The tone of Lady Chatterley’s lover is serious, introspective and confiding. The narrator remains the same throughout. They speak from a third-person omniscient perspective that’s deeply attuned to the finer points of characters' emotions and physical feelings. Initially, the narrative tone feels quite reserved, as Lawrence lays out the situation of the characters for the reader, and establishes the book’s groundwork for Connie’s desperate attempts to explore herself and to find satisfaction and freedom.
As the narrative unfolds and she begins to do so, this restraint gives way to a more candid and explicit tone. The narrator’s voice evolves alongside Connie’s changing perspective. It becomes increasingly forthright in addressing themes of repression and frustration with British conservatism. The reader is never allowed to forget the societal norms and standards that stall the characters’ progress. The deeper Connie and Mellors fall into one another, the more assertive this political tone becomes. The narrator also speaks archly and critically about characters like Clifford Chatterley and Michaelis, who are aligned with an unfeeling bygone era of social stratification. Clifford in particular—as an industrialist and an aristocrat—receives skepticism from the narrator, as they describe his lack of feeling and self-centered attitude to life.
During the many intimate moments between Connie and Mellors, the tone becomes intense and sensual. Here, the narrator often transitions into the perspectives of the characters themselves, as they describe the crackling sexual energy between Lady Chatterley and her “lover.” These moments, especially when the sexual tension between the two is not yet fully broken, are designed to titillate a reader. However, they are meant to do more than be arousing. The narrative tone in the novel’s sex scenes supports a very important idea: that abstract, academic experience of the world is not enough, and that true happiness and self-knowledge requires a connection with the body.
By the end of the novel, when Connie and Mellors’s romance has evolved into a real, actionable relationship, the tone becomes more deliberate and reflective. It explicitly addresses the predicament in which the characters find themselves, asking the reader to consider how they would proceed if faced with a choice like Connie’s. By the novel’s close, the tone becomes aligned with the dubious but optimistic view on the world that Oliver Mellors takes. While the narrator cannot promise the reader that everything will work out, they imply that in spite of the “skies falling” that looms in the future, the lovers will do their best to end up together.
