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    Lady Chatterley's Lover
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    Lady Chatterley's Lover
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    Lady Chatterley's Lover
    Ebook516 pages8 hours

    Lady Chatterley's Lover

    By D. H. Lawrence

    3.5/5

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    SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING THE CROWN’S EMMA CORRIN AND UNBROKEN’S JACK O’CONNELL

    Introduction by Kathryn Harrison
     
    Inspired by the long-standing affair between D. H. Lawrence’s German wife and an Italian peasant, Lady Chatterley’s Lover follows the intense passions of Constance Chatterley. Trapped in an unhappy marriage to an aristocratic mine owner whose war wounds have left him paralyzed and impotent, Constance enters into a liaison with the gamekeeper Mellors. Frank Kermode called the book D. H. Lawrence’s “great achievement,” Anaïs Nin described it as “his best novel,” and Archibald MacLeish hailed it as “one of the most important works of fiction of the century.” Along with an incisive Introduction by Kathryn Harrison, this Modern Library edition includes the transcript of the judge’s decision in the famous 1959 obscenity trial that allowed Lady Chatterley’s Lover to be published in the United States.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateOct 31, 2000
    ISBN9780679641643
    Author

    D. H. Lawrence

    David Herbert Lawrence was born on 11th September 1881 in Eastwood, a small mining village in Nottinghamshire, in the English Midlands. Despite ill health as a child and a comparatively disadvantageous position in society, he became a teacher in 1908, and took up a post in a school in Croydon, south of London. His first novel, The White Peacock, was published in 1911, and from then until his death he wrote feverishly, producing poetry, novels, essays, plays travel books and short stories, while travelling around the world, settling for periods in Italy, New Mexico and Mexico. He married Frieda Weekley in 1914 and died of tuberculosis in 1930.

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    Reviews for Lady Chatterley's Lover

    3.5/5

    50 ratings63 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I did not approve of the morals of the characters in the book.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book. It wasn't what I was expecting at all. Obviously the book has a reputation, which is why I wanted to read it, to see what all the fuss was about. But it's not as scandalous as it's made out to be, not by today's standards anyway.The story is a bit of a cliche now, lady of the house is bored with married life so has an affair with a servant. But I could put up with that because this book is beautifully written.I enjoyed reading the political opinions of the characters, even though I didn't understand a few things they mentioned. I also really enjoyed seeing the relationship of Connie and Mellors develop. It was really easy to get sucked into the characters' minds and understand how they were feeling.
    • 3/5
      I picked it up because I was curious to see what one of the so-called sexiest books ever could have going on with it. I was more impressed with the actual story than I was with the sex. It had an excellent running commentary about the destruction of tradition and humanity through industrialization.
    • 4/5
       This wasn't quite what I expected. It is certainly difficult to see what made it quite so controversial when first published; the sex is by no means explicit and is dealt with briefly. Maybe the fact the lady of the house had an affair with the gamekeeper worried the solid men who argued against it...



