David Herbert Lawrence 1885 － 1930

Lawrence is one of the greatest English novelists of the 20th century, and, perhaps, the greatest from England proper and from a working- class family. During his life- long literary career, he had written more than ten novels and several volumes of short stories. He is also a proficient poet, a combative essayist, an atmospheric travel- writer, and a prolific literary correspondent.

His family’s effect on his writing Lawrence was born at a mining village in Nottinghamshire. The conflict between the earthly, coarse, energetic but often drunk father and the refined, strong- willed and up- climbing mother is vividly presented in his novel.

Main works Sons and Lovers 1913 The Rainbow 1915 Women in Love 1920 Lady Chatterley’s Lover 1928

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

The original title: Tenderness Lady Chatterley's Lover chronicles Connie's maturation as a woman and as a sensual being.

Connie She comes to despise her weak, ineffectual husband, and to love Oliver Mellors, the gamekeeper on her husband's estate. In the process of leaving her husband and conceiving a child with Mellors, Lady Chatterley moves from the heartless, bloodless world of the intelligentsia and aristocracy into a vital and profound connection rooted in sensuality and sexual fulfillment.

Clifford Chatterley He is a minor nobleman who becomes paralyzed from the waist down during World War I. He represents everything that this novel despises about the modern English nobleman: he is a weak, vain man, but declares his right to rule the lower classes, and he soullessly pursues money and fame through industry and the meaningless manipulation of words. His impotence is symbolic of his failings as a strong, sensual man.

Oliver Mellors He is the representative in this novel of the Noble Savage: he is a man with an innate nobility but who remains impervious to the pettiness and emptiness of conventional society, with access to a primitive flame of passion and sensuality.

Some questions How do you think that Lady Chatterley's Lover, in its perspective on coal miners and their role in the industrial economy, comments on Lawrence's own background? Who are the sympathetic characters in this novel? What is your opinion of Mellors? Is he a worthy match for Connie Chatterley?

Analysis The greatness of Lady Chatterley's Lover lies in a paradox: it is simultaneously progressive and reactionary, modern and Victorian. It looks backwards towards a Victorian stylistic formality, and it seems to anticipate the social morality of the late 20th century in its frank engagement with explicit subject matter and profanity. One might say of the novel that it is formally and thematically conservative, but methodologically radical.

Analysis continued Lawrence not only condemned the civilized world of mechanism that distorted all natural relationships between men and women, but also advocated a return to nature.

Points of view A strong reaction against the mechanical civilization Ideas about nature Views on psychology Ideas of balance or polarity