1. PROSE AND POETRY
IT IS SUBMITTED TO FULFILL PSIKOPEND DAN BIMPESDIK ASSIGNMENTS
Lecturer:
Eri Rahmawati, S.S, M.A.
Submitted by :
Maratus Solihah : 2223120743 Syifa Khairunnisa : 2223120163
Nurul Hidayah Santika : 2223120196 Aprilia Purwanti : 2223120330
Rosid Ikbal Setiadi : 2223120613 Desvina Eka W : 2223120611
Mega Widyaningsih : 2223120111
Novy Yuliyanti : 2223120520
Ulfathul Mardiah : 2223120105
4A
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY
2. SULTAN AGENG TIRTAYASA UNIVERSITY
2014
INTRODUCTION
Bismillahirrohmanirrohim
Assalamualaikum wr. Wb
Praise be to Allah God Almighty has given us the opportunity to be able to complete the task
groups of subjects is Prose and Poetry .
Salawat be glorified together with regards to major prophet Muhammad. He cover prophets and
messengers , also of mercy for the faithful followers hold teachings .this paper we make with
confidence and all our efforts to understand and also understand about the materials related to the
paper that we made . For resolution of this matter with the realization that I am the author would
like to thank the thousands of friends groups that have been working on this material are compact
and work hard . Especially in our lecturers who have given us direction and also the material so
that we can finish this paper in a timely manner .
But we also understand that there is no perfect world it . Then we would expect an improvement
and constructive criticism so that we can do better in the preparation of the next paper .
With this we thank you for your attention on our paper if there is a shortage that is our self.
Because the real truth belongs only to Allah SWT .
End of the word.
Wassalamu`alaikum wr. Wb
3. Cilegon, 2 Juni 2014
Kelompok 2
CHAPTER I
Background
Basically , we as a student majoring in education and literature English language understand that
we will not only explore the science teacher but also science literature . therefore we begin to
understand the need for reviewing the contents of a novel , short story , or a variety of papers
which of course requires the art of writing and literature in order to analyze secars correct and on
target . because the literature does not have the same meaning for some people . therefore , we
are here trying to find a common view of the novel . novels we studied may be many who find
controversial opinion because the theme is presented is a more mature romance theme is not
worth reading for minors especially for eastern nations such as Indonesia . but here we are trying
to assess from the literature that explores the submission of the author's thoughts and expertly
embodied in a paper which eventually can be enjoyed by the general public . for that we present
assessment of this book and the literary scientific as possible in order to achieve our goal of
literary analysis for this book from the controversial novel after this .
Problem Formulation
What are the intrinsic elements that exist in this novel ???
Purpose
The purpose of writing this paper we present are :
• In order for students to know the intrinsic elements in the novel
• In order for students to understand a novel of literary elements
• In order for students to know the relevance of the concept of writing and intrinsic element of a
novel
4. CHAPTER II
SUMMARY
Section IV: Chapter 10
Summary
Wragby is virtually abandoned now. Clifford has withdrawn into his mining plans, listening to
the radio, and talking with Mrs. Bolton. He maintains a sort of fearful worship of Connie, who
increasingly despises him. With springtime, and the resurrection of the forest, Connie's misery
seems all the harsher. She goes more and more to the hut in the woods where Mellors, the
gamekeeper, is breeding pheasants to hunt. One day, in a spasm of hopeless tenderness for the
young chicks, she has a breakdown at the hut. Mellors is there to comfort her; as he does so, his
physical desire for her grows. She is mute and unresisting as he takes her into the hut and sleeps
with her, but she stays separate from him in her mind, receiving no pleasure from the sex. They
leave each other, and Mellors--now torn from his solitude--muses about the importance of desire
and tenderness, and the evils of the mechanized industrial world. For her part, Connie is
confused: she knows that she does not love Mellors, but is happy that he has been kind not to her
personality--to her mind and intellect, which she is coming to believe are meaningless--but to
"the female in her."
The next day, they meet once again at the hut. Reverting to his Derbyshire dialect, he asks her
whether she is not worried that people will find out about her affair with a commoner, but she
throws caution to the wind; they have sex again. Mellors deeply and sensually appreciates her
body, but again she remains distant; during sex, she notices only how ridiculous his thrusting
buttocks look.
5. For several days after, Connie does not go to meet Mellors in the cabin. Instead, one afternoon
she takes tea with a friend of hers, Mrs. Flint, who has a newborn baby. Leaving tea, she runs
into Mellors in the woods. Although she says she does not want to have sex, he lays her down on
the forest floor, and she complies. This time, she has an orgasm simultaneous with his second
orgasm, and the impact on her is profound. She feels that her body has awakened to him, that she
adores him with all of her physical being. She spends that night in the company of Clifford, but
the bond between them has been irrevocably broken. She is in a dreamworld, truly conscious
only of the warmth inside of her. Clifford, on the other hand, is empty inside, beginning now to
resent the distance between them.
That night, Mellors cannot sleep; he replays his life in his mind. On a late-night walk through the
woods, he recalls his years as a soldier in India, and his unhappy marriage to Bertha Coutts. He
reflects on the difficulty of his position: entanglement with Connie will be emotionally taxing,
and will create any number of logistical difficulties. Where will they go? How will they live? He
reflects also on his own loneliness, and realizes that loneliness is fundamental to the human
condition. Standing outside Wragby in the darkness, thinking of Connie, he is seen by Mrs.
Bolton, who--having guessed earlier by Connie's actions that she was having an affair--realizes
that Mellors must be the man.
Commentary
This is the--no pun intended--climactic chapter in Lady Chatterley's Lover. It is here that
Connie's sexual awakening begins, catalyzed by her powerful and revelatory orgasm on the
forest floor. It is worth spending some time discussing the nature of her revelation, and the way
in which this becomes the basis of the relationship between her and Mellors.
What should be noted first is that the novel's approach to the significance of sex and sexual
relationships is quite vague. At times, it is almost opaque. This owes something to Lawrence's
difficulty or reticence in clearly describing sexual scenes. In its time, Lady Chatterley's Lover
was considered radically graphic; the difficulty with Lawrence's depiction of sex scenes is not
quite a failure of graphic description, but rather a tendency towards the obscure and mystical.
6. Thus, during the first sex scene between Mellors and Connie, Lawrence refers to Mellors
entering "the peace on earth of her soft, quiescent body." In a novel that appears to flaunt its bold
contempt for euphemisms, this is a strange euphemism, to say the least. The reader will also
recall Lawrence's contortions when trying to describe Connie's naked body at the beginning of
chapter seven; I, at least, have no idea what "glimpsey" thighs or "meaningful" breasts look like.
