Draft: Lawrence Connections
Nov. 29th, 2005 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jhameiaD.H. Lawrence presents many interesting problems and themes for the reader to look into and investigate, allowing for conclusions to be drawn through the interactions between characters. Lady Chatterly's Lover is not an exception to his formula of writing searchingly into relationships, seeking links between the characters and finding flaws in their personalities. The idea of character interaction leads into the search for connections between characters, and their eventual fulfilment thruogh these connections. Lady Chatterly's Lover also has its characters searching, whether or not they know it, for fulfillment, or at least for meaning in their lives, through their cnonections with one another. Many of the characters - particularly Clifford, even Michaelis, Hilda and the Cambridge intellectuals - search for connection ni different ways, but at the same time Lawrence demonstrates them disconnecting because their methods of cnoncetion are not fulfilling them in any meaningful way; only Connie and Mellors attain the most meaningful connection out of all of the relationships within the novel.
Lawrence identifies the connection that should be strived for in his A Propos as a greater order of life and of the cosmos that humans have lost connection to. This connection can be reached only through physicality, and the awareness of the physical body as a vital thing needed to experience life. He denounces three great influences on current prudish human philosophy, Buddha, Plato and Jesus, as pessimists who preached the idea that disconnection from the physical body is the only way to achieve happiness (A Propos 330) and that life is "nothing but futile contact". It is exactly this contact that Lawrence wants to get at in Lady Chatterly's Lover and Lawrence's point is that sensual contact and acknowldegement of physicality will lead into the return to the natural "rhythm of the cosmos" (A Propos 328), his ideal for fulfilment, particularly in the marriage system.
Clifford and Connie's system of marriage obviously fails in Lawrence's view, as it is based on intellectual interests. Neither of them is interested in the physical side of marriage, both entering it by taking sex as an aside and hardly required for a successful marriage, which is "an integrated life" with each other. Clifford especially maintains this stance, having been inexperienced entering his marriage and benig hors de combat and thus unable to perform the sexual aspect anyway. He cannot tolerate the thought of bodily contact and sexual exchanges, because he is paralysed (Adelman 100), so they live in their marriage mentally, working on Clifford's writings and sharnig ideas, but "bodily, they were non-existent to one another" (LCL 18). Yet because of Clifford's vague idea of exactly what he means to be writing and his simple desire to become famous and successful, the output is void and meaningless for Connie, eventually driving her away from the exhaustnig mental activity (Shiach 95) and seeking her own solitude. Connie notes several times during the entire novel how disconnected Clifford is from various spheres of life, and it is unclear whether he willfully puts himself in that position or if it is a symptom of his depression brought on by his paralysis. She does believe, however, that he is out of touch with his workers at Wragby, particularly the working class colliers who sometimes seem not to be working *under* him and give off the impression of simply being on a different side of life from Clifford (LCL 14). When he does try to re-connect with the workers by becoming involved in the industrial growth of wragby, he still does not interact in any way that is meaningful in Connie's opinion, seeing the men, and even himself, only as cogs in a machine. This is best seen in his monologue regarding the function of aristocracy, and his fatalist take on life. While he does maintain that the individuals within do not make up the aristocracy, but that teh aristocratic function makes an individual what s/he is, he still remains a seperate individual, hard on the outside, soft on the inside. He becmoes aware of the industrial world, but his awareness is not Lawrence's ideal - it is mechanical, not organic. The only person Clifford attempts to maintain a connection to is Connie, and he does this by worshipping her, telling her: "I mean but for you, I'm absolutely nothing. I live for your sake, for your future" (LCL 112). Such a declaration, however, does nothing but panick Connie.
