情与欲 》 查太萊夫人的情人 Lady Chatterley's Lover 》
第一章 CHAPTER 1
勞倫斯 David Herbert Lawrence
CHAPTER 1
 查太莱夫人的情人 第一章
第一章
我們根本就生活在一個悲劇的時代，因此我們不願驚惶自憂。大災難已經來臨，我們處於廢墟之中，我們開始建立一些新的小小的棲息地，懷抱一些新的微小的希望。這是一種頗為艱難的工作。現在沒有一條通嚮未來的康莊大道，但是我們卻迂回前進，或攀援障礙而過。不管天翻地覆，我們都得生活。
這大概就是康士丹斯·查太萊夫人的處境了。她曾親嘗世界大戰的災難，因此她瞭解了一個人必要生活，必要求知。
她在一九一七年大戰中和剋利福·查太萊結婚，那時他請了一個月的假回到英國來。他們度了一個月的蜜月後，剋利福回到佛蘭大斯前綫去。六個月後，他一身破碎地被運返英國來，那時康士丹斯二十三歲，他是二十九歲。
他有一種驚奇的生命力。他並沒有死。他的一身破碎似乎重臺了。醫生把他醫治了兩年了，結果僅以身免。可是腰部以下的半身，從此永久成了瘋癱。
一九二零年，剋利福和康士丹斯回到他的世代者傢勒格貝去。他的父親已死了；剋利福承襲了爵位，他是剋利福男爵，康士丹斯便是查太萊男爵夫人了。他們來到這有點零丁的查太萊老傢裏，開始共同的生活，收入是不太充裕的。剋利福除了一個不在一起住的姊妹外，並沒有其他的近親，他的長兄在大戰中陣亡了。剋利福明知自己半身殘疾，生育的希望是絶滅了，因此回到煙霧沉沉的米德蘭傢裏來，盡人事地使查泰萊傢的煙火維持下去。
他實在並不頽喪。他可以坐在一輪椅裏，來去優遊。他還有一個裝了發動機的自動椅，這一來，他可以自己駕駛着，慢慢地繞過花園而到那美麗的凄清的大林園裏去；他對於這個大林園，雖然表示得滿不在乎的樣子，其實他是非常得意的。
他曾飽經苦難，緻他受苦的能力都有點窮乏了。可是他卻依然這樣奇特、活潑、愉快，紅潤的健康的臉容，挑撥人的閃光的灰藍眼睛，他簡直可說是個樂天安命的人。他有寬大強壯的肩膊，兩衹有力的手。他穿的是華貴的衣服，結的是幫德街買來的講究的領帶。可是他的臉上卻仍然表示着一個殘廢者的呆視的狀態和有點空虛的樣子。
他因為曾離死衹間一發，所以這剩下的生命，於他是十分可貴的。他的不安地閃着光的眼睛，流露着死裏生還的非常得意的神情，但是他受的傷是太重了，他裏面的什麽東西已經死滅了，某種感情已經沒有了，剩下的衹是個無知覺的空洞。
康士丹斯是個健康的村姑佯兒的女子，軟軟的褐色的頭髮，強壯的身體，遲緩的舉止，但是富有非常的精力。她有兩衹好奇的大眼睛。溫軟的聲音，好象是個初出鄉廬的人，其實不然。她的父親麥爾·勒德爵士，是個曾經享有鼎鼎大名的皇傢藝術學會的會員。母親是個有教養的費邊社社員。在藝術傢與社會主義者的誼染中，康士丹斯和她的婉妹希爾達，受了一種可以稱為美育地非傳統的教養。她們到過巴黎、羅馬、佛羅倫斯呼吸藝術的空氣，她們也到過海牙、柏林去參加社會主義者的大會，在這些大會裏，演說的人用着所有的文明語言，毫無羞愧。
這樣，這婉妹倆從小就盡情地生活在美術和的氛圍中，她們已習損了。她們一方面是世界的，一方面又是鄉土的。她們這種世界而又鄉土的美術主義，是和純潔的社會理想相吻合的。
她們十五歲的時候，到德國德纍斯頓學習音樂。她們在那裏過的是快活的日子。她們無園無束地生活在學生中間，她們和男子們爭論着哲學、社會學和藝術上的種種問題。她們的學識並不下於男子；因為是女子，所以更勝於他們了。強壯的青年男子們，帶着六弦琴和她們到林中漫遊。她們歌唱着，歌喉動人的青年們，在曠野間，在清晨的林中奔竄，自由地為所欲為，尤其是自由地談所欲談。最要緊的還是談話，熱情的談話，愛情不過是件小小的陪襯品。
希爾達和康士丹斯婉妹倆，都曾在十八歲的時候初試愛情。那些熱情地和她們交談，歡快地和她們歌唱，自由自在地和她們在林中野宿的男子們，不用說都欲望勃勃地想更進一步。她們起初是躊躇着；但是愛情這問題已經過許多的討論，而且被認為是最重要的東西了，況且男子們又是這樣低聲下氣地央求。為什麽一個少女不能以身相就，象一個王後似的賜予思惠呢？
於是她們都賜身與平素最微妙、最親密在一起討論的男子了。辯論是重要的事情，戀愛和性交不過是一種原始的本能；一種反應，事後，她們對於對手的愛情冷挑了，而且有點憎很他們的傾嚮，仿佛他們侵犯了她們的秘密和自由似的。因為一個少女的尊嚴，和她的生存意義，全在獲得絶對的、完全的、純粹的、高尚的自由。要不是擺脫了從前的污穢的兩性關係和可恥的主奴狀態，一個少女的生命還有什麽意義。
無論人怎樣感情用事，性愛總是各種最古老、最宿穢的結合和從屬狀態之一。歌頌性愛的詩人們大都是男子。女子們‘嚮就知道有更好更高尚的東西。現在她們知之更確了。一個人的美麗純潔的自由，是比任何性愛都可愛的。不過男子對於這點的看法太落後了，她們象狗似的堅要性的滿足。
可是女人不得不退讓，男於是象孩子般的嘴饞的，他要什麽女人便得繪什麽，否則他便孩子似的討厭起來，暴躁起來把好事弄糟。，但是個女人可以順從男子，而不恨讓她內在的、自由的自我。那些高談性愛的詩人和其他的人好象不大註意到這點。一個女人是可以有個男子，而不真正委身r讓他支配的。反之，她可以利用這性愛去支配他。在性交的時候，她自己忍持着，讓男子盡先盡情地發泄完了，然而她便可以把性交延長，而把他當作工具去滿足她自目的性欲。
當大戰爆發，她們急忙回傢的時候，婉妹倆都有了愛情的經驗了。她們所以戀愛，全是因為對手是可以親切地、熱烈地談心的男子。和真正聰明的青年男子，一點鐘又一點鐘地，一天又一天地，熱情地談話，這種驚人的、深刻的、意想不到的美妙，是她們在經驗以前所不知道的，天國的諾言：“您將有可以談心的男子。”還沒有吐露，而這奇妙的諾言卻在她們明白其意義之前實現了。
在這些生動的、毫無隱諱的、親密的談心過後，性行為成為不可避免的了，那衹好忍受。那象是一章的結尾，它本身也是令人情熱的；那是肉體深處的一種奇特的、美妙的震顫，最後是一種自我决定的痙攣。宛如最後—個奮激的宇，和一段文字後一行表示題意中斷的小點子一樣。
一九一三年暑假她們回傢的時候，那時希爾達二十歲，康妮①十八歲，她們的父親便看出這婉妹倆已有了愛的經驗了。
①康妮，康士丹斯的呢稱。