What seems evident is that Lawrence believes some mystical power to reshuide in the human
body, and in the sex act, which cannot precisely be described. There is no real distinction, for the
reader, between the three sex scenes depicted in this chapter, and yet the third scene, on the
forest floor, proves orgasmic and profoundly meaningful. Lawrence gives the reader very little
idea why this might be. It is simply taken for granted: Mellors brings Connie to orgasm
simultaneous with his orgasm, and what results is the deepest of human connections. She begins
to adore Mellors. Her increased passion even seems to guarantee her pregnancy: the physical
stimulus of orgasm triggers a reaction of such psychological importance that it, in turns,
stimulates her physically to pregnancy. "It feels like a child in me," Connie thinks. Surely, this is
not a scientific but a mystical--a pseudo-pagan, even--explanation for her pregnancy.
Lawrence's mysticism makes it difficult for the reader to trace the evolution of love in Connie
and Mellors; it is difficult to identify with them or understand their emotions, because their
response is sensual, with sensory stimuli triggering deep emotion. In this sense, this is a very
difficult chapter for the reader. Lady Chatterley's Lover refuses to act like a typical novel,
familiarizing the reader with its protagonists.
I have observed that in many ways Lady Chatterley's Lover is a conservative novel. What
information one can glean from the sex scenes between Mellors and Connie seems to support
this assertion. The reader will notice that Connie is purely passive in all three of these sex scenes.
It is in the third scene--the one where she successfully reaches orgasm with Mellors--that her
passivity, even docility, is most explicit. She does not want to have sex with Mellors, but she
yields to the force of his passion: "She was giving way. She was giving up." It is only through
utterly surrendering herself to Mellors that she arrives at her sexual awakening. The reader will
remember that the great sin of Mellors' wife, Bertha Coutts, is that she was sexually aggressive.
Lawrence seems to exalt female passivity; women in his system become merely receptors. It is
7. through passivity, through yielding to the male urge, he indicates, that women can be fulfilled.
The reader will remember that on the night before Connie leaves for Venice (in chapter 16),
when she is transported by sensual pleasure, she needs first to subject herself: "she had to be a
passive, consenting thing, like. . .a physical slave." The contemporary reader may find this
troubling; I certainly do. What must be said, I think, is that, however radical are Lawrence's
graphic depictions of sex, his approach to the sex-act itself, and the roles of the sexes within it, is
hardly progressive.
8. Section V: Chapters 11 & 12
Summary
While sorting through a storage room with Mrs. Bolton, Connie finds the Chatterley's family
cradle, and tells Mrs. Bolton that she is thinking of having a child. Mrs. Bolton is surprised, as
Clifford Chatterley is impotent because of his paralysis. Still, she spreads the rumor throughout
the village. Even Squire Winter hears the rumor. Clifford himself begins to speak of
technological advances that will enable him to impregnate Connie. Connie, of course, has no
intention of having a child with Clifford. She will soon travel to Venice to spend a month, and
she plans to give birth to Mellors' child and tell Clifford--who has permitted her to have a child
by another man--that she had an affair with a nobleman in Venice.
Connie travels to the coal-mining village of Uthwaite, and is deeply disturbed by what she sees:
a landscape corrupted by the mines, men twisted and dehumanized by the work. The new
industrial England is eclipsing the old England of countryside and manor-houses. All seems
grim, gritty, hopeless. On her return, she has a conversation with Mrs. Bolton about the nurse's
dead husband, killed in a mining accident. Mrs. Bolton reveals her bitterness towards the mining
bosses and owners whom she holds responsible for her husband's death, and she speaks
movingly of the memory of her husband's touch, the way that his physical love has stayed with
her for the years since his death.
Connie goes to visit Mellors at his house. He seems uncomfortable to have her visit him there,
reminded of the class-difference between them. As usual, he speaks to her curtly, and drops
quickly into a bad mood. She tells him that she would like to bear his child, and he acts as if she
had been using him for her needs. He will not touch her in the house. Instead he insists that they
first go to the cabin, where they have sex. As in the beginning of their relationship, she keeps
him at an emotional distance. She is a little bit afraid of sensual abandon, and she sees them as if
from above, as if she were separate from the ridiculous act of lovemaking. She begins to sob,
9. lamenting, "I can't love you." Yet when he gets up to go, she finds herself clinging to him, and in
her need for him she receives him again. They once again have sex, and this time she comes to
orgasm. The sex that from an emotional distance seemed ridiculous now seems warm and
wonderful. Afterwards, she asks if he loves her, and he says that he loves her in that she opens
herself to him. This satisfies her. Playfully, they speak to each other in his Derbyshire dialect,
which she cannot quite master.
Commentary
In describing Connie's trip to Uthwaite, Lawrence issues one of the strongest indictments of the
English industrial economy since Dickens. It is a portrait of a village filled with "half-corpses,"
whose "living intuitive faculty was dead." This section is one of the few places in the novel
where Lawrence's emotion so overpowers him that he directly addresses the reader, and in which
his explicit political stance comes out: "England my England! but which is my England?"
Lawrence--for here there is no separation, one senses, between Lawrence himself and the
narrator of the novel, and one might argue that this is one of the novel's failings--bemoans the
transformation of old England, with its cottages and its stately manors, into the new England,
choked by soot.
This hatred for the mining economy should not, however, be mistaken for a particular concern
for the plight of the working man; Lawrence was not Dickens. Lady Chatterley's Lover certainly
detests the coal mines, but it has curiously little sympathy for the men whose lives are degraded
by working in the mines. (Just as, incidentally, it seems to have little sympathy for Clifford, a
war-hero who was paralyzed in combat; human sympathy for victims is unusual here.) These
men have been dehumanized, and as such Lawrence extends to them very little human sympathy.
Critics of Lawrence's work have often noticed a kind of self-hatred in Lawrence's unsympathetic
approach to the coal miners. There is a certain poignant force to Connie's horror at the coal-miners,
as she imagines bearing a coal-miner's child: "Children from such men! Oh God, oh
God!" Lawrence himself, of course, was the child of a coal-miner.
