What do you think?
Rate this book
The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels
D. H. Lawrence wrote his last novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, three times, and it is the third version that has become famous. The three versions are in fact three different novels, varying in length, significant episodes, and even some of the main characters. This is the first critical edition of the two early versions of the novel. The text is printed from manuscript source, including numerous deletions and variations from early printed editions. An introduction traces the genesis, publication and reception of the novel, and there are detailed explanatory notes.
732 pages, Paperback
Published June 6, 2002
44 people are currently reading
467 people want to read
About the author
D.H. Lawrence
2,086 books4,186 followersDavid Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English writer of the 20th century, whose prolific and diverse output included novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, literary criticism, and personal letters. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct.
Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. He is now generally valued as a visionary thinker and a significant representative of modernism in English literature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.H._Law...
Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. He is now generally valued as a visionary thinker and a significant representative of modernism in English literature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.H._Law...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
May 27, 2016
I have been reading a good deal of non-fiction and this was the novel I needed. This is only the second of D.H. Lawrence's works I have read and the first of his novels. This first version of the book that made an appearance in Mad Men, Lady Chatterley's Lover, appears not to be as famous as the latter third edition. This first edition is unusual in that it is not organised into parts or chapters and I found myself unable to put it down because it was good but also because there are no natural places to stop reading! Like most stories of passion, post-modern materialism has killed off any of the once 'shocking' parts of the story. Yet as Downton Abbey reveals the end of the servant-era and the lords and my-ladys in big houses, Lawrence here weaves a love story and a class commentary of rising socialism amid the collieries of the Midlands. It would seem that the references to great philosophers (including once to Hegel) are buried beneath the notoriety of this particular story. I found it hard to put this book down and now I must read the more famous version to fill in the many pages that were skipped in this first draft. It is certainly not difficult to see why Lawrence is held in such regard.
April 5, 2017
Lawrence wrote three versions and this one shows how he began to develop this coming of age story.
April 23, 2018
an original in the wasteland era of T.S. Elliot (after WWI)
May 7, 2011
D H Lawrence wrote three drafts of the novel that was later published as 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'. This first version, Frieda Lawrence's favourite, is related as a single narrative, unbroken by chapters. It's many years since I read the most famous of the three novels, so am unable to draw parallels. However 'The First Lady Chatterley' is a beautiful and absorbing read. A story of a woman initially torn between her love for two men; Sir Clifford's legal wife, but the 'wife in the woods' to the gamekeeper, Oliver Parkin. It examines the evolving relationship between her ladyship and the working class gamekeeper, whilst also probing the class barriers impeding their liaison, framed against a background of the English class system between the two world wars. It is extremely thought provoking to read a novel, written nearly a hundred years ago, that imagines a lady moving down into the working classes when a woman, four generations removed from coalmining stock, has just married up into the royal family.
February 3, 2018
I've read all three versions, and despite what the blurb said on the back of the second book, that Lawrence subtitled it 'Tenderness', this one is my favourite. There's more on the intellectual relationship between Constance and her husband; and my personal theory is that, in this version, you can see the influence of Thomas Hardy's last two novels: 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles' and 'Jude the Obscure'. The idea of a person being torn between a cerebral/platonic relationship and a physical one is nothing new; but this is well handled and believable. If you've only read the third and final version, give this one a go too.
September 25, 2019
Lawrence is one of the easiest writers to dismiss, and one of the hardest to get away from. He seems - from a rational point of view - so often and so obviously nuts. And there's a way of reading him that brackets the 'obviously nuts' parts, and enjoys him as if he were a more simpler writer who was good at describing the countryside, the mining villages, relations between heterosexual men and women, and relations between social classes.
Lawrence is hard to get away from because he seems (to me) to ask the hardest questions. For example, How do we live? What is important to us? Also, What can a novel achieve? Why is it worth writing about particular individuals?
To this second pair of questions, I think he has a better answer than almost any other writer I know. I don't think Joyce's answer, in Ulysses, can compete. Joyce seems to say, It's worth writing about Bloom because he's an ordinary man, and ordinary men are all extraordinary, and I've happened from my godlike position to choose this little beggar. And I don't think Joyce's answer in Finnegans Wake will do either. Here Joyce says, It's worth writing about HCE because he's Everyman, and you can't write about anybody more important than Everyman, and I'm going to write about Everyman more universally than anyone ever has before, so there.