好象誰說的：“愛情已在那兒經歷過了。”但是他自已是個過來人，所以他聽其自然。至於她們的母親呢，那時她患着神經上的瘋疾，離死不過幾月了，她但願她的女兒們能夠“自由”，能夠“成就”。但是她自己從沒有成就過什麽，她簡直不能。上代知道那是什麽緣故，因為她是個人進款和意志堅強的人。她埋怨她的丈夫。其實衹是因為她不能擺脫心靈上的某種強有力的壓製罷了。那和麥爾肯爵士是無關的，他不理她的埋怨和仇視，他們各行其事。所以妹妹倆是“自由”的。她們回到德纍斯頓，重度往日學習音樂，在大學聽講，與年青男子們交際的生活。她們各自戀着她們的男子，她們的男子也熱戀着她們。所有青年男子所能想，所能說所能寫的美妙的東西，他們都為這兩個而想、而說、而寫。康妮的情人是愛音樂的，希爾達的情人是技術傢。至少在精神方面，他們全為這兩個生活着。另外的什麽方面，他們是被人厭惡的；但是他們自己並不知道。
狠明顯；愛情——肉體的愛——已在他們身上經過了。肉體的愛，使男子身體發生奇異的、微妙的、顯然的變化。女子是更豔麗了，更微妙地了，少女時代的粗糙處全消失了，臉上露出渴望的或勝利的情態。男子是更沉靜了，更深刻了，即肩膊和臀部也不象從前硬直了。
這姊妹倆在性的快感中，幾乎在男性的奇異的權力下面屈服了。但是很快她們便自撥了，把性的快感看作一種感覺，而保持了她們的自由。至於她們的情人呢，因為感激她們所賜與的性的滿足，便把靈魂交給她們。但是不久，他們又有點覺得得不嘗失了。康妮的男子開始有點負氣的樣子，希爾達的對手也漸漸態度輕衊起來。但是男子們就是這樣的；忘恩負義而永不滿足！你要他們的時候，他們憎恨你，因為你要他們。你不睬他們的時候，他們還是憎恨你，因為旁的什麽理由。或者毫無理由。他們是不知足的孩子，無論得到什麽，無論女子怎樣，都不滿意的。
大戰爆發了。希爾達和康妮又匆匆回傢——她們在五月已經回傢一次，那時是為了母親的喪事。她們的兩個德國情人，在一九一四年聖誕節都死了，姊妹倆戀戀地痛哭了一場，但是心裏卻把他們忘掉了，他們再也不存在了。
她們都住在新根洞她們父親的——其實是她們母親的傢裏。她們和那些擁護“自由”，穿法蘭絨褲和法蘭絨開領襯衣的劍橋大學學生們往來。這些學生是一種上流的感情的無政府主義者，說起話來，聲音又低又濁，儀態力求講究。希爾達突然和一個比她大十歲的人結了婚。她是這劍橋學生團體的一個者前輩，傢財富有，而且在政府裏有個好差事，他也寫點哲學上的文章。她和他住在威士明斯泰的一所小屋裏，來往的是政府人物，他們雖不是了不起的人，卻是——或希望是——國中有權威的知識分子。他們知道自己所說的是什麽或者裝做知道。
康妮得了個戰時輕易的工作，和那些嘲笑一切的，穿法蘭絨褲的劍橋學生常在一塊。她的朋友是剋利福·查太萊，一個二十二歲的青年。他原在德國被恩研究煤礦技術，那時他剛從德國匆匆趕回來，他以前也在劍橋大學待過兩年，現在，他是個堂堂的陸軍中尉，穿上了軍服，更可以目空一切了。
在社會地位上看來，剋利福·查太萊是比康妮高的，康妮是屬於小康的知識階級；但他卻是個貴族。雖不是大貴族，但總是貴族。他的父親是個男爵，母親是個子爵的女兒。
剋利福雖比康妮出身高貴，更其上流，但卻沒有她磊落大方。在地主貴族的狹小的上流社會裏，他便覺得安適，但在其他的中産階級、民衆和外國人所組合的大社會裏，他卻覺得怯懦不安了。說實話，他對於中下層階級的大衆和與自己不同階級的外國人，是有點懼怕的。他自己覺得麻木了似的毫無保障；其實他有着所有優先權的保障。這是可怪的，但這是我們時代的一種稀有的現象。
這是為什麽，一個雍容自在的少女康士丹斯·勒德使他顛倒了。她在那復雜渾沌的社會上，比他自然得多了。
然而，他卻是個叛徒，甚至反叛他自己的階級。也許反叛這字用得過火了，太過火了。他衹是跟着普通一般青年的憤恨潮流，反對舊習慣，反對任何權勢罷了。父輩的人都是可笑的，他自己的頑固的父親，尤其可笑。一切政府都是可笑的，投機主義的英國政府，特別可笑，車隊是可笑的，尤其是那些老而不死的將軍們，至於那紅臉的吉治納將軍②更是可笑之至了。甚至戰爭也是可笑的，雖然戰爭要殺不少人。
②吉治納K(itchener)一九一四一一六年英國陸軍部長。
總之，一切都有點可笑，或十分可笑，一切有權威的東西，無論軍隊、政府或可笑到絶點。自命有統治能力的統治階級，也可笑。佐佛來男爵，剋利福的父親，尤其可笑。砍伐着他園裏的樹木，調撥着他煤礦場裏的礦工，和敗草一般地送到戰場上去，他自己便安然在後方，高喊救國，可是他卻人不敷出地為國花錢。
當剋利福的姊妹愛瑪·查太萊小姐從米德蘭到倫敦去做看護工作的時候，她暗地裏嘲笑着佐佛來男爵和他的剛愎的愛國主義。至於他的長於哈白呢，卻公然大笑，雖然砍給戰壕裏用的樹木是他自己的。但是剋利福衹是有點不安的微笑。一切都可笑，那是真的；但這可笑若挨到自己身上來的時候？其他階級的人們，如康妮，是鄭重其事的；他們是有所信仰的。
他們對於軍隊，對於徵兵的恐嚇，對於兒童們的糖與糖果的缺乏，是頗鄭重其事的。這些事情，當然，都是當局的罪過。但是剋利福卻不關心，在他看來，當局本身就是可笑的，而不是因為糖果或軍隊問題。
當局者自己也覺得可笑，卻有點可笑地行動着，一時紊亂得一塌糊塗。直至前方戰事嚴重起來，路易·佐治出來救了國內的局面，這是超乎可笑的，於是目空一切的青年們不再嘲笑了。
一九—六年，剋利福的哥哥哈白陣亡了。因此剋利福成了唯一的繼承人。甚至這個也使他害怕起來。他早就深知生在這查太萊世傢的勒格貝，作佐佛來男爵兒子，是多麽重要的，他决不能逃避他的命運。可是他知道在這沸騰的外面世界的人看來，也是可笑的。現在他是繼承人，是勒格貝世代老傢的負責人，這可不是駭人的事？這可不是顯赫而同時也許是十分荒唐的事？
佐佛來男爵卻不以為有什麽荒唐的地方。他臉色蒼白地、緊張地固執着要救他的祖國和他的地位，不管在位的是路易·佐治或任何人。他擁護英國和路易。佐治，正如他的祖先們擁護英國和聖佐治一樣；他永不明白那兒有什麽不同的地方。所以佐佛來男爵吹伐他的樹木，擁護英國和路易·佐治。
他要剋利福結婚，好生個嗣於，剋利福覺得他的父親是個不可救藥的者頑固。但是他自己，除了會嘲笑一切，和極端嘲笑他自己的處境外，還有什麽比他父親更新穎的呢？因為不管他心願與否，他是十分鄭重其事地接受這爵銜和勒格貝傢産了。
太戰起初時的狂熱消失了。死滅了。因為死的人太多了，恐怖太大了。男子需要扶持和安慰，需要一個鐵錨把他碇泊在安全地下，需要一個妻子。
從前，查太萊兄弟姊妹三人，雖然認識的人多，卻怪孤獨地住在勒格貝傢裏，他們三人的關係是很密切的，因為他們三人覺得孤獨，雖然有爵位和土地(也許正因為這個)，他們卻覺得地位不堅，毫無保障。他們和生長地的米德蘭工業區完全隔絶；他們甚至和同階級的人也隔絶了，因為佐佛來男爵的性情是古怪的，”固執的，不喜與人交往的。他們嘲笑他們的父親，但是他們卻不願人嘲笑他。
