How is human sexuality treated in the work of Lawrence? - Lady Chatterleys Lover

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In the novel Lady Chatterleys Lover, by D. H. Lawrence, the author took a different view of the relationship between the two sexes than was generally discussed before in novels. The themes, descriptions and words he used were highly controversial at the time it was written, causing its first publications to be in Italy in 18 even though the author was English. It was not published until the 160s in England, and even then amongst great controversy due to the reputation of being a sordid book that had grown up around it. However, Lawrence himself did not see the book in such a light. He saw it as a critique of society and the way in which human intellectual and sexual relationships had evolved and become disconnected from each other in a very unnatural way over the years. In this essay, I will attempt to show his analysis of such things in the time he was living and how his views are brought out through the characters with the novel.

At the time of his writing, sexual attitudes had taken a drastic shift away from the remnants of the Victorian era and into a sort of enlightened, intellectual state of freedom. After the First World War, real advances began to be made in regards to attitudes towards sexual relations. 'Modern sex and education of a sort had begun to evolve. People were beginning to believe that they had control over their own sexuality and had the choice when to evoke it, loosing the natural vitality that it once had, making it far more meaningless and false. The 10s was the decade of the introduction of contraception, giving an even wider gap between sex and procreation than had been there before. Already, attitudes had been shifting towards a decrease in the relationship between intellectual thought and sexual relations. The idea of mental compatibility was becoming the desired option for relationships and marriage, when, until fairly recently, it had been chiefly the domain of property exchange and procreation to meet this end. However, even in the early nineteenth century, this shift was clearly beginning to evolve, making ones life centralised around the wealth you had rather than your sexual desirability. This can be seen in the works of the likes of Charles Dickens, with the increased sense of poverty and striving for wealth to attain a better quality of life, and Carl Marx, who tried to show how we were becoming too focused on the material. As we entered into the inner war years, the ideas were firmly set that relationships were for love, mental compatibility, shared thoughts and the ability to communicate, an idea that is not entirely foreign to us these days. Lawrence saw this as a way in which you lost something in the sexual relationship due to relating to each other on a different level and making relationships uncomfortable. He felt that introducing the idea of conversation to sex, as the new cosmopolitan bohemian set felt, was a misconception of it. Sex was more a question of what it was to be a human being, and this new view was altering what it meant to be by separating the relationship between mind and body. Lawrence believed that sex was just as fundamentally a part of the body as intellectual stimulation of the mind, not just accidentally there as something to be done.

Lawrence was not a radical modernist, such as James Joyce or Virginia Woolf, who had set structured interpretations of what they wanted to do with the works they produced, but he did share similar views with them. He agreed that, after the war, culture and society had become morally deficient and directionless. But the thing he saw as the biggest threat to this natural being was the Industrial Revolution, man and machine destroying nature and making it something cold, harsh and dead rather than the vast, mysterious being it had been to the likes of Wordsworth and other Romantic writers. The sublime image of Thomas Hardys Egdon heath had been reduced to dust and organic growth ploughed over for coalmines and factories. But, not only did it lessen the importance of the natural world, it also implemented a strong social culture that dominated the personal life of every individual. World War One was just the first obvious extreme of this intense industrialisation on life, centralising state and wealth closer into one than before, writing out the individual as having any main role and, rather leaving them to be eclipsed by modern society. Therefore, to Lawrence, to escape from this world in which you are subjected to a set role, one must flee England, Europe and the rest of the industrialised world and revert back to a more primitive, simplistic state.

It is within these ideals that he sets his novel Lady Chatterleys Lover, with his attempts to show human sexuality for what he felt that it was, and how the society around it was affecting it. In the beginning of the novel, Lawrence gives us an overview of the early life of Connie and her sister, and the world that they grew up in. Their father was a fellow of the Royal Academy and their mother was Fabian, progressive socialist and liberal, so they grew up around art and socialist culture. They were sent to Dresden for studies when they both had their first sexual encounters and, to both of them, it was but something extra that was desired by the men, a 'sort of primitive reversion. It is this world that shaped how Connie grew up and what she believed life should be like. To her, a relationship was an intellectual high, ecstasy stimulated through words and level of discussion. Sexual relations were an after thought, something extra that you let a man have to satisfy a few carnal desires. She believed that you never gave yourself up to this other individual through such a basic act because you could control it. She is very cold about sex, withholding her enjoyment of these experiences with both her first lovers in Dresden and her lover while married to Clifford, Michaelis, and, it would be assumed, also with Clifford in their marriage before he sustained his injuries, as it was a way of controlling man 'without yielding her inner, free self. It became no more than the climactic end to such 'vivid and soul-enlightening discussions. Connie and her sister may have mourned the passing of their first young men when the war had come, but it was more a required response, inside they had never yielded themselves and so could let such things pass. When Connies sister Hilda married, it was more for intellectual position and stimulation in society that any proper love. Clifford was also Connies intellectual partner, just another member of the semi-rebellious youth craze for philosophical and political commentary on the world. He was slightly different in his position as a member of the aristocracy, but he was still a part of this bohemian set that was the trend of the day, blaming the past for the shape of the world as it had become. This was the modern intellect, analysing and reanalysing where they felt the world had gone wrong, making a mockery of the world before the now. This was a view apparent in the works of a great many modernist writers, including Virginia Woolf, such as in her references to her father in To the Lighthouse, and in James Joyces Ulysses with the portrayal of Irish freedom movements, where the past was the big motivation for them, as it still is even today. Order Custom Essay on How is human sexuality treated in the work of Lawrence? - Lady Chatterleys Lover