In an introduction to the novel, the American poet Archibald MacLeish points that, in Lady
Chatterley's Lover, "One is never left in doubt as to what Lawrence is against in the modern,
10. industrialized world, but it is less clear what he is advocating in its stead." Lawrence is no
socialist, spending time in this novel mocking socialism. Indeed, he lays the blame for the coal-miners'
dehumanization squarely on their own shoulders. And yet he seems to propose no
alternative social ordering. What he evidences is a profound nostalgia for England's past, without
real concern for the past's social and political imperfections. When Connie goes to Uthwaite, the
reader will notice that one of the novel's chief complaints is the destruction of the old,
aristocratic manor houses. The new King, Lawrence comments bitterly--for this is no longer the
voice of Connie or of the narrator--occupies himself chiefly with opening soup-kitchens, not with
preserving England's past. Lady Chatterley's Lover seems to advocate a return to an English
heyday with a King concerned for the health of the aristocracy rather than the feeding of the
poor, a heyday in which the aristocracy--with its lovely manors and perfect manners--reigned
supreme.
Lady Chatterley's Lover does, it should be noted, make some provision for the health and
sustenance of the coal-miners, who would be jobless in a return to pre-industrial England. This
provision comes in the form of a plan by Mellors to restore the humanity and the dignity of the
coal-miners, given in chapter 15. If Mellors had his way, he says, he would tell the coal-miners
to stop working so hard: "no need to work that much." He would dress them in red pants and
white jackets. Within a month, women--inflamed, presumably, by these outfits--would begin to
act like women, and men would be real men. They could pull down the mining village and erect
a "few beautiful buildings" to house everybody. What is remarkable about this plan is that
Mellors seems quite passionate about it; Connie takes it seriously; and it is actually repeated in
Mellors' letter to Connie which comprises the final pages of the novel. It is, indeed, one of the
thoughts on which the novel ends. It may be understood, it seems, as a proposal that this novel
takes seriously as an ideal vision for the future of the working classes. The reader must
determine whether the serious proposal of this plan is a failing or strength in this novel; it should
be evident, however, that this the novel is one which draws its power as a social critique not from
its vision of a better future, but rather from its condemnation of a corrupted present. Still, the
reader should not confuse baby with bathwater; at heart--however impractical and even
ridiculous the specific plan might be--this novel and Lawrence believe that the social order will
be improved when people learn to trust and appreciate their bodies and their sensual urges.
11. Section VI: Chapters 13 & 14
Summary
One Sunday morning, Clifford and Connie go into the woods, which are beautiful in early
summer. They discuss the plight of the coal-miners, with Connie complaining about the
hideousness and hopelessness of the miners' lives, and Clifford taking the position that he, as a
capitalist, is doing his responsibility to provide work for the common people. Clifford theorizes
that it is environment that makes people noble or common, that unstoppable and systematic
forces are what shape aristocrats and workers; "the individual hardly matters."
Clifford's motorized wheelchair becomes stuck on a sharp incline, and he calls Mellors to come
fix it. There is a tense scene in which Clifford insists on getting the chair up the incline on its
own power, while Mellors and Connie realize that only pushing will get it up. Connie inwardly
scoffs at the powerlessness of Clifford, the man who so recently bragged about the strength and
responsibility of the aristocracy. The chair slips, and Mellors--already weakened by pneumonia--
lunges to catch it, in the process exhausting himself. Connie is furious at Clifford for his
stubbornness, which she holds responsible for the situation.
That night, Connie slips out of the house and meets Mellors; they have planned for her to spend
the night at his cottage. She sees that he still has a picture of his wife, Bertha Coutts, and
convinces him to burn it and to initiate divorce proceedings. He explains why he married Bertha,
in the process telling her about his sexual and emotional history, and initiating their first real
conversation. He began his professional career as a clerk, and during his clerkship he had two
lovers before Bertha, both women who loved him deeply but who were uninterested in sex. He
felt that they were robbing him of his masculinity (they had "nearly taken all the balls out of
me"). Taking a more manly job as a blacksmith, he married Bertha because he saw a deep
sensuality in her. As it turns out, he was right: they had deep sexual desire for each other. But she
began to assert herself too aggressively, holding out when he wanted sex, refusing to have
12. orgasms with him, seizing sexual control. They began to sleep separately, and to hate each other.
He went off to the army in India, and she moved in with another man.
After recounting his history of sexual woes, Mellors begins a heated discussion of the purpose of
sex, and the nature of sexual satisfaction. He explains his personal credo--"I believe in being
warm-hearted. . .in fucking with a warm heart"--and talks about how a proper relationship with a
woman involves mutual and simultaneous orgasm. Connie senses a deep despair in him, a belief
that true passion and tenderness are dying, that "there's black days coming for us all and for
everybody." They begin to quarrel, accusing each other of excessive self-involvement; he
accuses her of an inability to open herself tenderly to him. But they resolve their quarrel in a
moment of longing and tenderness, after which they have sex on the rug. They fall asleep, and
when they wake up in the morning they once again make love. For the first time, she appreciates
his penis closely: "so proud! And so lordly!" He begins their tradition of referring to their sex
organs as separate from them, John Thomas and Lady Jane. She asks if he really loves her, and
he responds as he did earlier in the novel: he loves her "womanness."
Commentary
In his long discourse on his sexual history and his theory of sexuality, Mellors reveals himself
for the first time to the reader. For the first time, the reader has an extended look into Mellors'
head, and develops a picture of his past and his personality. It should hardly be taken for granted,
I think, that it is an attractive personality. Mellors is a complex character, and the question of
whether he is sympathetic is debatable. The English author Lawrence Durrell, writing about
Lady Chatterley's Lover, complains, "I find that Lawrence has failed to secure the reader's
sympathy for this strange, self-satisfied little boor, so complacent about his 'flamy' body and
hard-worked 'prick'. . .Mellors just sits around waiting to be fished out of holes by poor Connie. .
.One pities the poor lady when one thinks of the future she promises herself with a man like
this--listening to his half-baked twaddle about putting miners into pinafores in order to save their
souls." Well, that's Lawrence Durrell's opinion. It need not be taken as absolute truth. It is hardly
arguable, though, that Oliver Mellors is a difficult person: he picks fights (his treatment of
Connie's sister Hilda is particularly brutal); he is disdainful and condescending, even to Connie;
he pleases nobody unless it is in his own interest. Durrell seems right that he has a curious lack
13. of initiative, needing Connie to tell him to divorce his wife and burn her picture. His use of
Derbyshire dialect is almost impossibly irritating for both the reader and, at times, for Connie.