他們說過要永久的住在一塊，但是現在哈白已死了。而佐佛來男爵又要剋利福成婚。父親這欲望並不正式表示，i他是很少說話的人，但是他的無言的、靜默地堅持，是使剋利福難以反抗的。
但是，愛瑪卻反對這事！她比剋利福大十歲，她覺得剋利福如果結婚，那便是離叛他們往日的約言。
然而，剋利福終於娶了康妮，和她過了一個月的蜜月生活。那正在可怕的一九一七那一年；夫婦倆親切得恰如正在沉沒的船上的兩個難人。結婚的時候，他還是個童男，所以性的方面，於他是沒有多大意義的。他們衹知相親相愛，康妮覺得這種超乎性欲的男子不求“滿足”的相親相愛，是可喜的。而剋利福也不象別的男子般的追求“滿足”。不，親情是比性交更深刻，更直接的。性交不過是偶然的、附帶的事，不過是一種笨拙地堅持着的官能作用，並不是真正需要的東西。可是康妮卻希翼着生些孩子，好使自己的地位強國起來，去反抗愛瑪。
然而，一九一八年開始的時候，剋利福傷得一身破碎。被運了回來，孩子沒有生成。佐佛來男爵也憂憤中死去了。
Lady Chatterley's Lover is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1928. The first edition was printed in Florence, Italy; it could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960. (A private edition was issued by Inky Stephensen's Mandrake Press in 1929). The book soon became notorious for its story of the physical relationship between a working-class man and an aristocratic woman, its explicit descriptions of sex, and its use of (at the time) unprintable words.
The story is said to have originated from events in Lawrence's own unhappy domestic life, and he took inspiration for the settings of the book from Eastwood in Nottinghamshire where he grew up. According to some critics, the fling of Lady Ottoline Morrell with "Tiger", a young stonemason who came to carve plinths for her garden statues, also influenced the story. Lawrence at one time considered calling the novel Tenderness and made significant alterations to the text and story in the process of its composition. It has been published in three different versions.
Plot introduction
The story concerns a young married woman, Constance (Lady Chatterley), whose upper-class husband, Clifford Chatterley, has been paralyzed and rendered impotent. Her sexual frustration leads her into an affair with the gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. This novel is about Constance's realization that she cannot live with the mind alone; she must also be alive physically.
Main characters
* Lady Chatterley is the protagonist of the novel. Before her marriage, she is simply Constance Reid, an intellectual and social progressive from a Scottish bourgeois family, the daughter of Sir Malcolm and the sister of Hilda. When she marries Clifford Chatterley, a minor nobleman, Constance (or, as she is known throughout the novel, Connie) assumes his title, becoming Lady Chatterley. Lady Chatterley's Lover chronicles Connie's maturation as a woman and as a sensual being. She comes to despise her weak, ineffectual husband, and to love Oliver Mellors, the gamekeeper on her husband's estate. In the process of leaving her husband and conceiving a child with Mellors, Lady Chatterley moves from the heartless, bloodless world of the intelligentsia and aristocracy into a vital and profound connection rooted in sensuality and sexual fulfillment.