      I thought it was a good read, as the characters evolve throughout the book. Connie grows as Clifford withdraws from her and life. The whole thing balances on several axes.
    • 2/5
      Oh boy. More sex and mildly interesting musings on society. I've read fanfiction with better sex in it. I kept chuckling at the penis nicknaming.
    • 2/5
      Still making my mind up about this, might change it to 3 stars later.
    • 3/5
      don't quite know what lawrence was trying to do. ok story but not presented in a very interesting way.
    • 4/5
      Clifford Chatterley returns from WW1 wheelchair bound, and with his young wife Connie goes to manage Wragby, the family estate, in an industrial area in the english midlands. While initially happily married, Connie's desire for a child gains tacit approval from the sexless Clifford. An unexpected meeting with the estate's game keeper and the ensuing affair awakens Connie to a sexuality she did not know existed.I did not immediately take to the book, but enjoyed it more once the rythm of the story was established It is certainly easy to understand why it created such a stir when originally published
    • 4/5
      A very good read and highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      **WARNING: This review contains a discussion of the c-word, and I plan to use it. Please don't read this if you do not want to see the word spelled out. Thanks.**This is less a review than an homage to my crazy mother (now I have you really intrigued, don't I?)It was 1983, and I was in my first Catholic school. I'd spent my first six years of school in a public school, but my "behavioral issues" coupled with my lack of growth made me a target for bullies, so my parents were advised to move me to another school where no one knew me.So off I went to the home room of a fallen nun, who'd given up her habit for a family. She wasn't much of a teacher. She was an old school Catholic educator who practiced punitive teaching, which included kicks to the shins, yanking of ears, pulling of hair, and screaming from close range.I kept my head down and tried to blend in with my new surroundings, but my Mother made that difficult from the get go. I was a voracious reader, and she passed on the disease to me. From grade two on she had been recommending great books to me. I was reading everything before most everyone else, but my Mom's recommendation of Lady Chatterly's Lover in my first month of Catholic school was probably her most outrageous and unforgettable recommendation. She bought me a copy at the book store in the mall, and that's where I met one of my favourite words of all time -- cunt. Back in 1983, cunt was not a word in your average child's vocabulary. Sure we'd heard it, and maybe even seen it, but it was not something that was regularly used by kids, and its usage was pretty vague to every 13 year old I knew.But there it was in Lady Chatterly's Lover. It was all over the place. So as I read the story and absorbed the way Lawrence used cunt, his usage became my usage. Lawrence used cunt beautifully; it was not a term of denigration; it was not used to belittle; it was not an insult nor something to be ashamed of; cunt was lyrical, romantic, caring, intimate. And I came to believe that cunt was meant to be used in all these ways. That the poetic use of cunt was the accepted use of cunt, the correct use of cunt, and suddenly cunt was part of my vocabulary. I was thirteen.Now I didn't just start running around using cunt at every opportunity. I did what I always did with new words that I came to know and love. I added them to my vocabulary and used them when I thought it was appropriate.And when I whispered it to Tammy, the girl I had a crush on, a few weeks later, thinking that it was the sort of romantic, poetic language that made women fall in love with their men (I can't remember what I said with it, but I know it was something very much like what Mellors would have said to Constance), she turned around with a deep blush, a raised eyebrow and a "That's disgusting" that rang through the class (I can still see the red of autumn leaves that colored her perfectly alabaster skin under a shock of curly black hair, aaaah...Tammy. Apparently she had a better sense of cunt's societal taboos than I did). Mrs. C--- was on her feet and standing parallel to the two of us in a second, demanding to know what was going on.To her credit, Tammy tried to save me -- sort of. She said "Nothing." Then Mrs. C--- turned on me; I was completely mortified (I'd obviously blown it with the first girl I loved in junior high school), and while I was in this shrinking state, Mrs. C--- demanded to know what was happening and what I had said. I tried to avoid repeating what I had said. I admitted I shouldn't have been talking. I admitted that I should have been working. I tried to divert her attention. But she was a scary lady, and I couldn't help myself. I repeated what I had said -- as quietly as I could -- but as soon as Mrs. C--- heard "cunt" I was finished. That was the moment I knew "cunt" was the catalyst for the whole debacle. Now...I'd known before that the word was taboo, but I didn't think it would generate the response it did. I really thought that Tammy would be flattered. And I certainly didn't expect that I would be dragged to the office by an angry ex-nun. Silly me. I got the strap. It was the first time (although there would be another). Three lashes to the palm of the hand.I didn't use "cunt" in public or private for a long time after that, but my punishment couldn't diminish my love for the word. Lawrence made such and impression on my young mind that neither humiliation nor physical pain could overcome my appreciation of cunt's poetic qualities. To me the word is and always will be a beautiful and, yes, gentle thing.Every time that event was recounted at the dinner table over the years, whether it was amongst family, or with my girlfriends or my future wife, my Mom always got this sly little grin on her face and indulged in a mischievous giggle before refusing to take the blame for me getting the strap. After all, "Who was the one who was stupid enough to use the word, Brad? Not me."I love her response as much as I love the word. And in case you were wondering, my Mom never stopped recommending books to me. She was an absolute kook. I miss her. I can't wait to pass on Lady Chatterly's Lover to my kids...but I think it's going to have to be in grade three if it's going to have the same effect it had on me...hmmm...I wonder how that will go over.
    • 3/5
      When I began reading Lady Chatterley's Lover---the first complete, unexpurgated version published in the United States (in 1959)---I thought it was going to be like Peyton Place: I would be able to see how it might have been shocking at the time, but compared to modern works, it would seem quite tame. Instead, the sex scenes were written incredibly explicitly, and I find them fairly edgy even from a modern perspective. But the thing that saves the sex from being gratuitous and merely pornographic is that it serves a higher narrative purpose than mere titillation (but barely. Which is not intended as a pun. I think it might be impossible to write about this book without a number of unintentional puns).

      Lawrence uses sex to illustrate the central conflict between the intellectual and the physical. Connie initially is described in very physical terms. She's a sturdy Scottish lass, a womanly creature unlike the thin, boyish figures popular for women at that time (the 1920's). She's "full of unused energy," Lawrence tells us. She's not inexperienced in sexual matters, but she sidelines their importance in favor of intellectual intimacy. She goes so far as to marry Clifford, a man for whom sex is also a small matter.

