Lady Chatterley’s Lover D. H. Lawrence

Tone Lawrence waivers between a harsh tone in response to society or symbols of society, Clifford, the coal mines, or the class system, and a softer, passionate tone. Lawrence handles Connie, the heroine, gently and presents her in the best light. When he discusses love and relationships he is passionate. This creates a excitement that uplifts and juxtaposes the novels darker themes.

examples “Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.” “Constance…was a ruddy, country-looking girl with soft brown hair and sturdy body, and slow movements, full of unusual energy. She had big, wondering eyes, and a soft mild voice, and seemed just to have come from her native village.” Lawrence’s attitude towards his century is distaste and sadness. More than anything the Industrial age he lived in depresses him, with its lack of all things natural, including love. Lawrence deals with Connie, the books heroine in an affectionate way. He describes her “soft mild voice.” and provincial characteristics in a endearing, not demeaning, way.

Imagery Lawrence is very descriptive of the people, places and events in the novel. He uses vivid imagery most notably when describing, the enormous cast of characters included in his novel, in order to highlight and show the importance of each one. What makes Lady Chatterley a “scandalous” novel is the sensual imagery Lawrence uses in intimate scenes between Connie and her lovers. “Perhaps they were only weird fauna of the coal seams. Creatures of another reality, they were elementals, serving the elements of coal… men not men, but animals of coal and iron and clay…They had perhaps some of the weird, inhuman beauty of minerals, the luster of coal, the weight and blueness and resistance of iron, the transparency of glass.” Lawrence describes the coal miners as a strange subspecies, part human, part rock. He uses this imagery to try and explain the unnatural nature of mining.

Voice Lawrence fuses first person and third person voices. Lawrence’s narrations seamlessly transitions to Connie, Mellors or Clifford’s voice. This uniquely flowing approach to voice is dynamic and interesting to the reader and allows full understanding of complex character’s and plot from multiple angles.

Irony Lawrence uses irony, as a mild form of humor, and more often to surprise the reader with his wit. Examples of irony in Lady Chatterley’s Lover include: Days after their honeymoon’s end Clifford leaves Connie for war.. When he returns he is paralyzed. Before the war the couples ‘sex life’ is described, “…merely an accident, or an adjunct, one of the curios obsolete, organic processes which persisted in its own clumsiness, but was not really necessary.” Ironically when sex is not an option Connie becomes restless. Connie and Mellors’s love affair is in full bloom, when Mellors playfully jokes that Connie will get bored of him and leave him. The reader remembers the irony of his flirting when the couple’s relationship is waning and almost ends. Connie and Mellors playfully deface a portrait of Mellors and his separated wife. A few months later, much to the readers surprise the wife returns, finds the portrait and is able to trace Connie as “the other woman” her husband has been with.

End By Rachel Wolfe