It is in his approach to sex that Mellors can be most difficult to appreciate. Difficulty
sympathizing with Mellors can amount to a difficult sympathizing with Connie, without which
sympathy this novel fails. If Mellors is a braggart and a buffoon, or at least a jerk, it becomes
hard to understand why Connie would risk everything to spend her life with him. And it makes
the reader reevaluate Connie as protagonist.
Mellors is frustrated because his first two lovers are not really interested in sex with him. He is
frustrated by his wife, Bertha Coutts, because she is too sexually aggressive. The reader will note
that the crime of which Mellors accuses Bertha--restraining her orgasm until after Mellors', and
then using Mellors' penis to come to her own orgasm through her own exertions--is precisely
what Connie does to Michaelis. And Michaelis loses the reader's sympathy for his resentment of
this behavior. However open Mellors is in his broad sensuality, he seems to have an antagonistic
approach to women in this section, especially in referring to Bertha's vagina as a "beak," and
speaking of it tearing into him. He resents women who want to be the "active party." In a trope
that has become familiar from puerile boys' locker-room talk, he complains that a huge number
of women who don't satisfy him, or who are not satisfied by him, are really just lesbians. It may
be difficult for the modern reader to sympathize with this man, who brags about the amount of
sex that he has had and considers himself a victim because so few of his companions have had
orgasms.
It should be remembered that Mellors' ultimate goal, of course, is mutuality, love and tenderness
through the bonding experience of simultaneous orgasm. And that what Mellors conveys, more
than anything--and despite his failings as a sympathetic character--is an attitude towards
sensuality and towards the body, an appreciation of the physical. He is perhaps hyperbolically
oversexed; in this, he better serves his propagandistic or idealistic purpose. It might be argued
that he is a kind of laboratory creation, an abstracted man with enough experience in sex to be
licensed to evaluate human sexual failings. This does not absolve his failings as a character, but
merely points out that Mellors is more than a character in a novel; he is an allegorical figure
14. representing sensual, savage man. The relationship between Mellors as allegory and Mellors as
personality is complex, and tortured
Section VII: Chapters 15 & 16
Summary
Connie learns that she will be leaving for Venice soon; Clifford makes her promise that she will
come back to him, but she is secretly planning her final escape. She meets with Mellors in the
cabin during a rainstorm, and they discuss running away to the British colonies. He also tells her
about his time in the army, and about the colonel who became his surrogate father. He explains
his theory of social decline: English society is faltering because technology and industry have
emasculated English men. Eventually, men will be drawn in their despair to wipe each other out.
It would be a shame, he says, to bring a child into this world. Connie--planning to bear his
child--begs him for a sign of hope, and he talks about the way society can be repaired. The
working classes will have to stop subjugating themselves to the industrial machine, and recover
the life of the body. Machines will have to be destroyed, and manhood restored.
Connie suddenly leaves the cabin, and runs outside. He joins her, and they dance naked in the
rain, and have sex on the ground. They go back into the hut and warm themselves before the fire.
Running his hand over her "secret places," he tells her she has a beautiful body, that he adores
her in all of her base physicality. They discuss the future, planning to run away together and have
a child; they will both pursue divorces. They agree that she will spend the night before she leaves
for Venice with him in his cottage. They fall into a lover's game, intertwining flowers in each-others'
pubic hair, playfully referring to the wedding of their genitals, Lady Jane marrying John
Thomas.
It is late, and raining. On her way home, Connie runs into Mrs. Bolton, who has been sent to look
for her. They return to Wragby, where Clifford scolds Connie for impetuously running around
15. outside in the rain. That night, Clifford reads to her from a book that predicts the spiritual rise of
man, and his physical decline. But Connie has been converted to the worship of the sensual and
physical. She decries the spiritual life, the life of the mind, and valorizes instead the human body,
predicting a future blessed by the realization of the body's preeminence. Clifford is taken aback.
After a conversation with Mrs. Bolton--who sometimes serves as her expert on male
psychology--Connie realizes that Mellors was probably depressed in the hut because he was
angry with her for going to Venice.
Hilda arrives to pick up Connie for the trip. Connie explains her plan: they will leave Wragby,
acting as if they are departing for Venice, but Connie will spend the night at Mellors' house. The
next day Hilda will pick her up and they will make good their departure. Hilda is appalled to
learn that Connie is having an affair with a common gamekeeper; nevertheless, she agrees to abet
Connie in her subterfuge. That night, Hilda drops Connie off at Mellors' cottage, and Mellors and
Hilda confront each other. She treats him with contempt and condescension; he responds by
reverting to his Derbyshire dialect--asserting himself as a common, earthy man--and accusing
her of sexual frigidity. They do not get along. Connie spends a night of pure sensual passion with
Mellors, in which she reaches new heights of sexual pleasure through passivity before his
masculine will, learning in the process to discard shame and convention. In the morning she
leaves for Venice.
Commentary
In his essay "A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover, Lawrence explained at length the mentality
he was trying to combat with his frank sexuality and worship of the body. "The mind," he writes,
"has an old groveling fear of the body and the body's potencies." He observes that even the likes
of the great poet and satirist Jonathan Swift seemed afflicted by a terror of the body: "The
insanity of a great mind like Swift's is at least partly traceable to this cause. In the poem to his
mistress Celia, which has the maddened refrain, "But--Celia, Celia, Celia s---s" (the word rhymes
with spits), we see what can happen to a great mind when it falls into panic." According to
Lawrence, even a great wit like Swift could not see how ridiculous he made himself. "Of course
Celia s---s! Who doesn't? And how much worse if she didn't. And then think of poor Celia, made
to feel iniquitous about her proper natural function, by her "lover." It is monstrous." Lawrence
16. was appalled at the idea of people feeling shame about their bodies. Shame, for Lawrence, was
simply a manifestation of fear. Chapters 15 and 16 in Lady Chatterley's Lover are, to a great
extent, the chronicle of Connie's loss of shame, which disappears during her passionate night
with Mellors before her departure for Venice. And these chapters contain what almost seems a
direct response to Swift's unhappiness at acknowledging physicality in his lover: "An' if tha shits
an' if tha pisses, I'm glad," says Mellors.
It is during that night between Connie and Mellors that the reader gets the clearest picture of
their relationship. Throughout their affair, Connie has asked him whether or not he loves her. He
always responds with a qualified answer: he loves that he can touch her; he loves sex with her;
her loves her for her physicality. And here it is confirmed with crystal clarity: "It was not really
love. . .It was sensuality."
Love, it seems, requires the interaction of minds. Connie and Mellors rarely speak, and when
they do it is rarely real, intimate conversation; either Mellors fulminates, losing his individuality
in acting as a spokesperson for Lawrence, or they engage in a kind of meaningless love-prattle.
