Lady Chatterley’s Lover is the final novel by English author D. H. Lawrence, which was first published privately in 1928, in Florence, Italy, and in 1929, in Paris, France.[2] An unexpurgated edition was not published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960, when it was the subject of a watershed obscenity trial against the publisher Penguin Books, which won the case and quickly sold three million copies.[2] The book was also banned for obscenity in the United States, Canada, Australia, India and Japan. The book soon became notorious for its story of the physical (and emotional) relationship between a working-class man and an upper-class woman, its explicit descriptions of sex and its use of then-unprintable profane words.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover – Wikipedia by Lady Chatterley’s Lover – Wikipedia

I remember reading D.H. Lawrence’s short story ’Odour of Chrysanthemums’ at university, however I had never actually read any more of Lawrence’s other stories or novels. I therefore decided to listen to John Lee’s reading of Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence on Audible.

The novel explores the dichotomy between mind and body. We are taken beyond Lady Constance Chatterley’s marriage with Sir Clifford Chatterley, which is fruitful on paper as he is a successful writer and businessman, but far from fulling from the perspective of emotions and desire. The story explores the affair with Oliver Mellors, the gamekeeper, the growing relationship between the two and the social complexities associated with following such paths in life.

It was interesting reading this 100 years later and think about the shock associated with it.

Lawrence’s novels are considered important for many other reasons, including their depictions of everyday, working-class life. Stories from this point of view were considered radical compared to works by other authors who wrote about the elite class in England.

Source: 10 Banned Literary Classics You Might Not Know by Alex “Cosmo” Lutz

Another self was alive in her, burning molten and soft in her womb and bowels, and with this self she adored him. She adored him till her knees were weak as she walked. In her womb and bowels she was flowing and alive now and vulnerable, and helpless in adoration of him as the most naïve woman. It feels like a child, she said to herself it feels like a child in me. And so it did, as if her womb, that had always been shut, had opened and filled with new life, almost a burden, yet lovely.

This is history. One England blots out another. The mines had made the halls wealthy. Now they were blotting them out, as they had already blotted out the cottages. The industrial England blots out the agricultural England. One meaning blots out another. The new England blots out the old England. And the continuity is not Organic, but mechanical.

Note: The idea of one time replacing another reminds me of Hartley’s The Go-Between