however one might sentimentalize it, this sex business was one of the most ancient, sordid connections and subjections. Poets who glorified it were mostly men. Women had always known there was something better, something higher. And now they knew it more definitely than ever. The beautiful pure freedom of a woman was infinitely more wonderful than any sexual love. The only unfortunate thing was that men lagged so far behind women in the matter. They insisted on the sex thing like dogs. P4

These amusing sentences come from the author of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, DH Lawrence, and epitomizes his attitude toward sex, which flows from him to his characters in the early twentieth-century England. It’s not surprising that this, his last and most famous novel, was banned here and in the United Kingdom from 1928 until 1959. When young Connie marries an aristocrat who is crippled a month into their marriage, she becomes restless, however, for sex after two years wrapped up innocently in her husband’s books and ideas. This was scandalous material in 1928!

Soon a popular playwright who presents himself as an Englishman, but is obviously not, comes to visit and that night Connie invites him up to her parlor. She suddenly is “in love” with him, the naughty woman, but please hear his biting thoughts…

He didn’t take the lovemaking altogether personally. He knew it would not change him from an ownerless dog, whom everyone begrudges its golden collar, into a comfortable society dog. P30

He is not unaffected by her, though. They have a torrid, secret affair where Connie learns to crave “his male passivity erect inside her.” However it comes to an end because he “couldn’t keep anything up” and was fated to be his usual “lone dog.” Hehe. As her husband grows busier with old and new friends because of the books he writes, she takes to walks in the quiet forest. Once as she is pushing Clifford in his wheelchair, it becomes too much for her going up a hill and the gameskeeper appears to lend his help. This gameskeeper worked for Clifford, dwelling in a primitive cottage in the forest.

Connie’s affair with him didn’t begin for another few years, but when they do, Lawrence’s achingly sensual description of their sex scenes is what really caused the book to be edited or rather censored! While her affair with the playwright was only a sad, desperate kind of lust, she is totally changed by her relationship with the gameskeeper, a man so much lower in class than she. The separation of the classes does cause her to feel dirtied by him at first, but love transforms him into someone of beauty…and so is she.

For readers of romance supernovels, Lawrence won’t shock them with anything new, but I guarantee they will still be satisfied with the eroticism. It is as true today as it was then that men and women approach intimate relationships differently, with men not needing to love in order to have sex like women do, and this is explored in all of Connie’s relationships with men. It is only with the unassuming, warm-hearted gameskeeper Oliver that she is able to be fully satisfied sexually and her inner self is discovered. She really is in love this time and becomes pregnant.

The rest of the novel shows her acting in courage to break away from Clifford and the shallowness of English society for a life of passion and love with Oliver. In their struggle to be together they must part for a while, yet become so much more pure in spirit without the constant compulsion of lovemaking.

Final Thoughts

I smiled at the dog metaphor, which Lawrence used to denote men’s helpless slavery to sex. Although it wasn’t part of Oliver’s description, but only of the weak, ineffectual playwright, (I can’t help suspecting Lawrence disliked the theatrical art form!) the term f*cking is generously used to describe Oliver and Connie’s lovemaking. It’s the common term he would use, applicable to dogs or other animals. Connie, however, doesn’t compare the experience to a dog’s:

And it seemed she was like the sea, nothing but dark waves rising and heaving, heaving with a great swell…and she was ocean rolling its dark, dumb mass. Oh and far down inside her, the deeps parted and rolled asunder in long, far-travelling billows…til suddenly, in a soft, shuddering convulsion, the quick of all her plasm was touched, she knew herself touched, the consummation was upon her, and she was gone. She was gone, she was not, and she was born: a woman. P208

For the much more religious, pious society of the US and the UK through the 50s, this was steamy stuff, very “adult.” Though poetic in rhythm, I have to admit the wording is somewhat repetitious in that scene (I cut out more of it). Honestly I found most of the writing fresh and bold, narrated in third person or the author's viewpoint. The whole book is a powerful revelation of his beliefs of how natural beauty is being broken down by industry and the separation of the classes in society. Even today it continues to ring true.

Reading this novel was simply a joy and thrill. The sensitivity of the author’s depiction of the characters as well as the compelling story combined to make it an experience of triumphant proportions, well worth the reading. The soul-wrenching desire for love has never been more admirable…or palpable…on the page.

This review is part of a write-off hosted by phineaskc. Please read the other wonderful reviews of banned or censored media by...Lagavulin
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Recommended: Yes