The love affair Connie has with Michaelis is her first diversion from her 'integrated' yet unfulfilling life with Clifford. Michaelis is half-intellectual, seeking approval thruogh his "smart society lpays" (LCL 20), and Connie finds him appealing as a child, and eventually as a lover, creating a sexual cnoncetion between them which is consummated almost immediately. But even this affair falls short of Lawrence's expectations for a love-connection, and this is firstly foreshadowed wen Michaelis is first received in Cnonie's parlour: "He followed blindly after the servant-he enver noticed things, or had contact with his surroundings" (LCL 24). Lawrence believes that the sensual connection between a man and a woman would elicit a response of awareness, or vice versa, and Michaelis is too absorbed in himself to be able to give himself to Connie as fully as she would like. He searches in Connie an emotional cnonection and a stable life, but Connie, sensing the hopelessness in him, understands that he would not be able to satisfy her as she cannot "quite love ni hopelessness" and "he, benig hopeless, couldn't ever quite love at all" (LCL 29). As much as he tries to reach out and connnect himself from the isolated condition of his individuality, eventually he withdraws, perpetuating his own aloneness, lack of connection to anything meaningful for himself, a bit like a depressed person who has no inclination to be cured. This is very well exemplified in the last few encounters Connie has with him - he asks her to abandon Clifford and marry him, but later, he lashes out at her for not having a simultaneous orgasm with him and for not allowing him to be the active agent for her satisfaction. This effectively destroys the sexual and emotional connection Cnonie shared with him, but has further consequences - it destroys Connie's desire for sexual connection with men entirely.
The collection of people who cmoe to visit Wragby are also in search of connection, yet also disconnected. They gather together and talk about a wide range of subjects, usually arguing with each other, and believe in "the life of the mnid, and keeping pure the integrity of the mind" (LCL 31). Lawrence uses them to as a slice of civilization almost, demonstrating the problems that society has at large thruogh the interaction of these intimate circles (Daiches 146) and using these interactions to air varying outlooks on love and sex. But he also points out that these nitellectuals do not come together because they are only interested in ideas, and not in each other personally. At this point of the novel, Connie has ceased to look for a sexual connection with a man, and enjoys instead the intellectual discussions, as if the men give her access to their minds when they get together to talk. Yet their discussions never seem to produce anything meaningful to Connie, especially with her exclaimation: "But what cold minds!" (LCL 35) Nor do they produce anything meaningful to Lawrence as they are too removed from physicality to enjoy life. Lady Bennerly said the words which Lawrence must have found anathema to write: "So long as you can forget your body, you are happy... the moment you begin to be aware of your body, you are wretched" (LCL 74).
Clifford's circle of friends are not the only ones with the dilemma of disconncetion. Hilda, Connie's sister, also faced the same barrier in search for a fulfilling connection within her marriage. She looked for "complete intimacy", which Connie supposes is "revealing everyting about yourself to the other person, and his revealing everything about himself to you" (LCL 253). Hilda claims to be sick of sensual physicality between men and women, and wants nothing to do with it, yet Connie has already acknowledged by then that it is through sensual awareness that a couple finds fulfilment. Connie also observes in Duncan Forbes, her artist friend, a similar incapability for a fulfilling conncetion, revealed in the "tubes and valves and spirals" (LCL 286) of his art. Not only that, but Duncan, despite having been in love with Connie before, does not even want any sensual connection to her at all, merely wants her to pose for him someday. Like Clifford, he is a self-absorbed intellectual, constantly worried about societal views of himself based on his art, sticking to the masses, as it were.
Only Tommy Dukes comes close to expounding Lawrence's views, believing in physicality and his exhortations for the "resurrection of the body" (LCL 75). He even observes the [danger] of having a purely intellectual life, likening it to being an apple having fallen off the tree, severed from life (LCL 36). The metaphor goes even further, in that the personality whose apple has disconnected from the tree will inevitably go rotten, "just as an apple must go bad" (LCL 37). This image of being severed will be echoed in Lawrence's A Propos, demonstrating how profoundly affected by this concern he is about the lack of connection. Much of what Tommy Dukes says seems to come right out of Lawrence, such as the belief that the phallus will be the bridge to the future of civilization (LCL 75). In A Propos, Lawrence uses a similar image of the phallus being a link between the masculine and feminine, but the image is used mostly in the context of marriage. Yet for all of Tommy Dukes' being D. H. Lawrence's mouthpiece among the Cambridge Companions, he comes short of Lawrence's ideal - he, too, is unable to connect the way Lawrence believes couples should connect: sexually. In talking to Connie, Dukes says that viewing a woman nitellectually is different frmo viewing her sexually, and in his opinion, the two views cannot reconcile and are simply incompatible (LCL 56). That, and although he is intellectually aware of the need for physicality, he, too remains disconnected because he does not have the "chirpy penis" (LCL 37) required for it.