      "No, the intimacy was deeper, more personal than that. And sex was merely an accident, or an adjunct, one of the curious obsolete, organic processes which persisted in its own clumsiness, but was not really necessary."

      When her new husband returns home from the war paralyzed, their relationship turns almost entirely to the intellectual, with the exception of the everyday care-taking of Clifford's physical self, which he insists that Connie---and only Connie---provide for him.

      For a period, Connie is satisfied by the intimacy of their intellectual connection, but after a while, she begins to grow restless. There's this "unused energy" that she's tried to deny, this draw to the physical that she tries to reason herself out of, to no avail. Gradually, she comes to dislike Clifford and seeks to withdraw from him.

      "Between him and Connie there was a tension that each pretended not to notice, but there it was. Suddenly, with all the force of her female instinct, she was shoving him off. She wanted to be clear of him, and especially of his consciousness, his words, his obsession with himself, his endless treadmill obsession with himself, and his own words."

      She outsources Clifford's physical care to a hired servant and distances herself from their intellectual connection, eventually leaving nothing at all between them. Then Mellors enters the story. He is a man who is not unintelligent but who chooses to live and connect more through the body than through the intellect. With him, Connie is drawn into a deeper intimacy than she's ever experienced through intellectual connection.

      In this book, the denial of the physical is evident not just in the bedroom. Everywhere we see the pursuit of profit and intellectual innovation trumping the physical. Lawrence shows us the coal mine, in which the miners toil for three shifts a day, trudging home physically lopsided, deformed by the unnatural work they do underground. He shows us the unnaturally stark light in the bald patch of the forest where a stand of old-growth trees was chopped down to support the war effort. He shows us the ugliness of the town, erected in haste and without care to support the labor needs of the mines. We smell the choking fumes of the mills, so incongruous but so intractable in the otherwise idyllic English countryside.

      The blame for this dangerous and lopsided shift to the intellectual over the physical is borne by both the individual and the culture. The individual is carried away by the prejudices of the culture and the pressures of class, and he feels impotent to effect change. But Lawrence shows us that this is a willing impotence. The individual knows inwardly that there is something missing, something awry, but he refuses to confront it head-on, preferring to sublimate it. When it becomes so apparent that it he can no longer deny it, this missing bit breaks him.

      I can see that Lawrence has shown us this process using sex as the centerpiece. I can see that it's fitting. It's an act and a drive that is so basic and so commonly denied and tabooed by the culture even nearly 100 years after Lawrence wrote Lady Chatterley's Lover that it makes sense to use it to illustrate the denial of the physical in favor of the intellectual. But some of it didn't ring true to me when it came down to a one-man-one-woman level. The initial sexual encounter between Connie and Mellors seemed like it came almost out of nowhere. There was a build-up to it, the tension between the two parties, but it was subtle in contrast to the stark description of the consummation. When it happened, I was like, "Really? Just like that?"

      I didn't really see what drew Connie and Mellors to one another. Once they were together, once I as a reader accepted their closeness to one another, the progression and the deepening intimacy made sense, but the initial couple of encounters seemed unlikely to me. In addition, the language around sex was kind of awkward. If I ever go back and read this book again, I'm going to underline every occurrence of the words "loins" and "womb." I swear they must appear five times on each page. And while I won't go into details, there are really a lot of assumptions that I find distasteful about just what's acceptable and "valid" when it comes to sex---and this is among the participants in the explicit sex scenes, not those trying to deny it.

      For me, the saving grace of the book and what makes it unique among the books that I've read is that the sex really is a vehicle for addressing a broader theme. Even in all its explicitness and all of its assumptions, the sex in this book can really just be looked at as another way of experiencing the physical and making a connection with another person. In the end, I find the book to be about balance and about the danger---to ourselves, to others, to nature and the world at large---of denying an aspect of ourselves.

