I have been going through certain critical material on the writings of D. H. Lawrence. One of the major criticisms against him is that his emphasis on sex is exaggerated & unrealistic. Now it may come as a surprise but through out his life,
People have raised the storm of indignation against his novels Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Sons & Lovers, The Rainbow & Women in Love. But they went mad when Lady Chatterley’s Lover was published for the 1st time. In fact it was published privately in 1928 & basically readers were outraged with it sexual explicitness & strong language. It seems the word ‘fuck’ has a strong effect on closed minds in almost any age or era. Maybe its meaning is taken way too seriously. By the way, this story is about a married woman’s sexual awakening through her affair. Naturally it became one of the most controversial novels of the 20th century.
Penguin Books were prosecuted under the Obscene Publication Act, 1959 for having published this book. However, the 12 jurors (3 women & 9 men) gave a verdict of ‘Not Guilty’ & thus his last novel was finally available to the public in
I’ve taken out few dialogues from Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Quite frankly, when I read the book for the 1st time, I expected too much & I was shocked that people tend to make a lot of noise when it’s not even essential.
‘You love fucking all right: but you want it to be called something grand & mysterious, just to flatter your own self-importance. Your own self-importance is more to you, fifty times more, than any man, or being together with a man.’ (Mellors says this to
To which
‘Ay! Very well then!’ he said. Let’s keep apart then. I’d rather die than do any more cold-hearted fucking.’
Well I’m sure this kind of conversation must be too much for some people even today. It won’t be incorrect to say that they would rather die than reflect over the concept of cold-hearted fucking.
At one point, Constance Chatterley says to Mellors:
‘I want to touch you like you touch me. I’ve never touched your body.’
How do you touch another person? That’s when you feel that person. I just couldn’t see anything dirty about it. These 2 characters were quite open about matters that happen on a daily basis, but we all must keep mum about them. It’s okay as long as we are cracking lousy jokes on sex, but if we ever talk on sex seriously, you hardly come across anyone you could have a discussion with. Yeah your friends would listen, but then a wall too could just listen to almost anything.
I really like how the protagonist pours out his real sentiments:
‘You see I couldn’t fool myself. That’s where most men manage. They take an attitude, & accept a lie. I could never fool myself. I knew what I wanted with a woman, & I could never say I’d got it when I hadn’t…For me it’s the core of my life: if I have a right relation with a woman.’
Who wouldn’t go for this kind of a man! But I guess such men only exist in books & movies. Actually I really admired the character of Mellors.
D. H. Lawrence also wrote in his letter to elaborate his point:
‘I can only write what I feel pretty strongly about: and that, at present, is the relation between men & women. After all, it’s the problem today, the establishment of a new relation, or the re-adjustment of the old one, between men & women.’
However, I didn’t like the poems he wrote in his anger against those who had problems with his writings & were certainly not in the position to understand them. Those poems were mediocre, to say the least. I wouldn’t have read them, had they been written by someone else. And I still regret wasting my time.
Anyhow to D. H. Lawrence, the elevation of ‘love’ as the be-all & end-all of existence is entirely deplorable, for as it is presented to us it is sham; the love of the pop-songs is often nothing more than a desire for security, for some certainty in a dark & alien world that ‘somebody out there loves me,’ whereas the whole point of proper sexual relationship is to make one aware of new possibilities & depth of life; & to bring one closer to an understanding of the reality underlying existence.
