This was written in the late 1920s, shortly before Lawrence's death. It is set in the Industrial midlands of England, where Lawrence was raised, and details the sexual affair between an upper class lady and a local gamekeeper. [SPOILER ALERT]. Constance is from an upper middle class anglo-Scottish family. She is a bit of an intellectual and Bohemian who marries an English aristocrat named Clifford. Clifford then goes off to the trenches and returns paralyzed from the waist down. At first Constance stands by him. She later has an unfulfilling affair with a young Irish playwright who visits her husband. Gradually what is left of the marriage breaks down and she begins an affair with her husband's gamekeeper Mellors. Constance becomes pregnant, the affair is revealed, her husband refuses to agree to a divorce and the couple are left in a kind of limbo, but agree to wait.
This is a surprising novel in almost every way. First of all, it really isn't all that explicit or shocking. The sexual passages make up about 5% of the book. And whatever else they are, they are not pornographic- quite the opposite in fact. Lawrence thought sex important and was determined to break down taboos. He also thought sexual repression unhealthy and dangerous. But, he was oddly puritanical as well. He loathed the idea of casual sex, and the relationship between the couple, though it is described in detail, is tender, loving and respectful. And the characters are not quite what you'd expect either. Constance is not a sexually repressed upper class neurotic. In her youth she had had sexual affairs, but had regarded them as much less interesting than the intellectual conversations she enjoyed with her lovers. Mellors is not some great, brutal, mindless force of nature. He is 39 and celibate and has even spent time as an officer in the British army, though his background is essentially working class. In fact, he seems tired and broken when she first meets him.
Overall it is kind of dull. Critics often accuse Lawrence of lacking any interest in individual characterization, which, if Lady Chatterley is anything to go by, is certainly true. Even Mellors, who is supposed to be the great regenerating force, doesn't seem quite real somehow. In fact, it's an oddly depressing novel. But I would still recommend it. Lawrence may not have made much effort to create interesting, individual characters, but then that isn't his ambition. What he wants is to reconnect his readers with the wonder and mystery of life. It is often said that Lawrence may have been shocking and exciting to an early 20th century audience, but that he isn't to a 21st century audience. I don't agree. I think we overestimate how sexually repressed people were. And in any case, his stuff on sex is not so interesting as his descriptions of nature. That, for me, is where Lawrence can rival any writer in history. When he writes about the strange miracle of life, and about how disconnected and half-dead we are, he is more important. I'd say the average westerner is even more removed and disconnected from what Lawrence would have called 'the heart of life' than they were in the 1920s. My ambition now is to work my way through as much Lawrence as I can. I regard myself as just as jaded, numb, depressed and half-dead as anyone, and Lawrence is a great antidote to that.
(btw, if anyone else is interested in Lawrence and doesn't know where to start, I'd urge you to read the opening chapter of his novel 'The Rainbow'. That is Lawrence at his best. He opens by describing the deep, unspoken, intuitive connection a family of English farmers have with the farmland on which they work. It is wonderful. If you don't like it, you won't like Lawrence)