      It's an interesting read, but definitely not one I want my seven-year-old to open up and say, "What are you reading, Mommy?"
    • 4/5
      "Lady Chatterly's Lover" caught my attention as soon as I began reading it. The characters were very realistic, and I liked the elegant, drama-filled writing.The storyline is about an affair. Connie Chatterly is married to a man who has been paralyzed from the waist down. Not only is her husband incapable of performing sexually, but the main character does not love him. So when Connie meets Mellors, a mysterious gamekeeper who works on her husband's estate, she is drawn to him both romantically and sexually. They begin a heated affair, prompting Connie to think about her life, and what she wants from it. For Lawrence's time, this book was shocking. Even today, it is obvious that the author's intention was to surprise the less open minded. This book contains a lot of sex - and I loved the old fashioned descriptions and words used. They simply felt out of place with the X-rated scenes, a combination that I liked.I loved the characters in this book, especially the three main persons of Connie, her husband, and Mellors. They were remarkably realistic. The only thing that I didn't like about this book was that it was so long winded. Much of the book was, though not painful, certainly tedious reading. But, overall, I enjoyed reading my first D.H. Lawrence.
    • 5/5
      A shocking affair between a frustrated wife and the gamekeeper on her estate is explicitly explored in this beautiful novel. Originally banned as pornography, this novel lives up to the hype surrounding it. You must read it!
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed the story for its depiction of Connie's journey and, to a lesser extent, Mellors's as well. I also thought Lawrence's depiction of Sir Clifford "Life of the Mind" Chatterley was masterful. The author allowed Sir Clifford to reveal his blind spots and psychoses without being preachy or patronizing. I might have titled the book "Lady Chatterley's Cuckold".
    • 3/5
      I can see why this was so controversial in the past, but the language and images are definitely mild by today's standards. A lyrical story of sexual awakening. I would recommend reading this back-to-back with [Their Eyes Were Watching God] by [[Zora Neale Hurston]], another excellent story of sexual awakening.
    • 5/5
      Another treat. Thanks Mr. Lawrence... Apart from the abstract world of ideas, Lawrence showed his readers that he can also be strongly physical and down to the fleshy earth. A very erotic novel.
    • 2/5
      I can't say I was particularly enamoured with this, although I am glad I have read it. Perhaps it just wasn't what I expected it to be. I found the political/class war aspect rather dull and all of the characters pretty unsympathetic. Both Clifford and Connie both seemed rather caught up in their own misery and self-loathing and I often wondered whether Mellors actually even liked Connie let alone loved her. To be honest I felt like giving them all a good kick up the backside. I thought the sex scenes, for which the book was banned for so many years, were neither tame nor overly offensive , just provocative, as if Lawerence had incuded them deliberately for the shock value at the time.
    • 5/5
      Wow...D.H. Lawrence's descriptive talent is alive in this novel. The sexual content, that was so controversial shortly after it's publication, is woven within the story with good taste and is, by no means, smutty or offensive. Like John Travolta said in "Phenomenon"...it is a guide to a woman's heart and emotions.
    • 2/5
      The least execrable of Lawrence's work but still the most easily parodied. At least it's short, which is more than one can say for 'The Rainbow'.
    • 3/5
      I won't discount this book, since it has had a profound effect on the history of literature, and it's good. But it's not my favorite of Lawrence, nor is it entirely well written. It seems like most of its fame is a result of it being controversial, rather than groundbreaking in a literary sense. It is good, it's just not up there with Sons and Lovers in my list of favorites.
    • 4/5
      At the end of the first page, you already have an appreciation for Lawrence's talent as a writer. This work is a classic because he applies that talent to convey both the stark reality and the subtle nuances of human relationships - even our human state in modern times (e.g, "And that is how we are. By strength of will we cut off our inner intuitive knowledge from our admitted consciousness. This causes a state of dread, or apprehension, which makes the blow ten times worse when it does fall."). Lawrence wrote a propos that explains his intent and expands on his points. He believed that modern man and woman had lost touch with their real emotions, especially about love. They were instead getting by on counterfeit feelings, almost to the point of completely obliterating the real human sense. And this played out in marriage more significantly because of the role of marriage in society.
    • 3/5
      Wasn't impressed at all. I think I read it expecting really salacious stuff, and was completely blind to its qualities. So I'm due for a re-read.
    • 5/5
      The book hasn't lost its freshness and realistic significance even today! As a male writer, Lawrence's understanding of women is frighteningly profound and precise, and he didn't hesitate to explore to the depth. I can understand why it was banned because of not only the explicit sex descriptions, but also, and more important, the symbolic meaning behind Constance's sexual awakening - which would shake the English gentry class to its foundations.
    • 4/5
      Up until I read this, I hadn't imagined that any 'older' books could tackle the sort of topics that Lawrence tackles in Lady Chatterly's Lover. His insights made me look out especially for his other books.
    • 5/5
