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
Connie now feels a new aversion to Clifford—not hate, exactly, but some sort of physical disgust. She starts to feel that everything around her is insane: people are obsessed with money and claim to care about love, but even the most passionate forms of love seem damaged (as with Michaelis). And all Clifford ever does is talk and write, though at least he is directing attention more and more towards Mrs. Bolton these days. Clifford is always able to assert himself over Mrs. Bolton, and Connie reflects that this subtle power is perhaps what once drew her to him.
Even if Connie does not outright articulate it, her brief time with Mellors is quickly reshaping how she views her life with Clifford. Increasingly, Connie has little patience for Clifford’s endless writing and talking and intellectualizing. Again, it is worth keeping in mind that the novel sometimes demonizes disability, conflating Connie’s disgust at Clifford’s mannerisms with the fact of his wounded body.
Themes
Mrs. Bolton shaves Clifford every day now, a ritual he initially detested but has come to enjoy. Mrs. Bolton is almost sensual in the way she handles his flesh, though privately, she rejoices that she has (quite literally) got this fancy aristocrat “by the throat.” Mrs. Bolton likes being Clifford’s keeper, boasting to Connie that all men are ultimately babies—even people like Clifford, who at first seem to be real gentlemen.
In the novel’s framework, Mrs. Bolton’s care for Clifford represents a double inversion: she at once upends class hierarchies and flips gender roles, handling Clifford with the tenderness that—Mellors will later suggest—men should use during intimate moments with women. The undertone of something illicitly sexual between Clifford and Mrs. Bolton foreshadows what is to come.
Themes
Originally, Connie had been Clifford’s typist when he thought up new stories, but now, Mrs. Bolton is learning that skill, too. And after Connie goes to bed, Mrs. Bolton sits up late and plays chess and piquet with Clifford, proud to be learning “all that the gentry knew, all that made them upper class: except the money.” More than any physical desire or emotional love, Ivy Bolton is thrilled by this new knowledge. Connie, meanwhile, finds it all revolting, though she knows that Clifford is only just showing his true colors.
Just as Mellors’s inconsistent use of dialect can be read as his challenge to the absurdities of class hierarchy, Mrs. Bolton’s desire to “know all that the gentry knew” is perhaps her own form of rebellion against these stratifications: if she can possess everything that makes the upper class themselves, then she can make clear that the only divide between upper-class people and working-class people is “the money.” In a country like England, where status is inherited over generations, Mrs. Bolton thus subtly counters the belief (which Clifford and his friends hold) that class is a permanent fixture of character rather than the result of chance and circumstance.
Themes
Connie feels conflicted about listening to Mrs. Bolton’s gossip. On the one hand, she enjoys it, but on the other hand, she feels that gossip is only appropriate when it is driven by respect and sympathy (even though satire can be part of that). She feels similarly about the novel as an art form—Connie thinks that novels can either “reveal the most secret places of life” or be “vicious” and “humiliating.”
This strange passage is perhaps Lawrence’s meta-commentary on his own project. Because Lady Chatterley’s Lover goes into such detail about sex—arguably “the most secret place” of all—Lawrence is likely signaling his own intentions, communicating to readers that he includes these private sexual details as a way to build sympathy, not just to scandalize.
Themes
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In Mrs. Bolton’s descriptions, Connie reflects that Tevershall feels more like a dangerous jungle than an English village. Mrs. Bolton goes into extreme detail about everyday scandals: remarriages, middle-aged people behaving badly, and, most of all, the obsession with earning and spending money that she sees in the younger generations. Mrs. Bolton especially criticizes younger people for their fixation on clothes.
This passage echoes Tommy Dukes’s fear that capitalist society wipes clean peoples’ individuality, instead rendering them single-minded copies of one another. It is especially salient that young people are so fascinated with clothes, given that fashion obscures the natural nakedness Connie and Mellors will later celebrate.
Themes
Clifford begins to worry that the people of Tevershall will turn to Bolshevism, egged on by poor economic conditions and their love of spending. Mrs. Bolton, however, puts this fear to rest—the townspeople have too much interest in consumer goods to ever leave capitalism behind. Privately, Connie thinks that all the classes are alike; “the moneyboy and the moneygirl” are everywhere, she reflects, and “the only difference was how much you’d got, and how much you wanted.”
Unlike Connie and Mrs. Bolton, both of whom take issue with their society’s materialism, Clifford’s concern is not philosophical but personal—he does not want to lose his position of power and wealth, as he certainly would were bourgeoisie-toppling Bolshevism to take hold. In a novel so obsessed with delineating traditional, distinct gender roles, the terms “moneyboy” and “moneygirl” are particularly frightening, erasing natural gender differences in favor of monolithic consumerism.
Themes
With Mrs. Bolton at his side, Clifford now takes more interest in the mines, embracing his role as the “real boss” of the Tevershall pits. Unfortunately, the pits are losing money, and many of the men are heading to the fancier mines nearby (in a village known as Stacks Gate). Mrs. Bolton theorizes that Tevershall is about to go under—especially because the Stacks Gate mines are equipped with new chemical technologies and “iron men,” large machines that cut the coal from the walls of the mine (which men used to do by hand).
Connie and Tommy Dukes have both spoken philosophically about the ways in which machines seem to be replacing men, but the “iron men” technology makes this replacement literal. Moreover, this kind of industrialization is cyclical: machines replace men to extract additional coal, which can then fuel more machines to replace more men.
Themes
Mrs. Bolton frets that machines are going to replace men entirely, but Clifford does not fear this idea. For the first time, he is interested in a different kind of success: not the popular kind attained by making stories, films, and other forms of art, but the more “savage” form of success, derived from money and industrial production. Unlike Connie, who encouraged Clifford towards the “sensitive,” inwards pursuits of art and academia, Mrs. Bolton makes “a man out of him” by sparking his interest in business.
During her phase of being attracted to Michaelis, Connie reflected that his open drive for success—and especially financial success—was more admirable than Clifford’s less straightforward ambition. Now, in turning his focus more squarely to wealth and accumulation, Clifford becomes the kind of man Connie once admired (though ironically, it is too late for Connie to care).
Themes
Clifford thus returns to the mines, reading his old technical books and remembering the things he had learned before the war. He is amazed by the degree of chemical knowledge and invention that goes into coal mining: “in this field,” he realizes, “men were like gods, or demons,” discovering and then reshaping the earth. Clifford also knows that this kind of technical invention comes with a stunted emotional life, but he is too overwhelmed by his new sense of power to care.
Clifford’s new focus on the mines reveals one of the most essential differences between himself and Mellors. While Mellors works closely with the earth, helping flowers grow and (later) birds hatch, Clifford fights against it, embracing his view of himself as a shaping “god.” Indeed, Clifford even celebrates the loss of his natural, internal feelings because it helps him challenge the nature of his external world.
Themes
Indeed, Clifford feels that though he has been slowly “dying” in his life with Connie, this new focus on mining allows him to be “reborn.” Clifford dreams of inventing new technologies: first converting coal into electricity, and then concentrating the fuel so it burns more slowly and fiercely. He prides himself on at last having achieved “a man’s victory”—though he only feels this way with Mrs. Bolton. With Connie, Clifford is timid and subservient, and though he would never admit it, he comes to dread her presence.
Clifford’s metaphorical death and rebirth perhaps parallel the British nation as a whole as it struggles to recover from WWI. After mass casualties and great environmental destruction, industrial technology was an exciting avenue for both Clifford and his country to regain a sense of power and “victory.”
Themes
