him, but she refuses. Instead, the sisters go back to the Midlands, where Hilda threatens that she will send Connie to live with Sir Malcolm if Clifford does not get some new help.
Connie’s refusal to go to Sicily with Michaelis (despite the fact that the change of circumstance might be good for her) reflects her knowledge that Michaelis is not really unlike Clifford; neither one of them will make her feel wanted or truly understood.
Themes
Clifford relents, provided that the servant is Mrs. Bolton, a well-respected local nurse. The 47-year-old Mrs. Bolton has been a widow for 22 years because her husband was killed in a mining accident. After the death, the law sided with the mining company, so Mrs. Bolton got only a small stipend on which to live. Still, Mrs. Bolton thinks well of the mining company, and particularly Sir Geoffrey, who stepped in to help her train as a nurse.
As the owner of the Tevershall mine, Sir Geoffrey is indirectly responsible for Mrs. Bolton’s tragic loss (and her unjust compensation after the fact). But because Sir Geoffrey’s privilege insulates him from real accountability, he—and by extension Clifford—gets to swoop in as a hero to fix problems he helped to create.
Themes
Mrs. Bolton feels a great deal of sympathy with the colliers, but she also feels superior to them. Similarly, she resents the wealthy classes even as she longs to impress them. Connie is compelled by these contradictions, especially when she notices that Mrs. Bolton—so bossy around Connie and the servants—is deferential to Clifford. The colliers had always looked up to Mrs. Bolton, but Clifford makes her feel small, and so she becomes small to fit his expectations.
Though Mrs. Bolton is proud and competent in her normal life, she quickly shrinks herself to fit Clifford’s ideas of what a working-class woman should be. The narrative thus seems to suggest that class hierarchies take precedence over individual personality traits—not only for Clifford and his ilk, made shallow by their wealth, but for people like Mrs. Bolton, too.
Themes
Mrs. Bolton is a great servant: she helps Clifford shave and get in and out of bed, attending to all of his needs. But Clifford still does not forgive Connie for outsourcing his care, feeling that she has killed “the real flower” of their intimacy. Connie feels that the metaphorical flower was never very beautiful to begin with. Instead, she basks in her new alone time, listening to the servants talk and marveling at the new world of gossip suddenly at her door. Whenever Clifford calls Connie to his room to talk or read, Connie arranges for Mrs. Bolton to interrupt them.
At the beginning of her time at Wragby, Connie did her best to find non-sexual ways of being intimate with Clifford. Now, she actively distances herself from him, preferring the lively world of Mrs. Bolton’s gossip to the “life of the mind” conversation Clifford engages in. Importantly, flowers now begin to emerge as an important symbol for desire and companionship—neither of which, as her snarky thoughts demonstrate, Connie shares with Clifford.
Themes