Their attraction instead grows out of sex and sensuality, an attraction more bestial than personal;
she is a "bitch," he is a "wild animal." The entire point of the relationship between Connie and
Mellors is that it is shaped not around their personalities, but around a kind of wild,
depersonalized, primordial sex-force. It is telling that, as Connie reveals to Hilda, the paramours
never refer to each other by name: they only call each other John Thomas and Lady Jane, pet-names
for genitalia. Indeed, Lawrence called the penultimate draft of this novel "John Thomas
and Lady Jane." And in Mellors' letter to Connie with which the novel ends, the final sentence is
a salutation not from one person in love with another, but from John Thomas to Lady Jane. In the
language of the book, he has become a "phallus," she a "cunt": and this is--for this novel--the
highest, and the purest, human aspiration.
17. Section VIII: Chapters 17-19
Summary
Connie travels to Venice by way of London, Paris, and the overland route through the Alps. She
finds herself awakened to sensuality in peoples' bodies, noticing how few people have truly alert
bodies, and how few places have any appreciation of sensuality. She longs to be back in Wragby,
away from the cloud of tourists bent single-mindedly on enjoying themselves. In Venice, she and
Hilda join her father, Sir Malcolm and several others, including Duncan Forbes, as guests in the
home of a rich Scotsman, Sir Alexander. Connie has a pleasant but not fabulous time in Venice,
bathing with Hilda on remote beaches across the lagoon, ferried by the gondoliers Daniele and
Giovanni.
Soon, however, she gets letters from Clifford and Mrs. Bolton, telling her that Bertha Coutts,
Mellors' wife, has come back to him. He expelled her from the house, but she broke in again, and
he has gone to live with his mother, abandoning the house to Bertha. Bertha apparently found
perfume in the house, and the postman also recalls hearing a woman with Mellors one morning;
they do not, of course, know that this woman was Connie, but Mellors is suspected of adultery,
and Bertha is spreading rumors accusing him of sexual deviancy. Connie's first reaction is a
revulsion against Mellors. She feels humiliated to be associated with a commoner like him, with
somebody who would marry Bertha Coutts. But she comes around, remembering his tenderness
to her and how he awakened her sexually. She sends a note of support to Mellors through Mrs.
Bolton. With a second letter from Clifford, and one from Mellors, Connie learns that the
situation has gotten worse. Bertha Coutts has begun to spread the rumor that Connie herself was
Mellors' paramour. Coutts has been silenced by an injunction from Clifford. When Clifford
confronted Mellors with questions about his sexual conduct, Mellors responded disrespectfully;
18. Clifford then fired Mellors, who went to London. Meanwhile, Connie is now certain that she is
going to bear Mellors' child.
Connie and her family return to London, where she meets up with a dejected Mellors. Mellors
says that they should call their relationship off: he has nothing to offer her, and he is too proud to
live on her money, as a consort to an aristocrat. But they go back to her room and make love, and
she tells him that she admires the courage of his tenderness, his ability to ignore shame and
appreciate the physical. She urges him to trust the tenderness between them, and to disregard the
worldly differences. He agrees to stay with her, and even to love their child, despite his fears
about the future of society.
Connie discusses her situation with her father, who, despite his happiness that she has found
sexual satisfaction, is outraged that her lover is a commoner. But Sir Malcolm agrees to meet
Mellors, and they get along well, discussing sex earthily: they have a common ground in
sensuality. Between Hilda--who still hates Mellors--Connie, Sir Malcolm, and Mellors, they
develop a plan. Mellors will lay low and pursue his divorce with Bertha. Connie will pretend that
she is having an affair with Duncan Forbes, who will be named as the father of the child and the
co-respondent in the divorce (if Mellors is named as father, his admission of adultery will
complicate his own divorce). Clifford is more likely to accept Connie's having an affair with
Duncan, a member of the leisured class, than with Mellors, a gamekeeper. Duncan agrees to pose
as the father, despite Mellors' insulting his art by calling it soulless and self-indulgent.
Connie sends Clifford a letter, telling him that she loves Duncan, and asking for a divorce.
Clifford, despite having inwardly anticipated this, goes into shock. Mrs. Bolton comforts him
and tends to hi; more than ever, he becomes like a child in her arms. They enter into a perverse
relationship, both sexual and parental. She cares for him, and even loves him, but also despises
him for his weakness. Clifford refuses to divorce Connie, demanding that she come to Wragby.
She does come, and in a confrontation is forced to admit that her paramour is not Duncan but
Mellors. Clifford is outraged, and, furious, accuses her of depravity; he continues to refuse to
divorce her. She leaves Wragby, and goes with Hilda to Scotland. Mellors, meanwhile, works on
a farm, making money and waiting out the six-month divorce proceedings.
19. The novel ends with a letter sent from Mellors to Connie, summing up the message of the novel
about the social blight upon England. The masses of men are emasculated, poor, hopeless,
devoted only to getting and spending money. Without a radical change, the future is bleak. Only
with a mass transformation, a realization of the power of sensuality, will people restore humanity
and joy to their lives. Mellors comforts himself with thoughts of Connie, and the passion that
exists between them: "we fucked a flame into being."
Commentary
This is not a novel that ends with an epiphany, nor a climactic scene of action and emotion.
Rather, it fades away. Instead of a revelation, there is a careful summary of the novel's central
ideological messages; instead of tragedy or triumph, there is a certain measured circumspection,
a tenuous promise of hope in a vague future. The English author Lawrence Durrell held this
anticlimactic ending against the novel: "The book falls away rather sadly at the end. It had all the
ingredients for a big tragedy, but it ends on a whimper."
Perhaps, however, the ending of Lady Chatterley's Lover should be evaluated remembering that
the novel is as much an ideological tract as a work of living fiction. One way of reading Lady
Chatterley's Lover is to view the narrative as the means rather than the end of the novel. This
approach to the novel implies that in Lady Chatterley's Lover, the plot and the dialogue serve the
purpose of conveying more effectively the novel's ideology, its set of social messages. Only
secondarily do the characters assume depth and fictional reality; their primary function is to
enact scenes that dramatize the novel's agenda. Thus it could be argued that Mellors is less a
three-dimensional character in his own right than an embodiment of D.H. Lawrence's principles
of sensuality and irreverence.