* Oliver Mellors is the lover in the novel's title. Mellors is the gamekeeper on Clifford Chatterley's estate, Wragby Hall. He is aloof, sarcastic, intelligent and noble. He was born near Wragby, and worked as a blacksmith until he ran off to the army to escape an unhappy marriage. In the army, he rose to become a commissioned lieutenant — an unusual position for a member of the working classes — but was forced to leave the army because of a case of pneumonia, which left him in poor health. Surprisingly, we learn from different characters' accounts that Mellors was in fact finely educated in his childhood, has good table manners, is an extensive reader, and can speak English 'like a gentleman', but chooses to behave like a commoner and speak broad Derbyshire dialect, probably in an attempt to fit into his own community. Disappointed by a string of unfulfilling love affairs, Mellors lives in quiet isolation, from which he is redeemed by his relationship with Connie: the passion unleashed by their lovemaking forges a profound bond between them. At the end of the novel, Mellors is fired from his job as gamekeeper and works as a laborer on a farm, waiting for a divorce from his old wife so he can marry Connie. Mellors is a man with an innate nobility but who remains impervious to the pettiness and emptiness of conventional society, with access to a primal flame of passion and sensuality.
* Clifford Chatterley is Connie's husband. Clifford Chatterley is a young, handsome baronet who becomes paralyzed from the waist down during World War I. As a result of his injury, Clifford is impotent. He retires to his familial estate, Wragby Hall, where he becomes first a successful writer, and then a powerful businessman. But the gap between Connie and him grows ever wider; obsessed with financial success and fame, he is not truly interested in love, and she feels that he has become passionless and empty. He turns for solace to his nurse and companion, Mrs. Bolton, who worships him as a nobleman even as she despises him for his casual arrogance. Clifford is portrayed as a weak, vain man, but declares his right to rule the lower classes, and he soullessly pursues money and fame through industry and the meaningless manipulation of words. His impotence is symbolic of his failings as a strong, sensual man, and could also represent the increasing loss of importance and influence of the ruling classes in a modern world.
* Mrs. Bolton, also known as Ivy Bolton, is Clifford's nurse and caretaker. She is a competent, still-attractive middle-aged woman. Years before the action in this novel, her husband died in an accident in the mines owned by Clifford's family. Even as Mrs. Bolton resents Clifford as the owner of the mines — and, in a sense, the murderer of her husband — she still maintains a worshipful attitude towards him as the representative of the upper class. Her relationship with Clifford - she simultaneously adores and despises him, while he depends and looks down on her - is probably one of the most complex relationships in the novel.
* Michaelis is a successful Irish playwright with whom Connie has an affair early in the novel. Michaelis asks Connie to marry him, but she decides not to, realizing that he is like all other intellectuals: a slave to success, a purveyor of vain ideas and empty words, passionless.
* Hilda Reid is Connie's older sister by two years, the daughter of Sir Malcolm. Hilda shared Connie's cultured upbringing and intellectual education. She remains unliberated by the raw sensuality that changed Connie's life. She disdains Connie's lover, Mellors, as a member of the lower classes, but in the end she helps Connie to leave Clifford.
* Sir Malcolm Reid is the father of Connie and Hilda. He is an acclaimed painter, an aesthete and a bohemian who despises Clifford for his weakness and impotence, and who immediately warms to Mellors.
* Tommy Dukes, one of Clifford's contemporaries, is a brigadier general in the British Army and a clever and progressive intellectual. Lawrence intimates, however, that Dukes is a representative of all intellectuals: all talk and no action. Dukes speaks of the importance of sensuality, but he himself is incapable of sensuality and uninterested in sex. Of Clifford's circle of friends, he is the one who Connie becomes closest to.
* Duncan Forbes is an artist friend of Connie and Hilda. Forbes paints abstract canvases, a form of art Mellors seems to despise. He once loved Connie, and Connie originally claims to be pregnant with his child.
* Bertha Coutts, although never actually appearing in the novel, has her presence felt. She is Mellors' wife, separated from him but not divorced. Their marriage faltered because of their sexual incompatibility: she was too rapacious, not tender enough. She returns at the end of the novel to spread rumors about Mellors' infidelity to her, and helps get him fired from his position as gamekeeper. As the novel concludes, Mellors is in the process of divorcing her.
Themes
In Lady Chatterley's Lover, Lawrence comes full circle to argue once again for individual regeneration, which can be found only through the relationship between man and woman (and, he asserts sometimes, man and man). Love and personal relationships are the threads that bind this novel together. Lawrence explores a wide range of different types of relationships. The reader sees the brutal, bullying relationship between Mellors and his wife Bertha, who punishes him by preventing his pleasure. There is Tommy Dukes, who has no relationship because he cannot find a woman whom he respects intellectually and, at the same time, finds desirable. There is also the perverse, maternal relationship that ultimately develops between Clifford and Mrs. Bolton, his caring nurse, after Connie has left.
Mind and body
Richard Hoggart argues that the main subject of Lady Chatterley's Lover is not the sexual passages that were the subject of such debate but the search for integrity and wholeness. Key to this integrity is cohesion between the mind and the body for "body without mind is brutish; mind without body...is a running away from our double being." Lady Chatterley's Lover focuses on the incoherence of living a life that is "all mind", which Lawrence saw as particularly true among the young members of the aristocratic classes, as in his description of Constance's and her sister Hilda's "tentative love-affairs" in their youth:
So they had given the gift of themselves, each to the youth with whom she had the most subtle and intimate arguments. The arguments, the discussions were the great thing: the love-making and connexion were only sort of primitive reversion and a bit of an anti-climax.
The contrast between mind and body can be seen in the dissatisfaction each has with their previous relationships: Constance's lack of intimacy with her husband who is "all mind" and Mellors's choice to live apart from his wife because of her "brutish" sexual nature. These dissatisfactions lead them into a relationship that builds very slowly and is based upon tenderness, physical passion, and mutual respect. As the relationship between Lady Chatterley and Mellors develops, they learn more about the interrelation of the mind and the body; she learns that sex is more than a shameful and disappointing act, and he learns about the spiritual challenges that come from physical love.
Neuro-psychoanalyst Mark Blechner identifies the "Lady Chatterley phenomenon" in which the same sexual act can affect people in different ways at different times, depending on their subjectivity. He bases it on the passage in which Lady Chatterley feels disengaged from Mellors and thinks disparagingly about the sex act: "And this time the sharp ecstasy of her own passion did not overcome her; she lay with hands inert on his striving body, and do what she might, her spirit seemed to look on from the top of her head, and the butting of his haunches seemed ridiculous to her, and the sort of anxiety of his penis to come to its little evacuating crisis seemed farcical. Yes, this was love, this ridiculous bouncing of the buttocks, and the wilting of the poor insignificant, moist little penis." Shortly thereafter, they make love again, and this time, she experiences enormous physical and emotional involvement: "And it seemed she was like the sea, nothing but dark waves rising and heaving, heaving with a great swell, so that slowly her whole darkness was in motion, and she was ocean rolling its dark, dumb mass."