Of all the characters who deny the connection of sensuality between man and woman, only Connie and Mellors are unable to to avoid it despite wanting to remain unconnected at the beginning of their relationship. By the end of the novel, both have fully embraced it, Connie especially
Holy multiple typos, Batman!
Lawrence identifies the connection that should be strived for in his A Propos as a greater order of life and of the cosmos that humans have lost connection to. This connection can be reached only through physicality, and the awareness of the physical body as a vital thing needed to experience life. He denounces three great influences on current prudish human philosophy, Buddha, Plato and Jesus, as pessimists who preached the idea that disconnection from the physical body is the only way to achieve happiness (A Propos 330) and that life is "nothing but futile contact". It is exactly this contact that Lawrence wants to get at in Lady Chatterly's Lover and Lawrence's point is that sensual contact and acknowldegement of physicality will lead into the return to the natural "rhythm of the cosmos" (A Propos 328), his ideal for fulfilment, particularly in the marriage system.
Clifford and Connie's system of marriage obviously fails in Lawrence's view, as it is based on intellectual interests. Neither of them is interested in the physical side of marriage, both entering it by taking sex as an aside and hardly required for a successful marriage, which is "an integrated life" with each other. Clifford especially maintains this stance, having been inexperienced entering his marriage and benig hors de combat and thus unable to perform the sexual aspect anyway. He cannot tolerate the thought of bodily contact and sexual exchanges, because he is paralysed (Adelman 100), so they live in their marriage mentally, working on Clifford's writings and sharnig ideas, but "bodily, they were non-existent to one another" (LCL 18). Yet because of Clifford's vague idea of exactly what he means to be writing and his simple desire to become famous and successful, the output is void and meaningless for Connie, eventually driving her away from the exhaustnig mental activity (Shiach 95) and seeking her own solitude. Connie notes several times during the entire novel how disconnected Clifford is from various spheres of life, and it is unclear whether he willfully puts himself in that position or if it is a symptom of his depression brought on by his paralysis. She does believe, however, that he is out of touch with his workers at Wragby, particularly the working class colliers who sometimes seem not to be working *under* him and give off the impression of simply being on a different side of life from Clifford (LCL 14). When he does try to re-connect with the workers by becoming involved in the industrial growth of wragby, he still does not interact in any way that is meaningful in Connie's opinion, seeing the men, and even himself, only as cogs in a machine. This is best seen in his monologue regarding the function of aristocracy, and his fatalist take on life. While he does maintain that the individuals within do not make up the aristocracy, but that teh aristocratic function makes an individual what s/he is, he still remains a seperate individual, hard on the outside, soft on the inside. He becmoes aware of the industrial world, but his awareness is not Lawrence's ideal - it is mechanical, not organic. The only person Clifford attempts to maintain a connection to is Connie, and he does this by worshipping her, telling her: "I mean but for you, I'm absolutely nothing. I live for your sake, for your future" (LCL 112). Such a declaration, however, does nothing but panick Connie.
The love affair Connie has with Michaelis is her first diversion from her 'integrated' yet unfulfilling life with Clifford. Michaelis is half-intellectual, seeking approval thruogh his "smart society lpays" (LCL 20), and Connie finds him appealing as a child, and eventually as a lover, creating a sexual cnoncetion between them which is consummated almost immediately. But even this affair falls short of Lawrence's expectations for a love-connection, and this is firstly foreshadowed wen Michaelis is first received in Cnonie's parlour: "He followed blindly after the servant-he enver noticed things, or had contact with his surroundings" (LCL 24). Lawrence believes that the sensual connection between a man and a woman would elicit a response of awareness, or vice versa, and Michaelis is too absorbed in himself to be able to give himself to Connie as fully as she would like. He searches in Connie an emotional cnonection and a stable life, but Connie, sensing the hopelessness in him, understands that he would not be able to satisfy her as she cannot "quite love ni hopelessness" and "he, benig hopeless, couldn't ever quite love at all" (LCL 29). As much as he tries to reach out and connnect himself from the isolated condition of his individuality, eventually he withdraws, perpetuating his own aloneness, lack of connection to anything meaningful for himself, a bit like a depressed person who has no inclination to be cured. This is very well exemplified in the last few encounters Connie has with him - he asks her to abandon Clifford and marry him, but later, he lashes out at her for not having a simultaneous orgasm with him and for not allowing him to be the active agent for her satisfaction. This effectively destroys the sexual and emotional connection Cnonie shared with him, but has further consequences - it destroys Connie's desire for sexual connection with men entirely.
