Lady Chatterley's Lover (Arcturus Paperback Classics) [Paperback]

D. H. Lawrence (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2010 | ISBN-10: 1848377088 | ISBN-13: 978-1848377080

The last and most famous of D. H. Lawrence's novels, Lady Chatterley's Lover was published in 1928 and banned in England and the United States as pornographic. While sexually tame by today's standards, the book is memorable for better reasons-Lawrence's masterful and lyrical prose, and a vibrant story that takes us bodily into the world of its characters.As the novel opens, Constance Chatterley finds herself trapped in an unfulfilling marriage to a rich aristocrat whose war wounds have left him paralyzed and impotent. After a brief but unsatisfying affair with a playwright, Lady Chatterley enjoys an extremely passionate relationship with the gamekeeper on the family estate, Oliver Mellors. As Lady Chatterley falls in love and conceives a child with Mellors, she moves from the heartless, bloodless world of the intelligentsia and aristocracy into a vital and profound connection rooted in sexual fulfillment.Through this novel, Lawrence attempted to revive in the human consciousness an awareness of savage sensuality, a sensuality with the power to free men and women from the enslaving sterility of modern technology and intellectualism. Perhaps even more relevant today than when it first appeared, Lady Chatterley's Lover is a triumph of passion and an erotic celebration of life.

--This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Perhaps the most famous of Lawrence's novels, the 1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover is no longer distinguished for the once-shockingly explicit treatment of its subject matter--the adulterous affair between a sexually unfulfilled upper-class married woman and the game keeper who works for the estate owned by her wheelchaired husband. Now that we're used to reading about sex, and seeing it in the movies, it's apparent that the novel is memorable for better reasons: namely, that Lawrence was a masterful and lyrical writer, whose story takes us bodily into the world of its characters. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

It was a bomb, not a book Guardian A significant turning point in history Observer No one ever wrote better about the power struggles of sex and love --Doris Lessing --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Arcturus (June 1, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1848377088
• ISBN-13: 978-1848377080
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.7 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (156 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,701,679 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

105 of 108 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars "We ought to be able to arrange this sex thing as if we were going to the dentist." April 22, 2006

By Mary Whipple HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

A book which has achieved more notoriety for its sex scenes (shocking in 1930, when the book was written) than for its character studies, Lady Chatterley's Lover focuses on the affair between Constance, the "sturdy" young wife of Clifford Chatterley, and the gamekeeper of the Chatterleys' estate in the remote midlands. Constance, who married Clifford a month before he left for World War I, has become his caretaker since his return from the war, paralyzed from the waist down and impotent. A writer who surrounds himself with intellectual friends, Clifford regards Connie as his hostess and caregiver and does not understand her abject yearning for some life of her own.

The distance between Constance and Clifford increases when Mrs. Bolton, a widow from the village, becomes his devoted caretaker, and he becomes increasingly dependent upon her. In a remarkable scene, Clifford finally tells Connie that he'd like an heir, and he does not care whom she finds to be the father of "his" child. He believes, in fact, that he could treat her affair as if it were a trip to the dentist. Connie, yearning for an emotional closeness which she has never experienced before, soon becomes involved with Mellors, the estate's gamekeeper. Crude and anti-social, Mellors has an honesty and lack of pretension which Connie finds refreshing.

Throughout the novel, Lawrence creates finely drawn characters whose interactions and gradual changes are explored microscopically. The growth of love between Connie and Mellors is complicated by the increasing self-centeredness of Clifford, whose outrage at rumors of their affair is motivated by Connie's choice of someone so far beneath her. To Clifford, the separation of the social classes is an integral and inevitable part of life.... Devoted to achieving financial success even at the expense of his workers, the paralyzed Clifford is depicted as a symbol of unfeeling aristocracy and government. Mellors, by contrast, is vigorous and full of life, a strong man of character who obeys his instincts and stands up for what he believes.

