British Novel Week 5

Lady Chatterley's Lover reflects third-person omniscient narration. This was a welcome relief from the stream of consciousness technique of our previous weeks. Lawrence explores class differences in England along with industrialization. The main theme of the book is sexuality. Connie, Lady Chatterley, is married to Clifford. After only one month of marriage, Sir Clifford goes off to war and returns paralyzed from the waist down. He spends the rest of his life in a wheel chair. At first, Connie is content with an intellectual life versus a physical life. It is Clifford's intellect that excites her. As time goes on, the isolated, intellectual life at Wragby Hall wears on Lady Chatterley. A lover enters the picture but only for a short time. Then Lady Chatterley forms a sexual liason with Mellors who is Sir Clifford's gamekeeper. Connie's sexuality is awakened. This union turns out to be the union of a lifetime in the physical, sexual sense. Eventually, Connie's only goal is to leave Wragby Hall and spend the rest of her life with her lover . The novel ends with both Connie and Mellors waiting on divorces from their significant others. Also, the couple is expecting the birth of their child in the Spring. However, the irony is that with freeedom comes separation. They cannot be together until Mellors' divorice is final. D.H. Lawrence wrote Lady Chatterley's Lover in the 1920's. It was immediately attacked and later banned in his home country. In 1928 it was published in 1928 in Italy. It was not until the Penquin Books Trial in 1960 that Lawrence's book was published in Great Britian.