Author: D.H. Lawrence
Published in 1928
Thickness: 376 pages
Personal rating: 3 stars
In short
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 realisation that she cannot live with the mind alone; she must also be alive physically. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Chatterley%27s_Lover)
My two cents
My first impression of this novel was not of a good nature. I found the beginning to be excrutiatingly longwinding and boring. A good deal over its midst, the novel began to be interesting, with the love affair between her and her gamekeeper and its far reaching results.
Lady Chatterley, a woman of questionable moral, is married to a nobleman who got wounded in the war and lost the function of his lower body. Chained to a sexless marriage and with love slowly seeping out, Lady Chatterley, also named Connie, seeks her thrills elsewhere. Do not think this is impulsive or even selfish of her, since she nearly breaks down from the lack of physical and emotional love. Only the warm touch of one servant, the game-keeper, makes her sky clear again and her vision for the future bright.
Having been brought up quite liberally with having had the permission for an affair while she was away at college, her father had tried to coerce her husband into letting her have a love affair, afraid she would be turning into a demi-virgin. A virgin, not of mind, but of body.
Her husband, Sir Clifford, gave her that permission and even granted her the wish to conceive a child with the unknown party, as long as he himself never had to know any details.
Her husband, Sir Clifford, gave her that permission and even granted her the wish to conceive a child with the unknown party, as long as he himself never had to know any details.
Connie, betrayed by her first lover on an emotional base, tries to seek refuge in her world, but finds only superficial men who treat love as if it be a verb instead of something that is or isn’t. Women do not have meaning in their life, or they depend too much upon them. Neither is what Connie seeks and falling away in apathy she breaks down in tears in front of the game keeper, who sees her for who she is and straightforwardly gives her what she needs, even if it took her a while to see it for what it was.
Mellors, the gamekeeper, has been searching for a true woman all his life, a woman who isn’t afraid of the sexual act and who doesn’t use it to get her way or as punishment.
Mellors, the gamekeeper, has been searching for a true woman all his life, a woman who isn’t afraid of the sexual act and who doesn’t use it to get her way or as punishment.
Through the sexual escapades between him and Connie, he begins to learn how a true love affair is supposed to be like and despite his ironic and pessimistic demeanor, when Connie tells him she’s expecting his child, he has given her his heart and they will try to be together however difficult the odds.
I know I’ve told a lot of spoilers in my summary, but this novel isn’t so much about the content as it goes about an age changing. The age of noblemen making way for the industrialization. The fall of one empire, to give life to another.