Lawrence Durrell faults Lady Chatterley's Lover for avoiding the "big tragedy" that might have
brought a satisfying and dramatic ending to the narrative. But this sort of ending would not have
been in keeping with the social purpose of the novel. Throughout, Lady Chatterley's Lover--most
explicitly through the character of Mellors, in his role as the author's spokesman--expresses a
deep pessimism about the future of English society. Mellors is reluctant to bring children into the
world, which he feels is bound for disaster. In the postwar world of Lady Chatterley's Lover,
20. tradition has been discarded, men have been emasculated and dehumanized by industry and
greed, and women have forgotten sensuality.
There may be little room for optimism, but Connie convinces Mellors that there is room for
hope. And the novel ends with Mellors writing Connie a letter that balances its condemnation of
English society with a proposal for a massive societal transformation, and that ends both
"droopingly" and "with a hopeful heart." Mellors awaits his divorce, while Connie is left in
limbo, awaiting Clifford's consent for a divorce. A child will be born, but it remains to be seen
whether Mellors and Connie will be able to live together and raise the child under the protection
of their love, or whether circumstances will come between them. Thus the future of the
protagonists is uncertain, just as the future of the English society portrayed in Lady Chatterley's
Lover remains uncertain. A great tragedy, or a happy reunion, would run counter to the
perspective of the novel on the broader future of society.
21. CHAPTER III
INTRINSIC ELEMENTS
1. Theme :
a. The body :
D.H. Lawrence, for all that he's a pretty brainy guy, wants you to be
uncomfortably aware of your breathing. Lady Chatterley's Lover hates the life of
the mind—for almost everyone. It says the majority of people would be a lot
happier if they danced and had a lot more sex than they currently do. Of course,
he's not talking about heading down to Ft. Lauderdale for a drunken, overly
tanned orgy. Bodies are serious stuff, and he wants you to respect yours as much
as any Promise Keeper.
b. Men and masculinity
If so, D.H. Lawrence would very much like you to put down your Xbox controller
and go do something manly, like build a fire, convince some chickens to sit on
pheasant eggs, or milk a cow. In Lady Chatterley's Lover, these are acceptable
manly activities. Unacceptable activities include writing, reading, prematurely
ejaculating, and knowing anything about machines. Tough luck for all you auto
mechanics out there, because you're actually responsible for everything that's
wrong with the world, from World War I to women not being properly feminine.
If you have a problem with any of that, then you've obviously been corrupted by
greed for money and need—in Lawrence's words—to grow a pair.
22. c. Women and Femininity
If you think that Lawrence is being a little hard on men in Lady Chatterley's
Lover, wait until you hear what he has to say about women. When they're not
being promiscuous, they're being frigid; they have the wrong kind of orgasm
(thanks, Freud); and, worst of all, they don't get dinner on time. Are you turned on
yet? To be fair—kind of—Lawrence lays most of the blame on men. If men were
men, he (via Mellors) says, women would be women. But he sure does spend a lot
of time talking about how awful women are along the way. Really, the only
creatures that seem to be faithfully fulfilling their feminine role are Mellors's
chickens—and you get the sense he'd like a harem of human women, too.
d. Sex
Finally, the dirty bits. And they're pretty dirty. But as tempting as it is to giggle
about the insane way that Lawrence describes sex in Lady Chatterley's Lover, we
should also look at the way he uses it to express his philosophical ideas. This isn't
50 Shades of Grey: there's a lot more philosophy and a lot less spanking. Sex is a
way—the way—for two people to connect. It fights back against the uncaring
harshness of the modern world, and it restores some little bit of beauty and
realness to life. Good sex gives you more than just bragging rights. It gives you
wholeness.
e. Love
Love comes after sex. This is one of the things that's most radical and shocking about
Lady Chatterley's Lover. There's no "First comes love, then comes marriage, then
comes Connie pushing a baby carriage. And with that, Lawrence flies in the face of
hundreds of years of tradition. He insists that you can't have love without sex, and
you're fooling yourself if you think there's any such thing as a sexless marriage. Love
23. is the way that sex expresses itself, and not the other way around. This is why
Lawrence wouldn't want you heading out to have a bunch of meaningless sex—
because meaningless sex is mechanical, and being mechanical is the worst thing you
can do to your body.
f. Society and Class
Now we get to the nasty stuff. Lawrence is—there's no way to say this nicely—a
prick. He hates the aristocracy and the intellectuals, but he hates the working classes
even more. Sure, Mellors is from a coal-mining background, but he rises above his
circumstances. Connie and the narrator of Lady Chatterley's Lover both insist that
he's really, awfully nice, not at all like those other coal miners. Clifford says a lot of
mean things about the working classes, but Mellors is right there with him,
condemning them as stupid, ugly, and frivolous. You get the sense that what
Lawrence really wants is a feudal society with a noble overlord and happy, dumb
peasants. Yeah, good luck with that.
g. Isolation
We hate to be the ones to tell you, but poking your girlfriend on Facebook (does
anyone poke anymore?) isn't the same as actually hanging out with her. Connie
discovers this to her dismay when she realizes that Clifford's company isn't actually a
substitute for real human interaction. Everyone in Lady Chatterley's Lover is alone,
some by accident (Connie) and some by choice (Mellors). The central couple is
supposed to be a model of how to find human connection in an inhuman age—not
through jazz dancing or Foursquare, but real, human sex.
h. Wealth
D.H. Lawrence hates a lot of things—men, women, machines, London, Wragby,
literature, idiots, modernity—but he hates money most of all. Because, he implies in
Lady Chatterley's Lover, money makes people do things that dehumanize them. The
problem with money is that once you start using it, you start working to get it rather
24. than working to live. So instead of working at something that will directly help you
survive, like farming, and then prancing around the rest of the time in red trousers
(seriously), you work at a soul-crushing job to get money to spend at movie theaters
and jazz clubs to convince yourself that you don't hate your life. Big words, D.H.
i. Freedom and Confinement
There's a lot of entrapment in Lady Chatterley's Lover. Connie is trapped in an
unhappy marriage; poor Clifford is trapped in a wheelchair; and Hilda, Connie's
sister, is trapped in a prison of convention. There are all kinds of traps—marriage,
family, convention, money, fate—and the novel doesn't give us any real sense that
it's possible to break out. Connie isn't free at the end of the novel, and neither is
Mellors. Even divorce isn't necessarily a way out, as anyone with joint custody can
tell you. We're all trapped together in a world that's basically a prison full of lunatics
and weaklings. Awesome.
j. Youth
You know what's really wrong with the world today? Young people. Yeah, Lawrence
doesn't think much of the kids these days. In that sense, he's swimming against the
tide in Lady Chatterley's Lover. As a decade, the 1920s loved youth. Women cut
their hair like little boys and bound their breasts so they could wear skimpy dresses;
guys rejected bougie things like marriage and kids; everyone was really into fast cars
and jazz; college boys were the height of cool.
