Sex and repression (Lady Chatterley's Lover - D. H. Lawrence)

Member Name: littleemma

Product:	Lady Chatterley's Lover - D. H. Lawrence
Date:	14/05/02 (279 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: extremely well written, interesting characters, informative

Disadvantages: ??

David Herbert Lawrence was born on 11 September 1885 in Eastwood close to Nottingham. His father was a miner, his mother a teacher. She was the one to make it possible for him to study, and not only to study at school but also at a university, an unusual chance for a person from his background at that time. After finishing his degree at the University College in Nottingham in 1908, Lawrence published his first poems in ?English Review?. He taught at a school in London for three years, until in 1911 he started suffering from tuberculosis.

During the World War I, Lawrence drew unjustified suspicion to himself and was even for a while suspected of being a German spy because of his German wife. Due to this and to his illness, he finally left England for good in 1919 and went around Europe and further ? to Italy, Sicily, Australia, Mexico, back to Italy and finally to the South of France where he stayed for a while and tried to cure his disease.

From 1926 onwards, Lawrence lived in Italy, where he wrote two versions of the famous novel ?Lady Chatterley?s Lover? about the unsatisfying sexual life of Lady Chatterley and her husband, two aristocrats, and finally of the satisfying relationship between her and the forester. One version of this novel which did not include any sexual scenes was published in 1932, but the actual original version was not published until much later.

This book, although considered to be shocking when it was published, is probably far from shocking now but only stresses a point that is generally accepted today: ie that a life full of repression and complexes, and especially complexes in one?s sexual life, cannot lead to a fulfilling and happy life. The author describes the repressed (sexual and other) life of aristocrats at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century by making frequent reference to nature and by demonstrating that humans are still far closer to animals than we often imagine to be ? not mea
ning that everything is fair in love and war, but that pretending that our body has no demands is simply a lie to ourselves.

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