Other writers have different answers. Woolf seems to say, in The Waves, I'm writing about these people because, on the fringes of their experience, is something that has never been recorded before - it's been seen as trivial, as fleeting rather than essential.
Forster says, We're all in a terrible muddle, and it might comfort you to see some people muddling through their particular muddle.
I'm mentioning Lawrence's contemporaries. Among writers working today, it's rare for someone to believe a novel can be much more than an entertainment - ultimately. (If they do believe something more ambitious, they're likely to keep quiet about it.) Perhaps the novel is a feat of empathy, or a specific social insight, or a panoptic vision of a fracturing culture, or a set of unprecedentedly immaculate sentences. These are some present day options.
Lawrence, I think, says this: It's worth writing about Lady Constance Chatterley and Oliver Parkin because they are a test case. They - like the two pairs of lovers in Women in Love - are pioneers in their human relations. Or, if not pioneers, they are such rare birds as to be important in themselves. How often is such unrestricted contact (this is still Lawrence) between woman and man attempted? How frequently does such a large gulf class open within a couple, and can it be bridged? Can the conflict between intellectual being and fleshly being ever be resolved except at moments of orgasm?
Sometimes what is most touching about Lawrence is his absurd clumsiness in going at these questions, and sometimes what is breathtaking is how delicately he achieves a statement or a moment. If you can integrate the two of these approaches into one writer, you are getting close to a sympathetic reading of Lawrence. The characters in The First Lady Chatterley are, alternately, clumsy and delicate with one another.
Here is Parkin, the former gamekeeper, on Lady Chatterley and her class:
You folks is all doors, an' you keep 'em all shut even with yourselves. And sometimes you never open one, and sometimes you open two. But you niver open 'em all, not to God nor man nor the devil. You've always got yourselves shut up somewhere where nothing can get at you: Though a body might think you was open as the day -
I do think that dismissing Lawrence is closing yet another door. And the more blithely you do it, the less you've learned from even the gesture of dismissal. He believed the novel had a real purpose, in driving people (readers) toward a more fulfilling life. He pursued that purpose in a way that was not tasteful or terribly considered - and so it's embarrassing. He tried to write with all doors open. For this alone, it's worth closely reading The First Lady Chatterley. It's a book about, among many other things, class war. The section in the middle, about the hot-blooded ones and the cold-blooded ones, about two irreconcilable ways of being in the world, seems particularly timely.
Lawrence is hard to get away from because he seems (to me) to ask the hardest questions. For example, How do we live? What is important to us? Also, What can a novel achieve? Why is it worth writing about particular individuals?
To this second pair of questions, I think he has a better answer than almost any other writer I know. I don't think Joyce's answer, in Ulysses, can compete. Joyce seems to say, It's worth writing about Bloom because he's an ordinary man, and ordinary men are all extraordinary, and I've happened from my godlike position to choose this little beggar. And I don't think Joyce's answer in Finnegans Wake will do either. Here Joyce says, It's worth writing about HCE because he's Everyman, and you can't write about anybody more important than Everyman, and I'm going to write about Everyman more universally than anyone ever has before, so there.
Other writers have different answers. Woolf seems to say, in The Waves, I'm writing about these people because, on the fringes of their experience, is something that has never been recorded before - it's been seen as trivial, as fleeting rather than essential.
Forster says, We're all in a terrible muddle, and it might comfort you to see some people muddling through their particular muddle.
I'm mentioning Lawrence's contemporaries. Among writers working today, it's rare for someone to believe a novel can be much more than an entertainment - ultimately. (If they do believe something more ambitious, they're likely to keep quiet about it.) Perhaps the novel is a feat of empathy, or a specific social insight, or a panoptic vision of a fracturing culture, or a set of unprecedentedly immaculate sentences. These are some present day options.
Lawrence, I think, says this: It's worth writing about Lady Constance Chatterley and Oliver Parkin because they are a test case. They - like the two pairs of lovers in Women in Love - are pioneers in their human relations. Or, if not pioneers, they are such rare birds as to be important in themselves. How often is such unrestricted contact (this is still Lawrence) between woman and man attempted? How frequently does such a large gulf class open within a couple, and can it be bridged? Can the conflict between intellectual being and fleshly being ever be resolved except at moments of orgasm?
