I have never read Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence, although I feel it’s something I really ought to do. It is still considered to be THE sex book within the high-falutin’ canon of English literature, and one that has caused much frowning and tut-tutting amongst those whose only wish is to save our immortal souls. So as a purveyor of high-quality smut, I really should do my background research.
The thing is, I had to read The Rainbow during 3rd Year English at uni and I found it particularly uninspiring. Yes, it’s all about love, but DH Lawrence’s version of love and male-female relationships didn’t really speak to me. I tried to like it, but I found John Donne and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie to be far more appealing in the sex/romantic department.
Now I’ve read this extensive essay about DH Lawrence and Lady Chatterley by Doris Lessing and it’s all rather fascinating.
It’s a very long article so I’ll give you the “expurgated”, only-interested-in-the-sex-bits version:
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* DH Lawrence was suffering from tuberculosis when he wrote Lady Chatterley’s Lover. TB apparently “heightens sexuality and its feverish imaginings” while making one impotent.
* Lawrence had a turbulent marriage with his wife Frieda. They argued a great deal, were violent toward one another, and she had many affairs. There seems to have been a BDSM element to their interactions. Even so, they valued their relationship greatly.
* Lawrence was a big believer in simultaneous orgasms and vaginal orgasms
* “Lawrence did not know about the clitoris, which he called ‘a beak’. A beak that rubbed and tore ‘in the old stagers, particularly’. To him the clitoris was a weapon, against the male.”
* “Lawrence came too quickly, said Frieda, and then, complained Lawrence, she had to bring herself to orgasm with the aid of the pesky clit.”
* He was very big on anal sex. “We do know that Lawrence’s sexual problems were resolved in anal sex, and these days probably few people would say more than, ‘Really? Now that’s interesting, seeing how he did go on about cunt.'”
* Lady Chatterley’s Lover has a scene that didn’t attract the notice of the censors. “In it Lawrence lauds the anal fuck as the apex of sexual experience, but it is written in such a way as not to be explicit.”
Lessing says that Lady Chatterley has come to be associated with much ignorant sniggering, and this is ironic given that Lawrence was intent on writing about “sex as a kind of sacrament.”
“Doing dirt on sex,” he said, “is the crime of our times, because what we need is tenderness towards the body, towards sex, we need tender-hearted fucking.”
So… I found myself wondering if I should read Lady Chatterley’s Lover after reading this essay. I suspect I’ll have to, if only to discover this wonderfully hidden description of sodomy. And I do love the idea of “tender-hearted fucking” – it’s something porn rarely depicts. Indeed, it’s a nice term that should be used to describe Tony Comstock’s films.
Even so, I wonder if discovering the above information about the writer will interfere with my enjoyment of the book. According to some feminists, Lawrence was a misogynist, and I know that will get in the way of me taking the text at face-value.
Still, it will be worth doing. I have a long list of “worthy” books that I have been meaning to read, but never get around to. Time to add Lady Chatterley, it seems.