Both the most famous and the most damaging works of D. H. Lawrence's career, Lady Chatterley's Lover is a story mainly concerning female desire and sexual satisfaction – one of the first books to realise the importance of these things. Largely condemned for being explicit, the book was banned after a trial, and that made people all the more keen to get their hands on a copy in the 60s, when it was THE book to be seen reading. Lady Chatterley's husband is paralysed in the war, and therfore cannot satisfy her sexually. Encouraged by him to seek fulfilment in another, she embarks upon a passionate and confusing affair with the groundskeeper, which is both steamy and dangerous for both of them.
eMusic Review 0
09.15.08
D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover
2008 | Label: CSA Word
Canonical literature, yes — but also a dirty book, and a still-subversive one at that
Like Henry James and Herman Melville, D. H. Lawrence can be an intimidating author — that “classic” designation can turn otherwise intelligent and voracious readers all anxious and avoidant. Please note, however, that the check-this-one-off-the-list accomplishment factor turns out to be only a secondary benefit of Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. They didn’t ban this one for most of the 20th century for nothing — this book really is dirty, and not just by early 20th-century standards. First published in Italy in 1928, the novel was not legally available in Lawrence’s native United Kingdom until 1960.
But Lady Chatterley is more than just a novel about mistress/gamekeeper sex. Lawrence’s examination of repression and the search for a woman’s physical and emotional freedom recalls Kate Chopin‘s The Awakening. Likewise, the little-discussed “lover,” Oliver Mellors, requires as much liberation as our heroine; the strictures of pre-1960s carnality did not apply solely to women. Mellors suffers as much as Lady Chatterley, and their connection gives the novel romantic grace as well as sexual power.
Lady Chatterley is an especially appropriate book to hear aloud rather than read in private. Lawrence hoped to open his readers’ minds and bodies to new ideas about themselves and society. What better way to appreciate his success than to turn the volume high and revel in the strange tale of Constance Chatterley’s — and Oliver Mellors’ — difficult, imperfect liberation?
