Lady Chatterley's Lover

Lady Chatterley's Lover, written by DH. Lawrence was first published in 1928. The novel follows around the protagonist of the story, Lady Constance Chatterley. The story is about how this woman, who is trapped in a loveless and almost sterile marriage, finds emotional and physical love with the gameskeeper of her husband's estate. As a story about the relationships between men and women, I find this book a very nice read, but with Lawrence also using this novel as a way to show his readers the evils of machines and capitalism, at times I find it lacking. Lawrence has two main themes in this book; first, the relationship between men, women and how they find love; second, industry vs. nature. Both can be discussed to show how they are used to conveniently establish the relationship theme but not the secondary theme of industry vs. nature. The main theme in Lady Chatterley's Lover is that of the relationship between men and women. Lawrence shows the readers how you must have emotional and physical love, together, in order to have complete love. Through the example of Connie and Clifford's marriage, Lawrence shows the reader that though there is an emotional love between the two, neither is fulfilled. Their relationship can best be summed up by a quote directly from this book, "Time went on. Whatever happened, nothing happened." (19) Neither Connie nor Clifford have a great love for the other, they seam to be just friends who live together. The idea of a strictly physical love is shown briefly through Mellors and his marriage to his first wife. Though the two had a stable marriage based on physical love, it eventually deteriorated to the point of them living separately. Bertha rejected Mellors when he started to show tenderness towards her. Both examples are used by Lawrence to justify that though some marriages/relationships start out well, without the combined physical and emotional fulfillment of both people there can be no "true" love between them.

Cited: 1. Bloom, Harold (Editor), Twentieth-Century British Literature Volume 3. Chelsea House: New York, 1986. 2. Bryfonski, Dedria and Hall, Sharon K. (Editors), Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism Volume 2. Gale Research Company: Michigan, 1979 3. Lawrence, D.H. Lady Chatterley 's Lover. 1928. New York: Grover 's Press, 1959. 4. Neruda, Pablo, "Luminous Solitude", Memoirs. 1976. Included in Twentieth-Century British Literature, Volume 3. 5. Nin, Anais. "Lady Chatterley 's Lover" D.H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study. (1932) 1940. Included in Twentieth-Century British Literature, Vol. 3. 6. Porter, Katherine Ann. "A Wreath for the Gamekeeper". Encounter. 1960. Included in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Vol. 2.