Dealing with themes of love, passion, respect, honor, and the need for understanding, Lady Chatterley's Lover is a complex, character-driven novel which, though dated, celebrates the driving passions which can make life worth living. The romantic scenes and language here are tame by modern standards, and the extreme behavior and willingness to flout convention by Connie and Mellors may be less realistic, psychologically, than what would make sense to a modern reader. Firmly rooted in the 1930's, the novel shows an insensitive Clifford adhering to outdated values, based on outdated economic structures, while Connie and Mellors, freed from these conventions, explore their inner natures and their humanity. n Mary Whipple Read more ›

54 of 57 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "Lady Chatterly's Lover" ranks with "Ulysses" February 22, 2001

By Tim R. Niles

Format:Mass Market Paperback

I did not read this book until ten years ago - age forty for those who count - and found it a brilliant work. It touched on every aspect of life in that era, using a difficult premise at the focus.

One reviewer called it 'sexist.' In that era, women were kept removed from the world, so men were the ones who made the initial contacts with reality and their sexuality. If Lawrence had written about that society in any other way, he would have been inaccurate. Lawrence shows the social conflict with both subtlety and brutality. Yet, Mellor IS a lover. There are sexual descriptions which are explicit, but within the coccoon of emotional bondings.

The way that Lawrence has essayed the class structure of England in that era is brave and accurate in all ways. He makes the posturing of the aristocracy both frivilous and full of assinine criteria at the same time he understands the willingness of those in power to offer their lives in the defense of the general welfare.

Lawrence notes again with unpleasant accuracy the detriments of an unchecked Industrial Revolution on the social structure of the time. He has Constance both witness these effects and suffer the olfactory damage.

This is a literary work which has an effect across the full spectrum of the possible. Finely drawn characters searching for a better way to survive their lives in a scenario that is rife with obstacles and unpleasantness. He has the touch of the finest artist working with the lightest gossamer and the blunt force of an ogre swinging a stone axe....

This was published in an abridged version because it was felt that the societal message it conveyed should be allowed to transit the draconian (by the less filtered standards of today) censorship of the era which DID focus on the sexual descriptions but could NOT stop the voice of social criticism any more than the same group could stop Dickens a few decades earlier. Read more ›

62 of 68 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars I finally know what the hoopla's about! June 24, 2002

By Andi Miller

Format:Mass Market Paperback

When I first began to read Lady Chatterley's Lover I thought it was going to be quite a chore. I'm used to flowery language and all that, but I just wasn't in the mood for what I anticipated to be a sex-charged love story. Much to my surprise I got MUCH more from this wonderful classic.

D.H. Lawrence makes some striking observations about the state of the social classes in post WWI England, as well as providing some good insights into tough individual decisions we make in regard to relationships. I had limited knowledge of the post-war subject beforehand, but I felt that I learned a great deal in the process of reading. At times the book seemed repetitive, as if Lawrence were beating me over the head with his message, sacrificing character and plot in the process, but after all was said and done I couldn't say that it was a bad book. It's a very insightful, multi-layered work and I'm very glad I read it. The fact that the book was widely banned from publication in its early days is just another tempting reason to read it although, by today's standards, what was so risqué then borders on the ridiculous for us now. As long as you remind yourself of the time period in which it was written you'll be just fine...the laughs and raised eyebrows in conjunction with more serious themes are a pleasant mix.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Sensuality, 1920s style February 25, 2006

By Cassie W. VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I was first introduced to D.H. Lawrence in a Brit Lit class when I was in college. We read SONS AND LOVERS, and I was totally blown away by Lawrence's verdant prose and by the novel's brutal, uncomfortable beauty. My professor mentioned LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER frequently while we were studying Lawrence, and since then I've wanted to read this later, more well-known, more controversial work. Finally, two years after that class, I got around to it.

LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER tells the story of a young woman named Constance Reid, who marries Sir Clifford Chatterley when he's home on leave for a month from the battlefields of World War I. After a month of honeymooning, Clifford must return to the war; and sadly, when he returns six months later, he comes home "more or less in bits," paralyzed from the waist down. The newlyweds settle at Clifford's family home, Wragby, near the industrialized town of Tevershall.