Within the characters of Clifford and the friends that visit him, it is quite clear how the view of sex in society had become dehumanised and cold. Through these characters, Lawrence throws out his ideas in a randomly circulated way, between them. In the conversation in Chapter 4, the discussion of sex makes it seem more like just another physical necessity of life, something that is needed occasionally, like food and water, but nothing much more than that. 'Sex is just another form of talk, where you act the words instead of saying them, is just one of the many such views that Lawrence saw as harmful. While a character such as Charlie May believes that it is only right to finish a conversation with a woman by having sex as it would be a fitting end to the intellectual stimulation, Tommy Dukes believes that it does not matter, and that you can live perfectly normal lives without ever bothering about such trivial things as sex.

Clifford himself is also a strong indication of this. To him, his relationship with Connie was never sexually based; it was a mental link that they both shared. And so it did not really matter after his injury that he was incapable of sex with her. He also saw very little to worry about if Connie felt the natural desire for such a thing with another man, as long as he did not know, to the point where he even thought she could have a child from another man and he would raise it as his own nonetheless.He is like the embodiment of all that Lawrence felt was wrong about his society. To him, everything that he and Connie had was in the way that they interacted mentally. However, when this link was severed, both with Connies change of heart and the arrival of Mrs. Bolton, there was nothing left between them. When Connie chose to leave him, it was clear that his mental attachment had already shifted to Mrs. Bolton, even though there was not a proper sexual relationship present. The only real mention Connie makes of their marriage is at the beginning of Chapter , where she realises the lack of a physical connection between the two of them. She had married him because 'in a mental way he attracted her and excited her. He had seemed, in some way, her master, beyond her. This was similar to the relationship of master and servant that was developing between Mrs. Bolton and Clifford as well, but perhaps it was a better way of doing things for them, because they both gained from the interaction, unlike Connie who needed more than social or mental progression.

Clifford may have been a member of this modern society of beliefs, but as a member of the aristocracy, he was 'conscious of his own defencelessness even if he had 'all the defences of privilege. Through this, he was also impotent in the society around him as well as physically, for he could not alter how things were with the decline of aristocratic powers in the changing world structure. But no matter, he still tried to do just such a thing with his mines. He still views the world in the old aristocratic way of the chain of class, but as in the new industrial trend, making people all part of a system that they cannot escape. People, he feels, are not individuals, but part of the greater whole of the industrial world, he in the position of controller, the lower classes as the workers. Otherwise, the life that they build for themselves is shaped around this way of living. He believes, unlike Connie, that 'they are not men. They are animals…. The masses were always the same, and always will be the same… An individual may emerge from the masses. But the emergence doesnt alter the mass. It is this cold view that helps him to believe that what was needed now was a strong hand to be taken up against these masses again as they have been 'poisoned by education into believing in an equality and need to be brought back down to their rightful level.

It is this strength of opposition between the classes that Mellors brings into question. He is a humble gamekeeper, yet has the past behind him to be a gentleman. He does not feel that he is anything less than Clifford, as can be seen on a few occasions, most notably in Chapter 1, during the incident with Cliffords motorised chair. It is like a mini critique of society in itself. Clifford continues to fight with the chairs motor, forcing it on, even though it is dying, like his own society and its old ways. Mellors is the image of the new mass individual, he is clearly on equal ground, if not higher, than Clifford, even in the eyes of Connie in her anger at Clifford for his behaviour. It is as though Lawrence could be saying that, if the sort of isolationism that Clifford believes in continues, the masses will have to stand by and watch them die. If only the two sides worked together, like if Clifford let Mellors help him, they would get results. However, Clifford refused to give in, until he is forced into needing the help of Mellors, giving him the role of superior. Mellors himself, is the view of old nature, while Clifford is the modern industrial world, ever fighting ever trying to destroy to rebuild. In these ways, I believe that Lawrence is attempting to show how natural behaviour versus modern social structures will result in a conflict. In the novel, Connie is seduced by the natural charm of Mellors, and the simple charm of basic humanity, without these false airs and graces that society had been putting over it.

