Lady Chatterley's Lover, Chapter 16

[osprey_archer]

Lady Chatterley's Lover is such a different book than I expected. Not that I walked into it with very firm expectations, but I had the vague idea that it was like 80% sex scenes with perhaps some linking descriptions of English wildflowers.

In fact, it's more like one part sex scenes and one part wildflowers to three parts EXISTENTIAL DESPAIR. Industrialization has ruined the world and almost all of the people in it and probably within a hundred years humanity will have lost the last vestiges of its goodness and slaughter each other to extinction in an orgy of industrialized violence.

(Lawrence wrote this in 1929. We have twelve years left to go to before we can say he was wrong.)

Really I just want Connie to be happy, but that's looking less and less likely as the book goes on. Connie and Clifford have grown ever farther apart, and the more we know about Mellors the less he seems like an antidote. The main thing he and Connie seem to have in common is their despair, and I have become increasingly convinced that if Mellors and Connie run away together, they'll sink into an abyss of utter misery as soon as the first flush of honeymoon sex wears off.

I mentioned to evelyn_b last week that what these characters really need is a visit from Flora Poste, of Cold Comfort Farm, who would set them all right with firm good sense and cheerfulness. She could give Sir Clifford a pamphlet about ways to sexually satisfy his wife despite his impotence, whisk Connie off for a refreshing vacation in Venice, and... Well, I'm not sure how she could help Mellors. He doesn't like his dog! What kind of human being dislikes his own dog?

Flora could bring up Mellors' hang-ups about mutual orgasms, perhaps. Until Connie, Mellors has never managed to have a mutual orgasm with any of his partners, and he thinks that this is a sign that womanliness has been utterly undermined by the industrialization that is crushing the human spirit and slowly killing us all.

Like, dude. Maybe you're just not that good at sex, Mellors, did you ever think of that? Maybe women are a diverse population with different desires and physical sensitivities and you could try to make your peace with that instead of obsessing about how your lack of mutual orgasms is a sign that the world is in a ghastly state of degradation and decay.

I think if Flora tried to suggest any of this to Mellors, he'd probably just dismiss her as a meddling female, though. He might prove too tough a nut for even Flora Poster to crack.

Comments

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

What's-his-name the Irish playwright had a hang-up about mutual orgasms, too! When I got to that part I thought, LAWRENCE, NOT AGAIN. That whole chapter is such a mix of endearing/embarrassing earnestness and "ugh mellors what is your damage."

I keep writing a paragraph and then deleting it because I'm not sure what I want to say! but I feel like this book is ambitious on at least two fronts (write honestly about sex, write about the Post-War Industrial Malaise) and both fronts are doing ok on their own, more or less, but whenever DHL tries to make the sex say something about the malaise I get annoyed.

He doesn't like his dog! What kind of human being dislikes his own dog?

:(

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

George Bernard Shaw? Actually I have no idea if Shaw had opinions about mutual orgasms, but he had opinions about everything else, so it doesn't seem like a stretch.

I think Lawrence wants the Post-War Industrial Malaise to have caused the sex issue by alienating people from natural rhythms and instincts etc., and on the one hand, sometimes I feel like he has an insight in there somewhere... but I'm not sure exactly what the insight is or how to tease it out from everything else he's got going on there.

In completely unrelated news, I just discovered that there is a mystery series starring Josephine Tey as the sleuth. Unfortunately I haven't read any of them, so I don't know if she tracks down killers by checking their eyes for the telltale nymphomaniacal blue, but if not then the author missed a serious opportunity.

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

No, the fictional one Connie had an unsatisfying affair with! Michaelis! They broke up because he was an asshole about her not coming off at the same time as him, and "selfishly" continuing after he was "done."

I have heard of those books, but not attempted to read one. I wouldn't expect them to use face detection, but I would be disappointed if face detection didn't get at least a passing nod.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Oh, him! Yes. I guess Lawrence has a bit of a thing about it: he seems to think that the right kind of orgasm is the kind a man gives to a woman, who passively receives it rather than going after it herself.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

"Like, dude. Maybe you're just not that good at sex..."

I laughed so hard. Thank you ;o)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Either he's not that good at sex, or every woman he has ever had sex with EVER is an unnatural female who just can't get off properly. And it doesn't even occur to him to entertain the first possibility.