Class system and social conflict
Besides the evident sexual content of the book, Lady Chatterley’s Lover also presents some views on the British social context of the early 20th century. For example, Constance’s social insecurity, arising from being brought up in an upper middle class background, in contrast with Sir Clifford’s social self-assurance, becomes more evident in passages such as:
Clifford Chatterley was more upper-class than Connie. Connie was well-to-do intelligentsia, but he was aristocracy. Not the big sort, but still it. His father was a baronet, and his mother had been a viscount’s daughter.
There are also signs of dissatisfaction and resentment of the Tevershall coal pit’s workers, the colliers, against Clifford, who owned the mines. By the time Clifford and Connie had moved to Wragby Hall, Clifford's father's estate in Nottinghamshire, the coal industry in England seemed to be in decline, although the coal pit still was a big part in the life of the neighbouring town of Tevershall. References to the concepts of anarchism, socialism, communism, and capitalism permeate the book. Union strikes were also a constant preoccupation in Wragby Hall. An argument between Clifford and Connie goes:
‘’Oh good!, said Connie. “If only there aren’t more strikes!”
“What would be the use of their striking again! Merely ruin the industry, what’s left of it; and surely the owls are beginning to see it!”
“Perhaps they don’t mind ruining the industry,” said Connie.
“Ah, don’t talk like a woman! The industry fills their bellies, even if it can’t keep their pockets quite so flush,” he said, using turns of speech that oddly had a twang of Mrs. Bolton.
The most obvious social contrast in the plot, however, is that of the affair of an aristocratic woman (Connie) with a working class man (Mellors). Mark Schorer, an American writer and literary critic, considers a familiar construction in D.H. Lawrence's works the forbidden love of a woman of relatively superior social situation who is drawn to an "outsider" (a man of lower social rank or a foreigner), in which the woman either resists her impulse or yields to it. Schorer believes the two possibilities were embodied, respectively, in the situation into which Lawrence was born, and that into which Lawrence married, therefore becoming a favorite topic in his work.
Controversy
An authorized abridgment of Lady Chatterley's Lover that was heavily censored was published in America by Alfred E. Knopf in 1928. This edition was subsequently reissued in paperback in America both by Signet Books and by Penguin Books in 1946.
British obscenity trial
When the full unexpurgated edition was published by Penguin Books in Britain in 1960, the trial of Penguin under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959 was a major public event and a test of the new obscenity law. The 1959 act (introduced by Roy Jenkins) had made it possible for publishers to escape conviction if they could show that a work was of literary merit. One of the objections was to the frequent use of the word "fuck" and its derivatives. Another objection involves the use of the word "cunt".
Various academic critics and experts of diverse kinds, including E. M. Forster, Helen Gardner, Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams and Norman St John-Stevas, were called as witnesses, and the verdict, delivered on 2 November 1960, was "not guilty". This resulted in a far greater degree of freedom for publishing explicit material in the United Kingdom. The prosecution was ridiculed for being out of touch with changing social norms when the chief prosecutor, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, asked if it were the kind of book "you would wish your wife or servants to read".
The Penguin second edition, published in 1961, contains a publisher's dedication, which reads: "For having published this book, Penguin Books were prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act, 1959 at the Old Bailey in London from 20 October to 2 November 1960. This edition is therefore dedicated to the twelve jurors, three women and nine men, who returned a verdict of 'Not Guilty' and thus made D. H. Lawrence's last novel available for the first time to the public in the United Kingdom."
In 2006, the trial was dramatised by BBC Wales as The Chatterley Affair.
Australia
Main article: Censorship in Australia
Not only was the book banned in Australia, but a book describing the British trial, The Trial of Lady Chatterley, was also banned. A copy was smuggled into the country and then published widely. The fallout from this event eventually led to the easing of censorship of books in the country, although the country still retains the Office of Film and Literature Classification. In early October 2009, the federal institution of Australia Post banned the sale of this book in their stores and outlets claiming that books of this nature don't fit in with the 'theme of their stores'.
Canada
In 1945, McGill University Professor of Law and Canadian modernist poet F. R. Scott appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada to defend Lady Chatterley's Lover from censorship. However, despite Scott's efforts, the book was banned in Canada for 30 years due to concerns about its use of "obscene language" and explicit depiction of sexual intercourse. On November 15, 1960 an Ontario panel of experts, appointed by Attorney General Kelso Roberts, found that novel was not obscene according to the Canadian Criminal Code.
United States
In 1930, Senator Bronson Cutting proposed an amendment to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which was then being debated, ending the practice of having U.S. Customs censor allegedly obscene books imported to U.S. shores. Senator Reed Smoot vigorously opposed such an amendment, threatening to publicly read indecent passages of imported books in front of the Senate. Although he never followed through, he included Lady Chatterley's Lover as an example of an obscene book that must not reach domestic audiences, declaring "I've not taken ten minutes on Lady Chatterley's Lover, outside of looking at its opening pages. It is most damnable! It is written by a man with a diseased mind and a soul so black that he would obscure even the darkness of hell!"
Lady Chatterley's Lover was one of a trio of books (the others being Tropic of Cancer and Fanny Hill), the ban on which was fought and overturned in court with assistance by lawyer Charles Rembar in 1959.
A French film (1955) based on the novel and released by Kingsley Pictures was in the United States the subject of attempted censorship in New York on the grounds that it promoted adultery. The Supreme Court held that the law prohibiting its showing was a violation of the First Amendment's protection of Free Speech.
The book was famously distributed in the U.S. by Frances Steloff at the Gotham Book Mart, in defiance of the book ban.
Japan
The publication of a full translation of Lady Chatterley's Lover by Ito Sei in 1950 led to a famous obscenity trial in Japan, extending from May 8, 1951 to January 18, 1952, with appeals lasting to March 13, 1957. Several notable literary figures testified for the defense, but the trial ultimately ended in a guilty verdict with a ¥100,000 for Ito and a ¥250,000 fine for his publisher.
