by Moe Zilla

Created on: January 26, 2009

"Lady Chatterley's Lover" is a fine novel that's been overshadowed by its descriptive sex scenes. In fact, its characters are all well-defined, creating an intriguing drama about a woman married to a wealthy husband who wants a son though he's paralyzed and impotent. There's deep symbolism too, as Lawrence ruminates about the lives ruined by World War I. But Lawrence insists on including his character's sexuality as a part of the novel's story. "I want men and women to be able to think sex," D.H. Lawrence once said - "fully, completely, honestly, and cleanly."

His heroine, ironically, is named Constance - though the book's central dilemma is her adulterous affair with the estate's gamekeeper. And Lawrence obviously aims for an ambitious symbolism in the book, establishing a sweeping tone of despair in its very first page.

"Ours is essentially a tragic age... The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins... 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..."

Her problem? She'd married in 1917, when her husband was on leave, before returning to the bloody World War I battles in Belgium, "to be shipped over to England again six months later, more or less in bits." It's at this point that Lawrence tells us Chatterley is 22, while her paralyzed husband is 29, and he matter-of-factly sets the stage. "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, paralyzed for ever."

Her husband is Clifford Chatterley, who's inherited the family estate of Wragby Hall (since his own father is already dead). And it's significant that Lawrence attributes Clifford's crippling wounds to the final year of World War I. In fact, 3.6 percent of the population of Britain
suffered military wounds during the war - while another two percent actually died. It's been said that the tragic waste inspired the rise of the jaded "modernist" movement in literature and art. But for Lawrence, it's just the background for a story about a desperately unhappy woman - and the choices she makes.

Yes, Constance has an affair - but first she struggles for years against a very real sense of despair. Clifford devotes himself to a writing project, and "They talked and wrestled in the throes of composition, and felt as if something were happening, really happening, really in the void." Lawrence's enthusiasm for life gives him a breeziness, and he dismisses the deceptive pretenses haunting the British upper classes.

In the end, Lady Chatterley abandons those comforts for the vital passion that her life is missing.

Learn more about this author, Moe Zilla.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.