DH Lawrence and Lady Chatterley: More

Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence 

published 1928

Lady C -  outside in the grounds dressed in blue

 

I explained in my previous post

Lady Chat Chat – Uncensored

 

 how I was inspired to read Lady Chatterley’s Lover again by Guy Cuthbertson’s work about it.

It was more than 50 years since I first read it, and some parts were very memorable – flowers on the lovers’ bodies, dancing naked in the rain. It all comes flooding back. The red trousers, Mellors’ views on orgasm and his mad views of women which should be misogynistic but aren’t quite as bad as all that (apart from wanting to kill all the lesbians). At least he’s interested in women’s orgasms, while having predictably black and white views on them.

I couldn’t remember how the story  ended, which isn’t surprising when you read it again, as it is an unsatisfactory and unresolved ending. Is the reader meant to guess what will happen to them? Screen adaptations tend to have something more definite in the end. The Ken Russell TV version, which has the Isle of Wight ferry standing in for an Atlantic liner, and Brian Blessed mugging away in a cameo as a naval officer, is a particular standout.

It can seem to modern readers that Clifford, while obviously annoying and entitled, gets a raw deal. He is Lady C’s husband: his war injuries mean he is paralyzed from the waist down. Readers can feel that it is understandable that he is a bit difficult, and he at least tries to see how hard life is for Connie too, telling her flatly that she should take a lover and get herself pregnant to give him an heir.

Guy’s book helped me a lot with this, with his perception that Clifford and Mellors are both Lawrence, the two sides of him: he wants to be Mellors but has huge health problems.

Adultery in the 1920s featured in another recent post

Early 20C morals: Adultery and Redemption

-though I thought that book had a vibe from earlier days. And I have recently read a Winifred Holtby book which fits somewhere in between the von Arnim and the Lawrence. I didn’t draw any great conclusion about morals, except for the rather anodyne ‘times were changing’ and that the Charleston dance (originating in 1923) features in two of them.

I very much enjoyed most of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, but would be ambling along reading it when it would go completely off the rails, with eg Lawrence’s strange descriptions of women having sex, and a character saying ‘Fellows with swaying waists f--ing little jazz girls with small boy buttocks, like two collar studs!’-  that whole conversation (several pages long) is one that I’d be quite taken aback by in a social situation even today.

And the most utterly unbelievable moment comes when Connie’s father, Malcolm Reid, takes Mellors out to lunch late on in the book:

 

‘Well, young man, and what about my daughter?’

The grin flickered on Mellors’ face. ‘Well, Sir, and what about her?’...

Sir Malcolm gave a little squirting laugh, and became Scotch and lewd. ‘How was the going, eh? Good, my boy, what?’

‘Good!’

‘I’ll bet it was! Ha-ha! My daughter, chip of the old block, what! I never went back on a good bit of fucking, myself. Though her mother, oh, holy saints!’ He rolled his eyes to heaven. ‘But you warmed her up, oh, you warmed her up, I can see that. Ha-ha! My blood in her! You set fire to her haystack all right. Ha-ha-ha! I was jolly glad of it, I can tell you. She needed it. Oh, she’s a nice girl, she’s a nice girl, and I knew she’d be good going, if only some damned man would set her stack on fire! Ha-ha-ha! A game-keeper, eh, my boy! Bloody good poacher, if you ask me. Ha-ha! ‘

This goes on and on, and it would be sickmaking as well as cringemaking except that it is so completely unbelievable. Ken Russell plays the father in his adaptation so gets to speak some of it. Reid is an artist – y'know, Bohemian - but this does not make it any more likely.

The KR version is 1993, and Guy makes the excellent point that Joely Richardson as Connie resembles Diana Princess of Wales (going through a hard time in her own life in that year) in her clothes and general appearance.

There is not much in the book about clothes - Connie has a blue dress above, and Mellors is described thus:

He was a man in dark green velveteens and gaiters… the old style, with a red face and red moustache and distant eyes. He was going quickly downhill.

(He is moving down a slope, not heading for disaster, though in any other book I would assume the author intended a metaphor. Not this one)

 

A book of 1907 describes a gamekeeper thus: shabby corduroys and gaiters, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. (Although in this case it is a mistake, and the man is much more appealing, so some similarity). This post has a quick look at which professions wore gaiters.

 I used that lovely gamekeeper-in-the-snow picture for this entry:

New Year’s Day with Mrs Bradley

 & there is a long discussion of gamekeepers in the post, and in the comments below.

This picture looks like the perfect gamekeeper, a handsome one, but isn't at all... see link below.

I hugely enjoyed re-reading the book, and am grateful for Guy's commentary for making me revisit it, and illuminating so much.

As ever - can't ever predict what readers will focus on: in the earlier post it was Connie's trip with her sister to visit Germany just before WW1. They are studying music, learning about life, and meeting men. We are alll thinking of other examples (and there are A LOT) and wondering about the intricacies of that. Please add your own to either post. Was it the early 20 C version of a gap year?

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