India
In 1964, bookseller Ranjit Udeshi in Bombay was prosecuted under Sec. 292 of the Indian Penal Code (sale of obscene books) for selling an unexpurgated copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover.
Ranjit D. Udeshi v. State of Maharashtra (AIR 1968 SC 881) was eventually laid before a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India, where Chief Justice Hidayatullah declared the law on the subject of when a book can be regarded as obscene and established important tests of obscenity such as the Hicklin test.
The judgement upheld the conviction, stating that:
When everything said in its favour we find that in treating with sex the impugned portions viewed separately and also in the setting of the whole book pass the permissible limits judged of from our community standards and as there is no social gain to us which can be said to preponderate, we must hold the book to satisfy the test we have indicated above.
Cultural influence
In the United States, the free publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover was a significant event in the "sexual revolution". At the time, the book was a topic of widespread discussion and a byword of sorts. In 1965, Tom Lehrer recorded a satirical song entitled "Smut", in which the speaker in the song lyrics cheerfully acknowledges his enjoyment of such material; "Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately?/I've got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley."
British poet Philip Larkin's poem "Annus Mirabilis" begins with a reference to the trial:
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
And The Beatles' first LP.
By the 1970s, the story had become sufficiently safe in Britain to be parodied by Morecambe and Wise; a "play wot Ernie wrote" was obviously based on it, with Michele Dotrice as the Lady Chatterley figure. Introducing it, Ernie explained that his play was "about a man who has an accident with a combine harvester, which unfortunately makes him impudent".
Standard editions
* Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), edited by Michael Squires, Cambridge University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-521-22266-4.
* The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, edited by Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, Cambridge University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-521-47116-8. These two books, The First Lady Chatterley and John Thomas and Lady Jane were earlier drafts of Lawrence's last novel.
* The Second Lady Chatterley's Lover, Oneworld Classics 2007, ISBN 978-1-84749-019-3
In 1946 an English hardcover edition, copyright Jan Förlag, was published by Victor Pettersons Bokindustriaktiebolag Stockholm, Sweden. It is marked "Unexpurgated authorized edition". A paperback edition followed in 1950.
Adaptations
Radio
Lady Chatterley's Lover has been adapted for BBC Radio 4 by acclaimed writer Michelene Wandor and was first broadcast in September 2006.
Film and television
Lady Chatterley's Lover has been adapted for film several times:
* In 1955, starring Danielle Darrieux; was banned in the United States.
* In 1961, actor Michael Gough, playing a seemingly sinister but ultimately heroic butler named Fisk, is seen reading Lady Chatterley's Lover in the British horror comedy film What a Carve Up! (aka No Place Like Homicide! in the USA).
* 1981 film version by Just Jaeckin starring Sylvia Kristel and Nicholas Clay.
* In 1993 a lengthy television mini-series entitled Lady Chatterley directed by Ken Russell starring Joely Richardson and Sean Bean for BBC Television. This film incorporates some material from the longer second version John Thomas and Lady Jane.
* In 1998, Viktor Polesný filmed a Czech-Language television version with Zdena Studenková (Constance), Marek Vašut (Clifford) and Boris Rösner (Mellors).
* In 2006, the French director Pascale Ferran filmed a French-Language version with Marina Hands as Constance and Jean-Louis Coulloc'h as the game keeper, which won the Cesar Award for Best Film in 2007. Marina Hands was awarded best actress at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. The film was based on John Thomas and Lady Jane, Lawrence's second version of the story. It was broadcast on the French television channel Arte on 22 June 2007 as Lady Chatterley et l'homme des bois (Lady Chatterley and the Man of the Woods).
Theatre
Lawrence's novel was successfully dramatised for the stage in a three-act play by a young British playwright named John Harte. Although produced at The Arts Theatre in London in 1961 (and elsewhere later on), his play was written in 1953. It was the only D. H. Lawrence novel ever to be staged and his dramatisation was the only one to be read and approved by Lawrence's widow, Frieda. Despite her attempts to obtain the copyright for Harte to have his play staged in the 1950s, Baron Philippe de Rothschild did not relinquish the dramatic rights until his film was released in France.
Only the Old Bailey trial against Penguin Books for alleged obscenity in publishing the unexpurgated paperback edition of the novel prevented the play's transfer to the much bigger Wyndham's Theatre, for which it had already been licensed by the Lord Chamberlain's Office on 12 August 1960 with passages censored. It was fully booked out for its limited run at The Arts Theatre and well reviewed by Harold Hobson, the prevailing West End theatre critic of the time.
CHAPTER 1
Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.
This was more or less Constance Chatterley's position. The war had brought the roof down over her head. And she had realized that one must live and learn.
She married Clifford Chatterley in 1917, when he was home for a month on leave. They had a month's honeymoon. Then he went back to Flanders: to be shipped over to England again six months later, more or less in bits. Constance, his wife, was then twenty-three years old, and he was twenty-nine.
His hold on life was marvellous. He didn't die, and the bits seemed to grow together again. For two years he remained in the doctor's hands. Then he was pronounced a cure, and could return to life again, with the lower half of his body, from the hips down, paralysed for ever.
This was in 1920. They returned, Clifford and Constance, to his home, Wragby Hall, the family `seat'. His father had died, Clifford was now a baronet, Sir Clifford, and Constance was Lady Chatterley. They came to start housekeeping and married life in the rather forlorn home of the Chatterleys on a rather inadequate income. Clifford had a sister, but she had departed. Otherwise there were no near relatives. The elder brother was dead in the war. Crippled for ever, knowing he could never have any children, Clifford came home to the smoky Midlands to keep the Chatterley name alive while he could.
He was not really downcast. He could wheel himself about in a wheeled chair, and he had a bath-chair with a small motor attachment, so he could drive himself slowly round the garden and into the line melancholy park, of which he was really so proud, though he pretended to be flippant about it.
Having suffered so much, the capacity for suffering had to some extent left him. He remained strange and bright and cheerful, almost, one might say, chirpy, with his ruddy, healthy-looking face, arid his pale-blue, challenging bright eyes. His shoulders were broad and strong, his hands were very strong. He was expensively dressed, and wore handsome neckties from Bond Street. Yet still in his face one saw the watchful look, the slight vacancy of a cripple.
He had so very nearly lost his life, that what remained was wonderfully precious to him. It was obvious in the anxious brightness of his eyes, how proud he was, after the great shock, of being alive. But he had been so much hurt that something inside him had perished, some of his feelings had gone. There was a blank of insentience.