The collection of people who cmoe to visit Wragby are also in search of connection, yet also disconnected. They gather together and talk about a wide range of subjects, usually arguing with each other, and believe in "the life of the mnid, and keeping pure the integrity of the mind" (LCL 31). Lawrence uses them to as a slice of civilization almost, demonstrating the problems that society has at large thruogh the interaction of these intimate circles (Daiches 146) and using these interactions to air varying outlooks on love and sex. But he also points out that these nitellectuals do not come together because they are only interested in ideas, and not in each other personally. At this point of the novel, Connie has ceased to look for a sexual connection with a man, and enjoys instead the intellectual discussions, as if the men give her access to their minds when they get together to talk. Yet their discussions never seem to produce anything meaningful to Connie, especially with her exclaimation: "But what cold minds!" (LCL 35) Nor do they produce anything meaningful to Lawrence as they are too removed from physicality to enjoy life. Lady Bennerly said the words which Lawrence must have found anathema to write: "So long as you can forget your body, you are happy... the moment you begin to be aware of your body, you are wretched" (LCL 74).
Clifford's circle of friends are not the only ones with the dilemma of disconncetion. Hilda, Connie's sister, also faced the same barrier in search for a fulfilling connection within her marriage. She looked for "complete intimacy", which Connie supposes is "revealing everyting about yourself to the other person, and his revealing everything about himself to you" (LCL 253). Hilda claims to be sick of sensual physicality between men and women, and wants nothing to do with it, yet Connie has already acknowledged by then that it is through sensual awareness that a couple finds fulfilment. Connie also observes in Duncan Forbes, her artist friend, a similar incapability for a fulfilling conncetion, revealed in the "tubes and valves and spirals" (LCL 286) of his art. Not only that, but Duncan, despite having been in love with Connie before, does not even want any sensual connection to her at all, merely wants her to pose for him someday. Like Clifford, he is a self-absorbed intellectual, constantly worried about societal views of himself based on his art, sticking to the masses, as it were.
Only Tommy Dukes comes close to expounding Lawrence's views, believing in physicality and his exhortations for the "resurrection of the body" (LCL 75). He even observes the [danger] of having a purely intellectual life, likening it to being an apple having fallen off the tree, severed from life (LCL 36). The metaphor goes even further, in that the personality whose apple has disconnected from the tree will inevitably go rotten, "just as an apple must go bad" (LCL 37). This image of being severed will be echoed in Lawrence's A Propos, demonstrating how profoundly affected by this concern he is about the lack of connection. Much of what Tommy Dukes says seems to come right out of Lawrence, such as the belief that the phallus will be the bridge to the future of civilization (LCL 75). In A Propos, Lawrence uses a similar image of the phallus being a link between the masculine and feminine, but the image is used mostly in the context of marriage. Yet for all of Tommy Dukes' being D. H. Lawrence's mouthpiece among the Cambridge Companions, he comes short of Lawrence's ideal - he, too, is unable to connect the way Lawrence believes couples should connect: sexually. In talking to Connie, Dukes says that viewing a woman nitellectually is different frmo viewing her sexually, and in his opinion, the two views cannot reconcile and are simply incompatible (LCL 56). That, and although he is intellectually aware of the need for physicality, he, too remains disconnected because he does not have the "chirpy penis" (LCL 37) required for it.
Of all the characters who deny the connection of sensuality between man and woman, only Connie and Mellors are unable to to avoid it despite wanting to remain unconnected at the beginning of their relationship. By the end of the novel, both have fully embraced it, Connie especially
Holy multiple typos, Batman!