LADY CHATTERLEY and ME

The French film Lady Chatterley was released in the UK in August 2007.(1) I saw a small part of it last night more than four years later on SBSTV in Australia. There have been several film versions(2) of this novel by English writer D. H. Lawrence(1885-1930) Lady Chatterley’s Lover none of which I have seen. The original novel was published in 1928 in Italy, but was not available in the UK until 1960 due to censorship restrictions.

I remember hearing about this novel’s notoriety while I was finishing high school and at university in the early-to-mid-sixties. But I was not into reading novels at the time and had my hands full getting through: (a) the academic demands of Ontario’s secondary school curriculum, (b) summer jobs to pay for my education, (c) an intense engagement with sport, (d) the first decade of my life with a new religion,(3) (e) four years of a B.A. and a B.Ed. combination, (f) the first year of marriage and the beginning of a career in teaching, (g) as well as the psycho-social, psycho-sexual demands of my first episodes of what came to be called, in 1968, a schizo-affective disorder.

When I chanced upon this film while enjoying my late night snack, I’d had a busy day of writing, of dealing with an assortment of reading and email tasks, and of taking care of various domestic duties with my wife away babysitting her 15 months old grandchild & my step-grandchild. After about 20 minutes of watching this 146 minute award winning film with its verdant cinematography, I had to go to bed because I could not keep my eyes open.

One critic called this film a liberating, fresh, vital and modern version of Lawrence’s work. The segment I watched contained one of the six sensual sex scenes with its admixture of wildflowers, sunshine and fresh air. -Ron Price with thanks to 1SBSTWOTV, 11:25-1:45 a.m., 3rd and 4th of December 2011; 2 1995, 1992, 1981, & 1946; and 3 the Baha’i Faith.

Some said you were just a pornographer;
others had the view you were the greatest
imaginative novelist of that generation; &(1)
still others said you told a story of how sex
and its chemistry became love, how some of
us have to endure the savage pilgrimage of
life travelling from place to place in search
of a home for the mind, heart and spirit as
you did in the pre-war and inter-war years
before your death. But you seem, strangely,
still alive in your letters, memoirs and novels.(2)

1 E.M. Forster
2 I have taken an interest, as well, in Lawrence’s poetry, his free verse, which possessed no rhyme or metre and was, therefore, little different than prose. Such has been the type of poetry I have written.

Ron Price
6 December 2011