Constance, his wife, was a ruddy, country-looking girl with soft brown hair and sturdy body, and slow movements, full of unusual energy. She had big, wondering eyes, and a soft mild voice, and seemed just to have come from her native village. It was not so at all. Her father was the once well-known R. A., old Sir Malcolm Reid. Her mother had been one of the cultivated Fabians in the palmy, rather pre-Raphaelite days. Between artists and cultured socialists, Constance and her sister Hilda had had what might be called an aesthetically unconventional upbringing. They had been taken to Paris and Florence and Rome to breathe in art, and they had been taken also in the other direction, to the Hague and Berlin, to great Socialist conventions, where the speakers spoke in every civilized tongue, and no one was abashed.
The two girls, therefore, were from an early age not the least daunted by either art or ideal politics. It was their natural atmosphere. They were at once cosmopolitan and provincial, with the cosmopolitan provincialism of art that goes with pure social ideals.
They had been sent to Dresden at the age of fifteen, for music among other things. And they had had a good time there. They lived freely among the students, they argued with the men over philosophical, sociological and artistic matters, they were just as good as the men themselves: only better, since they were women. And they tramped off to the forests with sturdy youths bearing guitars, twang-twang! They sang the Wandervogel songs, and they were free. Free! That was the great word. Out in the open world, out in the forests of the morning, with lusty and splendid-throated young fellows, free to do as they liked, and---above all---to say what they liked. It was the talk that mattered supremely: the impassioned interchange of talk. Love was only a minor accompaniment.
Both Hilda and Constance had had their tentative love-affairs by the time they were eighteen. The young men with whom they talked so passionately and sang so lustily and camped under the trees in such freedom wanted, of course, the love connexion. The girls were doubtful, but then the thing was so much talked about, it was supposed to be so important. And the men were so humble and craving. Why couldn't a girl be queenly, and give the gift of herself?
So they had given the gift of themselves, each to the youth with whom she had the most subtle and intimate arguments. The arguments, the discussions were the great thing: the love-making and connexion were only a sort of primitive reversion and a bit of an anti-climax. One was less in love with the boy afterwards, and a little inclined to hate him, as if he had trespassed on one's privacy and inner freedom. For, of course, being a girl, one's whole dignity and meaning in life consisted in the achievement of an absolute, a perfect, a pure and noble freedom. What else did a girl's life mean? To shake off the old and sordid connexions and subjections.
And however one might sentimentalize it, this sex business was one of the most ancient, sordid connexions and subjections. Poets who glorified it were mostly men. Women had always known there was something better, something higher. And now they knew it more definitely than ever. The beautiful pure freedom of a woman was infinitely more wonderful than any sexual love. The only unfortunate thing was that men lagged so far behind women in the matter. They insisted on the sex thing like dogs.
And a woman had to yield. A man was like a child with his appetites. A woman had to yield him what he wanted, or like a child he would probably turn nasty and flounce away and spoil what was a very pleasant connexion. But a woman could yield to a man without yielding her inner, free self. That the poets and talkers about sex did not seem to have taken sufficiently into account. A woman could take a man without really giving herself away. Certainly she could take him without giving herself into his power. Rather she could use this sex thing to have power over him. For she only had to hold herself back in sexual intercourse, and let him finish and expend himself without herself coming to the crisis: and then she could prolong the connexion and achieve her orgasm and her crisis while he was merely her tool.
Both sisters had had their love experience by the time the war came, and they were hurried home. Neither was ever in love with a young man unless he and she were verbally very near: that is unless they were profoundly interested, TALKING to one another. The amazing, the profound, the unbelievable thrill there was in passionately talking to some really clever young man by the hour, resuming day after day for months...this they had never realized till it happened! The paradisal promise: Thou shalt have men to talk to!---had never been uttered. It was fulfilled before they knew what a promise it was.
And if after the roused intimacy of these vivid and soul-enlightened discussions the sex thing became more or less inevitable, then let it. It marked the end of a chapter. It had a thrill of its own too: a queer vibrating thrill inside the body, a final spasm of self-assertion, like the last word, exciting, and very like the row of asterisks that can be put to show the end of a paragraph, and a break in the theme.
When the girls came home for the summer holidays of 1913, when Hilda was twenty and Connie eighteen, their father could see plainly that they had had the love experience.
L'amour avait possé par là, as somebody puts it. But he was a man of experience himself, and let life take its course. As for the mot a nervous invalid in the last few months of her life, she wanted her girls to be `free', and to `fulfil themselves'. She herself had never been able to be altogether herself: it had been denied her. Heaven knows why, for she was a woman who had her own income and her own way. She blamed her husband. But as a matter of fact, it was some old impression of authority on her own mind or soul that she could not get rid of. It had nothing to do with Sir Malcolm, who left his nervously hostile, high-spirited wife to rule her own roost, while he went his own way.
So the girls were `free', and went back to Dresden, and their music, and the university and the young men. They loved their respective young men, and their respective young men loved them with all the passion of mental attraction. All the wonderful things the young men thought and expressed and wrote, they thought and expressed and wrote for the young women. Connie's young man was musical, Hilda's was technical. But they simply lived for their young women. In their minds and their mental excitements, that is. Somewhere else they were a little rebuffed, though they did not know it.
It was obvious in them too that love had gone through them: that is, the physical experience. It is curious what a subtle but unmistakable transmutation it makes, both in the body of men and women: the woman more blooming, more subtly rounded, her young angularities softened, and her expression either anxious or triumphant: the man much quieter, more inward, the very shapes of his shoulders and his buttocks less assertive, more hesitant.
In the actual sex-thrill within the body, the sisters nearly succumbed to the strange male power. But quickly they recovered themselves, took the sex-thrill as a sensation, and remained free. Whereas the men, in gratitude to the woman for the sex experience, let their souls go out to her. And afterwards looked rather as if they had lost a shilling and found sixpence. Connie's man could be a bit sulky, and Hilda's a bit jeering. But that is how men are! Ungrateful and never satisfied. When you don't have them they hate you because you won't; and when you do have them they hate you again, for some other reason. Or for no reason at all, except that they are discontented children, and can't be satisfied whatever they get, let a woman do what she may.
However, came the war, Hilda and Connie were rushed home again after having been home already in May, to their mother's funeral. Before Christmas of 1914 both their German young men were dead: whereupon the sisters wept, and loved the young men passionately, but underneath forgot them. They didn't exist any more.
