Lady Chatterley's Lover

The opening chapters of the novel establish the important temporal setting of the novel: The action of the plot occurs in the years immediately after World War I, and the events described are intimately shaped by the traumatic suffering that occurred during the war years. Clifford’s physical injuries symbolize that the individuals who lived through the war, and especially the men who fought in it, will never be the same as they were before. The post-war setting and the way in which characters engage with a changed world signal Lawrence’s engagement with literary Modernism: a broad movement that tended to focus on the need for new forms of representation to reflect a changing and increasingly unstable world. The novel’s opening lines reference a deeply Modernist perspective when Lawrence writes that “the cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins […] there is now no smooth road into the future” (1).

While Lawrence sets the stage with a backdrop of humanity struggling to find meaning in an entirely new kind of world, he quickly focuses on a small cast of characters in an isolated setting. Connie and Clifford are established as very different individuals, not least because of their different upbringings and social positions: “Connie was well-to-do intelligentsia, but [Clifford] was aristocracy. Not the big sort, but it” (7). While the war tragically damages Clifford’s body, leaving him passive and in need of constant care, it seems to likewise cut off Connie from a more permissive and empowered future she might have enjoyed. Prior to her marriage, Connie enjoyed access to art, travel, intellectual ideas, and sexual relationships. These formative experiences set the stage for her to later emerge as a woman who will make bold and controversial choices, struggling to regain a sense of agency.

Significantly, Connie is initially quite dedicated to tending to her husband and his disabilities, showing that she does try to be unselfish and altruistic. Clifford’s injuries symbolically emasculate him, while also leaving him literally unable to fulfil what many would have defined as his key responsibilities as Connie’s husband: to provide her with sexual satisfaction and to father her children. Because of Clifford’s injuries and the constant care he requires, the relationship between them becomes a surrogate parental one, in which Connie acts more like his mother than his wife. The lack of sexual relationship also leads to them resting the foundation of their relationship on the intellectual exchange of ideas, and for a time this seems to work: “[T]heir interests had never ceased to flow together over his work. They talked and wrestled in the throes of composition, and felt as if something were happening, really happening, really in the void” (16). However, this quotation reveals that their attempt at replacing true vitality with intellectualism is doomed to fail; they are merely pretending that they are not living in a “void.”

This section introduces the theme of Tension Between Intellectual and Physical Life through both a foreboding portrait of a precarious marriage and the portrayal of Clifford’s philosophical discussions with his friends. Clifford and the other well-educated elite men take an often cynical and detached view of emotions, sexuality, and human existence in general. While Connie does not actively participate in these discussions and debates, her attitude hints at why she will eventually grow dissatisfied with the social circle around her. The narrator notes that “she had an immense respect for thought…and these men, at least, tried to think honestly. But somehow there was a cat, and it wouldn’t jump” (35). Connie can sense that something is lacking from the bored, languid, and blasé masculinity that surrounds her, although she cannot yet identify what an alternative would be. Significantly, Connie is also excluded from these conversations, and not invited to share her own ideas or insights; while the men seem to be discussing novel and even avant-garde perspectives, they replicate very traditional gender norms in which they are active and Connie is a silent observer.

Connie’s future relationship with Mellors is not the first time that she commits adultery. She has a previous relationship with the Irish playwright Michaelis early in the novel. This prior relationship is significant in setting the stage for Connie’s subsequent relationship because it shows that adultery can be just as unremarkable and banal as marriage, and heightens the impact of class as what makes the relationship with Mellors truly taboo. Connie is protective of Clifford, and does not want him to be hurt by knowledge of her affair with Michaelis, but she is otherwise quite matter-of-fact about the affair. Especially since Michaelis is a wealthy intellectual, the relationship would be unremarkable to many.

Notably, the sexual pleasure that Connie gleans from this relationship revitalizes her and gives her energy to be a better partner to Clifford. This results in dramatic irony, in which readers know the source of Connie’s vitality while Clifford does not: “[W]hen those days of her grand joyful cheerfulness and stimulus were gone, quite gone, and she was depressed and irritable, how Clifford longed for them again” (29). This relationship reveals the argument, which will be developed throughout the narrative, that individuals thrive when they are experiencing sexual gratification, and tend to stagnate when they are deprived of sexual experience.