Intellect vs. Bodily Experience
At the beginning of D. H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Connie Chatterley finds great joy in clever short stories and long-winded conversations, and in her teenage romances, she prizes good conversation above any physical intimacy. But while Connie and her impotent husband, Clifford, originally share an appreciation for the “life of the mind,” Connie’s adventurous affair with game-keeper Oliver Mellors allows her to embrace a more physical form of joy. With Clifford…
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Nature vs. Machinery
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D. H. Lawrence’s novel about Constance Chatterley’s affair with her husband’s gamekeeper, is set in the Midlands region of England, once a land of rugged woods and stunning natural beauty. But by 1920, when Connie arrives, these lovely hills have turned into the mining town of Tevershall; at all hours of the night, Connie smells the smoke and hears the clanging sounds of the nearby mines. And just as the…
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Class, Consumerism, and Money
Throughout D. H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, protagonist Constance Chatterley finds herself surrounded by consumerist obsession. Her husband, Clifford, wants only to maximize the wealth he earns from his mining pits; the miners (known as colliers) who work for Clifford pine for the clothes and excursions they want but cannot afford. And while wealthy people like Clifford and Connie’s sister Hilda insist that class hierarchies are “fate[d]” and immovable, Connie thinks…
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Gender and Sexuality
Lady Chatterley’s Lover has made waves for nearly a century due to its frank, explicit descriptions of Connie’s sexual encounters. Lawrence breaks with tradition from beginning to end, using profanity and paying a great deal of attention to the mechanics and physical realities of sex. In fact, the final line of the novel sees Connie’s lover, Oliver Mellors, tenderly referencing his paramour’s genitalia. But even as Lady Chatterley’s Lover takes an open-minded view…
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Catastrophe, Continuity, and Tradition
D. H. Lawrence’s 1932 novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover begins just after the trauma of World War I. Even from the very opening lines, Lawrence locates his reader in this fractured era: “the cataclysm has happened,” the book begins, “we are among the ruins.” For many of the characters, including Clifford Chatterley and his band of intellectual friends, the loss and chaos of the war presents a chance to rebuild differently. They focus on new inventions…
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