She first had an affair with a guest of her husbands, Michaelis, an Irish writer, who had attracted her with his isolated nature - a man alone - a quality he shared with Mellors. But, with him, it was a loneliness brought about through this modern way. And no matter how much he my have tried to be against it, he was forever a part of it. He would still write to Connie, but never would he give of himself. The outer man was always to remain as he had been, just as with Connie as she never gave her inner self to him. He wrote 'with a queer sexless affection… a kind of hopeless affection he seemed to feel for her and the essential remoteness remained the same. It was still remote and hopeless, just as with the intellectual relations, no matter how much Michaelis tried to just live his own life, without being 'bent on saving mankind as in this social intellectual world. But Michaelis was still part of this world, as when he asked Connie to leave Clifford for him, promising jewels and society for her that he could offer with his position, but none of this thrilled her. And then, at the end of Chapter 5, she has the first real shock of her life. Michaelis accuses her of being selfish, of not being able to give in to a man during sex, as she must hold out 'till a chaps really done, then [she] start[s] in to bring [herself] off, and a chaps got to hang on. She could not understand why he would not wish for her to have her own satisfaction. With this moment, Connie looses all sense of sexual pleasure and release from 'this empty treadmill of what Clifford called the integrated life…the great nothingness of life. In Chapter 7, she observes her body, and feels that she is losing her womanly shape, that she is somehow hollow and meaningless. She longed for the vibrant love of her lover in Dresden as compared to the dreariness of the intellectual life. She felt her body was lacking that 'healthy, human sensuality that warms the blood and freshens the whole being. It was with this moment with Michaelis that Connie realised her confined, hollow life, and opens her to the struggle to break free from it.

It is with Mellors that she discovers her sexual freedom. With him, she learns to completely give herself, as he does to her. This builds until they eventually climax together during their encounter in the woods. Mellors is, as noted before, the embodiment of nature and natural pleasures. He is not a part of the modern intellectual world. During the war, he had been commissioned as an officer, had a role in that intellectual life, but refused to stay that way and gave it all up for the simple life of a gamekeeper, solitary and away from this world. With Connie, he finds a release for his natural desires again, without the ties of society to bind them in any way. His speech in base vernacular is just another way of Lawrence to show how unlike the intellectual world he was. He referred bluntly to the human body and its functions, without being restrained by rules and social structures. Constantly he is symbolised with nature, through his lonely life in the woods, to his encounters with Connie in the woods, in the rain and with the intimate placing of flowers between them. It was a complete freedom that they both received through this relationship, a freedom from society and mental ties. With Mellors, Lawrence says that she felt a connection 'hit her in the middle of her body… the shock of vision in her womb and Mellors felt his desire like an 'old flame shooting and leaping up in his loins…[leaping] downwards, circling his knees. This was basic and human desire rather than the intellectual highs of social relations as she had been used to. It was their escape back to nature and humanity.

We find that Lawrence, throughout the novel, will loose focus on the actual novel itself and his passion for what he believes is happening will come flooding out to the reader, such as in Chapter 11, where Connie is travelling through local towns. 'England my England! But which is my England? he cries out as we read of Englands history being destroyed within the very framework that it created. Great homes that once symbolised its power were being torn down and replaced by the little ideal homes of modern living and society. 'This is history. One England blots out another…The industrial England blots out the agricultural England… The new England blots out the old England. But near the end of the novel, in Chapter 18, Connie tells Mellors what his place in the world is, the reason for his existence. 'Its the courage of your own tenderness. It is at this final moment where Lawrences views are given to us straight through the words of the characters. 'Sex is really only touch, the closest of all touch. And its touch were afraid of. Were only half-conscious, and half alive. Weve got to come alive and aware. 'I stand for the touch of bodily awareness between human beings...and the touch of tenderness…And it is a battle against the money, and the machine, and the insentient ideal monkeyishness of the world. And so the novel ends with the two characters that discovered nature, passion and a real connection with one another together and about to start a new life of pure joy and reality, while leaving the rest of the world and the people that had become nothing more than a part of their own social structure to their own hollow lives. Lawrence never reaches a satisfactory conclusion as to what should be done to rectify this loss of humanity within society, but posses the problem. As he states in the Propos to the novel-

'Culture and civilisation have taught us to separate the word from the deed, the thought from the act or the physical reaction. We now know that the act does not necessarily follow on the thought. In fact, thought and action, word and deed are two separate forms of consciousness, two separate lives which we lead. We need, very sincerely, to keep a connection.

This is the point that he tries to bring to the reader, like a warning to them to be careful, or they will loose what it means to be human. Intellect is conditioned, sexuality is a basic human need and desire. Relationships should not be based on a mental connection that can fade and die, leaving you with nothing but the sort of physical repulsion of Connie for Clifford when their connection is gone. Physical connections are natures way of bringing people together and will always mean that there is something there between human beings.

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