Although Clifford cannot please Constance sexually, he and his wife are intellectually connected; they make love with words, and at first this is enough for Constance. However, a brief affair with one of Clifford's colleagues makes Connie aware of her more carnal needs, of her desire for physical pleasure.

Enter Oliver Mellors, the Chatterleys' groundskeeper who lives a life of solitude in a secluded wooded cabin. In Mellors, Connie is awakened to a higher consciousness, to the power of sexual pleasure and mutual satisfaction. Her relationship with Mellors helps her emerge from her cocoon of prudishness to become a highly sexualized being. The affair continues under Clifford's nose, and he is either too inattentive to notice or just pretends not to.

As a baronet, Clifford is in a position of power, but he finds himself completely powerless.... The mines of Tevershall, which he controls, are dying; and not only is his industry dead, so is his sexuality. He, and his business, are impotent. What makes him so interesting is the almost tender way in which Lawrence portrays him. The scene in which he tries desperately to force his wheelchair's dying motor to roll uphill while Connie and Mellors look on is particularly heartbreaking. Clifford is vain, and he has no use for sex or other things of a physical nature, but he also knows that the only way he can produce an heir is if Connie has sex with another man and allows Clifford to claim the child as his own. His lack of power, and his reaction to the knowledge of it, make him compelling.

Unlike Clifford, Connie's other love interest, Oliver Mellors, is confident and unashamed and almost pagan in his celebration of physicality. He's a surprisingly endearing character, a common man with some very intelligent things to say, who isn't intimidated by class boundaries, who doesn't chastise himself for ravishing a married woman.

Constance Chatterley is a woman awakening to her sexual self, and Lawrence chronicles her metamorphosis in explicit, sensitive detail. It's suprising how well Lawrence was able to write from a woman's perspective. However, Connie's perception of her ideal relationship near the end of the novel probably didn't quite ring true for many female readers of the time (at least, not that they would admit): "Complete intimacy! She supposed that meant revealing everything concerning yourself to the other person, and his revealing everything concerning himself. But that was a bore. All that weary self-consciousness between a man and a woman! a disease!" It's observations like this that made LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER so controversial.

LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER has probably remained so popular for 80 years because of its sexual content, which was undoubtedly completely immoral for the time period in which is was written. But of course the content is not anything too shocking in today's world of pay-per-view pornography and busty women on the covers of erotic fiction sold in supermarkets everywhere. However, this book shouldn't be bunched into that category, by today's standards or any other age's; I would like to think LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER is still popular today because of Lawrence's incredibly brave writing.

Lawrence expounds on many controversial ideas in this, his last major novel before his death in 1930. The novel is rife with criticism of post-WWI England and the failures of industrialization to support a growing economy. Lawrence believes sensuality should be the means of connecting with environment, not through the workings of iron and gritty coal. In LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER, industry is impotent; but men and women are sexually alive.

My only issue with the novel is that some of the sex scenes are absolutely ridiculous, and read like Lawrence was writing them merely for the shock factor. His language is often unnecessarily crude, and the whole "John Thomas" and "Lady Jane" thing is just silly. However, this ridiculousness is balanced nicely with some beautiful, sensual descriptions: Connie's first orgasm, the use of twined flowers to symbolize purity in love, the beautiful language Mellors uses in his letter to Connie at the end of the novel: "I love the chastity now that it flows between us. It is like fresh water and rain...like a river of cool water in my soul."

It's undeniable that Lawrence's prose is absolutely intoxicating and exciting, and he proves it again and again in the pages of this novel, written even as his life was ending. And that's what makes LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER memorable: not the sex, but the words used to describe the sex. LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER is an intimate look at love and sex, a novel whose popularity has remained for 80 years--and probably will remain far into the future, and rightfully so. Read more ›