In other words, we can blame the 1920s for youth culture. Lawrence is not on board
that train. In fact, he thinks that youth culture is everything that's wrong with the
world: loud music, meaningless sex, and unfeminine women. We can think of a few
fringe religious groups that would agree with him.
25. 2. Plot :
· Introduction :
The story concerns a young married woman, Constance (Lady Chatterley), whose upper-class
husband, Clifford Chatterley, described as a handsome, well-built man, has
beenparalysed from the waist down due to a war injury. In addition to Clifford's physical
limitations, his emotional neglect of Constance forces distance between the couple.
Her sexual frustration leads her into an affair with the gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. The
class difference between the couple highlights a major motif of the novel which is the
unfair dominance of intellectuals over the working class. The novel is about Constance's
realisation that she cannot live with the mind alone; she must also be alive physically.
This realisation stems from a heightened sexual experience Constance has only felt with
Mellors, suggesting that love can only happen with the element of the body, not the mind.
· Conflict :
Life at Wragby isn't much of a life. It's more of a half-life, or a non-life, or, well, as
Lawrence puts it, "a life: in the void. For the rest it was non-existence" (2.35). The people
of the Tevershall village don't like Connie; Clifford's friends patronize her; and Clifford
himself sees her as a glorified nurse. Both Connie's dad and her sister Hilda worry about
her, but they come up with different solutions: Hilda takes her to London to perk her up,
while her dad thinks she should take a lover. Mostly, she spends a lot of time looking at
flowers and thinking about how much her life stinks.
· Crisis :
Eventually Connie follows her dad's advice and picks up a boyfriend, the Irish playwright
Michaelis. Like most new relationships, it's great for a while: lots of sex, no strings
attached. And then it ends in flames, when Connie rejects Michaelis's marriage proposal.
He mutters some nasty stuff about frigid women, and Connie swears off men.
· Climax :
26. And then began again the unspeakable motion that was not really motion, but pure
deepening whirlpools of sensation swirling deeper and deeper through all her tissue and
consciousness, till she was one perfect concentric fluid of feeling, and she lay there
crying unconscious inarticulate cries […] The man heard it beneath him with a kind of
awe, as his life sprang out into her. (10.305)
The climax of the book is, literally, a climax—and not just any climax, but a
simultaneous one, which Mellors practically gloats about. We get it, Mellors: you're good
in bed. Congratulations; have a cookie, and please wear a condom.
Anyway, there's no going back now for Connie. She definitely can't return to Clifford,
even if it means giving up Wragby and her title and being plain old "Mrs. Oliver
Mellors."
· Resolution :
At the end of the novel, Mellors and Connie are living happily in a cottage in the north of
England, with their adorable little baby. Except not. Connie is still trapped at Wragby and
Mellors is stuck learning how to milk cows while they wait for Mellors's divorce. Happy
endings are so last century.
3. Character and Characteristic
Clifford Chatterley (Protagonist) landowner, disabled WW1 veteran, and
businessman
Constance Chatterley(Tritagonist) his wife, an intellectual and social progressive
Oliver Mellors (Tritagonist) ex-soldier, ex-blacksmith, intellectual, and the
gamekeeper at Wragby Hall
Mrs (Ivy) Bolton Clifford’s devoted housekeeper
Michaelis successful Irish playwright
Sir Macolm Reid Connie’s father, a painter
Hilda Reid Connie’s sister
27. Tommy Dukes an intellectual friend of Clifford’s
Duncan Forbes an artist friend of Connie and Hilda
Bertha Coutts Mellor’s wife – who does no appear in the
novel
4. Setting
Place :
Wragby
Wragby is Clifford's estate. It's not much of an estate—the house isn't very
impressive, and it's near an ugly mining village called Tevershall. Connie is used
to London and the pretty, green hills of southern England, so she's horrified by the
"utter, soulless ugliness of the coal-and-iron Midlands" (2.3). The Midlands were
the heart of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, sort of England's Silicon
Valley without all the good design and organic strawberries.
In the 19th century, the Midlands produced factories, coal, and misery in
astonishing quantities—and later, a lot of really good rock bands. Connie doesn't
admire their industry the way Clifford does, though; all she sees are
clouds of steam and smoke, and on the damp, hazy distance of the hill the raw
straggle of Tevershall village, a village which began almost at the park gates, and
trailed in utter hopeless ugliness for a long and gruesome mile: houses, rows of
wretched, small, begrimed, brick houses, with black slate roofs for lids, sharp
angles and wilful, blank dreariness. (2.1)
In fact, the general effect is, well, hellish: "a sulphurous combustion of the earth's
excrement" (2.3), which is a polite way of saying that the earth is pooping out
coal.
28. Connie puts up with it for a while, but eventually it starts bringing her down.
Wragby takes on a personality of its own: "The great, rambling mass of a place
seemed evil to her, just a menace over her. She was no longer its mistress, she was
its victim" (19.61). This is Poe-levelcraziness, but you can't blame her: the setting
of Lady Chatterley's Lover really is a prison to her.
It's not all ugly, though. Wragby is attached to a beautiful park, with really lovely
woods. Lawrence waxes rhapsodic about them. Here are a few typical examples:
1) "In front lay the wood, the hazel thicket nearest, the purplish density of oaks
beyond. From the wood's edge rabbits bobbed and nibbled. Rooks suddenly rose
in a black train, and went trailing off over the little sky" (5.4)
2) "The hazel thicket was a lace-work, of half-open leaves, and the last dusty
perpendicular of the catkins" (12.1)
3) "It was a lovely morning, the pear-blossom and plum had suddenly appeared in
the world in a wonder of white here and there" (12.3).
Time :
The 1920s
As important as the geographical setting is the temporal setting—not just where it's
set, but when. Lawrence spends a lot of time bemoaning the loss of the good old
England; not just the pre-industrial England of the 18th century, the "tattered
remnants of the old coaching and cottage England" but "even the England of Robin
Hood" (11.92). It's the woods where that Old England remains—"the great forest
where Robin Hood hunted" (5.5).