      There are a few things you need to get past in order to truly enjoy this book. It was banned and controversial, the book also focuses explicitly at times on the sexual relationships of the characters. You have to look beyond those things to truly understand what this book is about. Its about relationships but it more focuses on women's struggle with their own sexuality and being a good wife. As women we are taught to be dutiful wives, to worry more about our husbands and families than ourselves. Our sexuality is dirty or shameful. The book explores Constance's struggle against what she should do and her need to follow what she wants to do. I loved this book and could really identify with Constance's dilemmas throughout this book. I gave it 5 stars.
    • 3/5
      While at first I was impressed by Lady Chatterley's independence, half-way through the novel she reminded me of a needy teenager in lust. It was an easy read with a fairly interesting plot, but several of the characters are annoying. I understand why it was banned from the US for as long as it was: there were words in print here that I still rarely see now. The sex scenes are also fairly explicit, but written in a style that now seems hilarious.
    • 2/5
      Interesting and groundbreaking - I guess, but not very good.
    • 5/5
      Very sexy, and very raw. Not written with pretty words or to many analagies or any type of fluff. This book is just about the amazing passion and sensuality that exists within us.
    • 3/5
      The last DH Lawrence book I read was Sons & Lovers, a required novel for my grade 12 english class. At the time, I remember saying that I liked it, but found the surface of Lawrence's writing impenetrable (a nice irony for a man so concerned with sexual freedom). I always think kids reading this novel for the sexy bits; but I have to say that once Lady Chatterly actually got with the gamekeeper, that's when I lost interest. I found the negotiations and tension leading up to it more interesting; the post-coital dialogue becomes more pedantic.
    • 3/5
      D.H. Lawrence is such an interesting writer that even his failures are worth reading, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover is a bit of a failure. Today, with virulent pornography always a click away, I expected the famous sexy bits of this book to lose their shock, but I did not expect them to be comic. Yet they were, unless you do not find tropes such as “mound of Venus” rather funny. Still, these howlers came as a relief, because Lady Chatterley’s Lover is starkly humorless. Whether describing the miasma of industrialization or the rapacious drive of the clitoris, D.H. Lawrence is in deadly earnest. He shouts from the pulpit, and righteousness can never afford much laughter. So why read it? First and least, the text is an historical landmark in development of the English novel, both for it’s famous sexual content and the even more famous censorship battles it inspired. But historical landmarks are often bores to read, and Lady Chatterley Lover, for all it’s flaws, still engages. Much of it’s allure stems from the profound and maverick strangeness of the author’s mind. By the time Lady was written, decrying the evils of industrialization was common practice. But Lawrence surpassed all his peers in pure rage. Unlike the well-to-do members of the Bloomsbury group, Lawrence was a coalminer’s son who personally witnessed the mines physically and mentally cripple the community of his childhood. Add to this fact his atavistic love of nature, rarely shared by his modernist colleagues, and imagine him watching factories level the forests and pollute the air. It was a shock to me to discover that a seemingly erotic novel turned out so unconditionally angry. And this anger explains in part why Lady still has an edge; the sex may seem silly and tame, but the molten rage beneath it continues to unnerve. Much to his credit, Lawrence did not merely condemn industrial society, he proposed an alternative. Now, his solution, taken in the extreme manner in which he believed in it, is where the book shows its age. “Organic Fucking” is the best summary I can give his vision of redemption. It is the fierce ancestor of the milk toast “Make Love Not War” ethos of the 1960s. “Mound of Venus” references aside, I believe Lawrence would ultimately reject the willed naiveté of the hippy movement; he was too discerning, too acquainted with struggle and sacrifice, to merely hold up the flower and bliss out. But both Lawrence and the flower children drew on adolescent fantasies in order to overthrow grim realities. Like all utopian visions, it ultimately failed. Lawrence shares this fate with another articulate and outraged enemy of industrialization, John Ruskin. Yet while their respective solutions failed, Lawrence and Ruskin’s fiery salvos against modernity cannot be easily dismissed, nor can their willingness, at great personal sacrifice, to try and build a better world than the one they saw around them. But Lawrence’s fighting spirit does not mark the beginning and end of his appeal. While even in his more successful works his writing is uneven, with clods of purple pose choking the flow of the page, at is best it is nigh perfect: sensuous yet limpid, reaching depths of emotion that seldom surface on the cool waters of English prose. At times he manages to combine dazzling complexity of language with a irresistible primitivism of feeling, like a frightening ancient and barbaric statue wrapped in exquisite lace. Once more, his insight into the relationships of men and women are unsurpassed in all of English literature. No one has written on that ancient subject with such honesty, observation, and intelligence. And this is the real reason that I still enjoy Lawrence, for all of his flaws. As I write this I have been married to a woman for five years, and I hope for many years to come. Lawrence helps me make sense, and ultimately helps me better appreciate, this wonderful, frightening, protean, beloved, despairing, baffling, joyous, mercurial bond that is a cornerstone of my life.