Both sisters lived in their father's, really their mother's, Kensington housemixed with the young Cambridge group, the group that stood for `freedom' and flannel trousers, and flannel shirts open at the neck, and a well-bred sort of emotional anarchy, and a whispering, murmuring sort of voice, and an ultra-sensitive sort of manner. Hilda, however, suddenly married a man ten years older than herself, an elder member of the same Cambridge group, a man with a fair amount of money, and a comfortable family job in the government: he also wrote philosophical essays. She lived with him in a smallish house in Westminster, and moved in that good sort of society of people in the government who are not tip-toppers, but who are, or would be, the real intelligent power in the nation: people who know what they're talking about, or talk as if they did.
Connie did a mild form of war-work, and consorted with the flannel-trousers Cambridge intransigents, who gently mocked at everything, so far. Her `friend' was a Clifford Chatterley, a young man of twenty-two, who had hurried home from Bonn, where he was studying the technicalities of coal-mining. He had previously spent two years at Cambridge. Now he had become a first lieutenant in a smart regiment, so he could mock at everything more becomingly in uniform.
Clifford Chatterley was more upper-class than Connie. Connie was well-to-do intelligentsia, but he was aristocracy. Not the big sort, but still it. His father was a baronet, and his mother had been a viscount's daughter.
But Clifford, while he was better bred than Connie, and more `society', was in his own way more provincial and more timid. He was at his ease in the narrow `great world', that is, landed aristocracy society, but he was shy and nervous of all that other big world which consists of the vast hordes of the middle and lower classes, and foreigners. If the truth must be told, he was just a little bit frightened of middle-and lower-class humanity, and of foreigners not of his own class. He was, in some paralysing way, conscious of his own defencelessness, though he had all the defence of privilege. Which is curious, but a phenomenon of our day.
Therefore the peculiar soft assurance of a girl like Constance Reid fascinated him. She was so much more mistress of herself in that outer world of chaos than he was master of himself.
Nevertheless he too was a rebel: rebelling even against his class. Or perhaps rebel is too strong a word; far too strong. He was only caught in the general, popular recoil of the young against convention and against any sort of real authority. Fathers were ridiculous: his own obstinate one supremely so. And governments were ridiculous: our own wait-and-see sort especially so. And armies were ridiculous, and old buffers of generals altogether, the red-faced Kitchener supremely. Even the war was ridiculous, though it did kill rather a lot of people.
In fact everything was a little ridiculous, or very ridiculous: certainly everything connected with authority, whether it were in the army or the government or the universities, was ridiculous to a degree. And as far as the governing class made any pretensions to govern, they were ridiculous too. Sir Geoffrey, Clifford's father, was intensely ridiculous, chopping down his trees, and weeding men out of his colliery to shove them into the war; and himself being so safe and patriotic; but, also, spending more money on his country than he'd got.
When Miss Chatterley---Emma---came down to London from the Midlands to do some nursing work, she was very witty in a quiet way about Sir Geoffrey and his determined patriotism. Herbert, the elder brother and heir, laughed outright, though it was his trees that were falling for trench props. But Clifford only smiled a little uneasily. Everything was ridiculous, quite true. But when it came too close and oneself became ridiculous too...? At least people of a different class, like Connie, were earnest about something. They believed in something.
They were rather earnest about the Tommies, and the threat of conscription, and the shortage of sugar and toffee for the children. In all these things, of course, the authorities were ridiculously at fault. But Clifford could not take it to heart. To him the authorities were ridiculous ab ovo, not because of toffee or Tommies.
And the authorities felt ridiculous, and behaved in a rather ridiculous fashion, and it was all a mad hatter's tea-party for a while. Till things developed over there, and Lloyd George came to save the situation over here. And this surpassed even ridicule, the flippant young laughed no more.
In 1916 Herbert Chatterley was killed, so Clifford became heir. He was terrified even of this. His importance as son of Sir Geoffrey, and child of Wragby, was so ingrained in him, he could never escape it. And yet he knew that this too, in the eyes of the vast seething world, was ridiculous. Now he was heir and responsible for Wragby. Was that not terrible? and also splendid and at the same time, perhaps, purely absurd?
Sir Geoffrey would have none of the absurdity. He was pale and tense, withdrawn into himself, and obstinately determined to save his country and his own position, let it be Lloyd George or who it might. So cut off he was, so divorced from the England that was really England, so utterly incapable, that he even thought well of Horatio Bottomley. Sir Geoffrey stood for England and Lloyd George as his forebears had stood for England and St George: and he never knew there was a difference. So Sir Geoffrey felled timber and stood for Lloyd George and England, England and Lloyd George.
And he wanted Clifford to marry and produce an heir. Clifford felt his father was a hopeless anachronism. But wherein was he himself any further ahead, except in a wincing sense of the ridiculousness of everything, and the paramount ridiculousness of his own position? For willy-nilly he took his baronetcy and Wragby with the last seriousness.
The gay excitement had gone out of the war...dead. Too much death and horror. A man needed support arid comfort. A man needed to have an anchor in the safe world. A man needed a wife.
The Chatterleys, two brothers and a sister, had lived curiously isolated, shut in with one another at Wragby, in spite of all their connexions. A sense of isolation intensified the family tie, a sense of the weakness of their position, a sense of defencelessness, in spite of, or because of, the title and the land. They were cut off from those industrial Midlands in which they passed their lives. And they were cut off from their own class by the brooding, obstinate, shut-up nature of Sir Geoffrey, their father, whom they ridiculed, but whom they were so sensitive about.
The three had said they would all live together always. But now Herbert was dead, and Sir Geoffrey wanted Clifford to marry. Sir Geoffrey barely mentioned it: he spoke very little. But his silent, brooding insistence that it should be so was hard for Clifford to bear up against.
But Emma said No! She was ten years older than Clifford, and she felt his marrying would be a desertion and a betrayal of what the young ones of the family had stood for.
Clifford married Connie, nevertheless, and had his month's honeymoon with her. It was the terrible year 1917, and they were intimate as two people who stand together on a sinking ship. He had been virgin when he married: and the sex part did not mean much to him. They were so close, he and she, apart from that. And Connie exulted a little in this intimacy which was beyond sex, and beyond a man's `satisfaction`. Clifford anyhow was not just keen on his `satisfaction', as so many men seemed to be. 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. Though Connie did want children: if only to fortify her against her sister-in-law Emma.
But early in 1918 Clifford was shipped home smashed, and there was no child. And Sir Geoffrey died of chagrin.
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