Nostalgia like this drives home Lawrence's disgust for the modern world. This isn't
just some cranky ranting about Facebook and iPhones; Lawrence really feels that the
world is going to hell. We get lots and lots of passages about the new world replacing
the old. Here's another typical one:
29. Now they are pulling down the stately homes, the Georgian halls are going.
Fritchley, a perfect old Georgian mansion, was even now, as Connie passed in the
car, being demolished. It was in perfect repair: till the war the Weatherleys had lived
in style there. But now it was too big, too expensive, and the country had become too
uncongenial … This is history. One England blots out another. The mines had made
the halls wealthy. Now they were blotting them out, as they had already blotted out
the cottages. The industrial England blots out the agricultural England. One
meaning blots out another. The new England blots out the old England. (11.94-95)
This is also how you know that Lawrence isn't a progressive. He doesn't want things
to change, and anything new isautomatically bad. Just to be clear, we're not talking
about turning the clock back a few years, like putting on a neon shirt and calling it
retro. He wants to go way back to some kind of hazy feudal past, when the overlords
were overlords and peasants were peasants.
One thing is certain: Wragby in the 1920s is about the last place on earth that any
sane person would want to be.
5. Point of View
Third Person Omniscient
Skillful authors can utilize the point of view of their story to focus their readers’
attention on the exact detail, opinion, or emotion the author wants to emphasize. In Lady
Chatterley’s Lover, D.H. Lawrence uses the third person omniscient to convey his
detailed theme of human needs. Through his God-like narration, Lawrence entices his
reader to understand and empathize with his main character, Constance Chatterley.
6. Imagery
While all novels may open with a fair amount of description, some stories are so
rich in depiction that the reader can see, hear, and feel the motion of the words. From the
very beginning of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, readers may find themselves struck with how
30. rhythmical the words are. From the cadence, to the beautiful descriptions, D.H. Lawrence
comes across as truly skilled in regards to language. One aspect that stands out
immediately is his use of imagery. Lawrence’s ability to appeal to the senses and create
such a dynamic and clear picture of the story allows the reader to get completely lost in
the world of Wragby.
7. Symbolism
· Chickens
Lady Chatterley and Mellors bond over the chickens that Mellors has set nesting on some
pheasant eggs in a clearing in the woods. And Connie identifies with these chickens so
strongly that they become a symbol of her own captivity. Like her, they have a "soft
nestling ponderosity" and a "female urge" (10.37); like her, they lose themselves in
fulfilling their female role: "There's no self in a sitting hen" (12.111). When Connie first
sees the chickens, her heart breaks because "she herself was so forlorn and unused, not a
female at all" (10.36).
Of course what she really wants is Mellors's hands all over her. He handles the pheasant
chicks with "sure gentle fingers" (10.52) that calm the chickens down. These chickens,
and Mellors's control over them, seem to symbolize the potential animal/female nature
that the modern world has suppressed in Connie. They're a symbol of what she could be
—lost in nurture rather than lost in her head.
· The Wheelchair
Clifford is lucky enough to have a motorized chair, except that it doesn't handle being
outside too well. It's great for rolling Wragby or even touring the paths, but as soon as he
takes it off road, it gets stuck. No four-wheel drive on this baby.
31. It's not just that the natural world wreaks havoc on Clifford's chair; the chair destroys the
flowers. It's like mutually assured destruction, as Connie watches the chair "squash the
little yellow cups of the creeping-jenny" and then make "a wake through the forget-me-nots"
(13.77).
Lawrence gets pretty explicit as the chair heads off down a hyacinth-covered hill:
"O last of all ships, through the hyacinthian shallows! O pinnace on the last wild waters,
sailing in the last voyage of our civilization! Whither, O weird wheeled ship, your slow
course steering. Quiet and complacent, Clifford sat at the wheel of adventure: in his old
black hat and tweed jacket, motionless and cautious." (13.87)
The contrast between Lawrence's prophetic, poetic prose and the composed, stuffy
Clifford is funny, but it also points out how pathetic he is—not even able to steer his own
ship. In this passage, thewheelchair seems to become a metaphor for civilization itself,
plowing through the hyacinths totally oblivious to the beauty being crushed under its
wheels. Al Gore would be proud.
· Natural Imagery
References to the natural world are sprinkled all through Lady Chatterley's Lover, from
the long, effusive passages about the beauty of the woods to little side comments, like
Mrs. Bolton's thought that doctors could "sort of graft seed" to make Connie pregnant
(11.10)—grafting being a gardening technique where you stick one plant onto another.
Or take Clifford's anger that Connie wants to hire a nurse, which he says kills "the real
flower of the intimacy between him and her," although Connie thinks of that flower "like
an orchid, a bulb stuck parasitic on her tree of life" (7.130). Flower, trees, rabbits,
pheasants:Lady Chatterley's Lover is overrun with flora and fauna.
So what's all this natural imagery doing? Well, for one thing, it offers a nice contrast to
Lawrence's opinions about the soulless mechanical world. Underneath the misery of
Wragby, there's a whole bounty of nature waiting to spring to life.
32. And take the references to paganism that Lawrence drops. When Mellors comes in from
the rainstorm with an armful of flowers, Connie looks at him "as if he were not quite
human" (15.144)—as if, maybe, he's an incarnation of Pan. Pan?
In Greek mythology, Pan is the god of the wild. He's associated with all sorts of other
mythologies, like the Horned God of Celtic tradition. Mellors actually refers to him
explicitly, saying that peasants "should be alive and frisky, and acknowledge the great
god Pan. He's the only god for the masses, forever" (19.165).
In other words, the common people should be worshipping pagan gods with, like, orgies
and bonfires and piles of flowers rather than sitting in dark, depressing churches. All the
flowers and tiny forest creatures are pointing the way back to a (probably mythic) past
when people lived in harmony with the gods of nature.
It does sound nice, but still—we'll take the indoor plumbing.
· The Garden of Eden Allegory
We already know that Lawrence has a thing for the natural world (check out "Natural
Imagery"), and here's another possible reason: the Wragby woods are a big fat allegory
for the Garden of Eden.
8. Moral Value
No matter what happens we should be faithful
Don’t take your desire first and make you ignore the other important things.
It’s good to stand our right but we should do that in the good way.
We should be patient no matter what happens.
9. Genre
33. Romance
"Romance" seems like an obvious genre choice for Lady Chatterley's Love. Connie and
Oliver are almost nauseatingly in love, although sometimes that love is very poetically
expressed: "But the little forked flame between me and you: there you are! That's what I
abide by, and will abide by" (19.167). This "little forked flame" of love—but also of sex
—is at the heart (so to speak) of the novel.