Sometimes what is most touching about Lawrence is his absurd clumsiness in going at these questions, and sometimes what is breathtaking is how delicately he achieves a statement or a moment. If you can integrate the two of these approaches into one writer, you are getting close to a sympathetic reading of Lawrence. The characters in The First Lady Chatterley are, alternately, clumsy and delicate with one another.
Here is Parkin, the former gamekeeper, on Lady Chatterley and her class:
You folks is all doors, an' you keep 'em all shut even with yourselves. And sometimes you never open one, and sometimes you open two. But you niver open 'em all, not to God nor man nor the devil. You've always got yourselves shut up somewhere where nothing can get at you: Though a body might think you was open as the day -
I do think that dismissing Lawrence is closing yet another door. And the more blithely you do it, the less you've learned from even the gesture of dismissal. He believed the novel had a real purpose, in driving people (readers) toward a more fulfilling life. He pursued that purpose in a way that was not tasteful or terribly considered - and so it's embarrassing. He tried to write with all doors open. For this alone, it's worth closely reading The First Lady Chatterley. It's a book about, among many other things, class war. The section in the middle, about the hot-blooded ones and the cold-blooded ones, about two irreconcilable ways of being in the world, seems particularly timely.
October 14, 2011
I almost feel like I need to apologize for liking this book. I was warned I wouldn't like it and that everything between the "naughty" parts were boring. Not true. The between parts were by far the best parts! It makes you think about marriage and what you're willing to settle for, the social classes & what's considered the "upper class" is not necessarily upper by someone else's standards. And to tell you the truth it made me thankful for moral standards! A little guidance here would have been a good thing. It also gave a good description of a country moving into the industrialized realm. My book group chose it & I was the only one who read it. That bummed me out because I wanted to discuss it. Sorry to anyone who finds this rather benign review offensive. Besides it's a classic . . . . .
July 8, 2012
This book that I wanted so much to love, just turned out to be one long rant on everything that is/was wrong with society. Very little seemed to happen other than all the characters moaning. Also I know it was the 20s so they had a lot more modesty than we do now, and maybe I just didn't get it or something but other than the page long ramble about how a penis is a blood filled fountain of life, I couldn't find a single sexually explicit moment, or any kind of reason for this book to have been banned for 10 years.
In short, I'm very sorry but it bored me to tears.
In short, I'm very sorry but it bored me to tears.
August 14, 2015
I like it better
This book is more concise. The conclusion is a little less defined but it's better for that. We all do wonder how they would work it out. In this version, it's thoughtful, emotional, practical and personal. The plot moves quickly and the reflective/philosophical parts are appropriate and illuminating without dragging on for too long. I'm glad Michaelis wasn't in this version. It makes me want to watch the Ken Russell film again.
This book is more concise. The conclusion is a little less defined but it's better for that. We all do wonder how they would work it out. In this version, it's thoughtful, emotional, practical and personal. The plot moves quickly and the reflective/philosophical parts are appropriate and illuminating without dragging on for too long. I'm glad Michaelis wasn't in this version. It makes me want to watch the Ken Russell film again.
Want to read
December 12, 2008lagi ngomongin AE jadi inget gue punya buku ini. Belum disenggol. Cuma googling tentang kehebohan buku ini setelah nemu di toko buku bekas. :D
November 29, 2023
I read this at college years ago when I was in a DHLawrence mania. I read this and the second unpublished draft and, of course, the final version that got published.
My rating is based on the final version as I just can't recall in detail this first draft. But I do remember thinking - apart from some details - that each novel draft was quite similar in intent: all trying to deal with Victorian moral hypocrisy. This was a concern for Lawrence that, by that time, had well and truly become a central theme of his work as a fiction author.
I loved his ability to write about the gulf between men and women in terms of their innermost thoughts and feelings. In spite of the tenderness and occasional animal intercourse between the sexes, Lawrence keeps arguing that neither men nor women can breach the other sex's boundaries, can never truly "connect" with one another and thus they are doomed to go on coming together and moving apart. It's sort of like that saying I've heard men use about women: "Can't live with them, can't live without them."
Of course, that's waaaay too simplistic. I really think Lawrence understood that each PERSON is an island. Not just men and women being different. His views are never some kind of crass "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" crap. But he does seem to think that women are an important civilising influence on men - or at least they can be. And that women have some elemental connection between each other that no man can truly understand or breach. Maybe this novel, more than any of his writings, tries to describe two people who have found a way into each other's souls. It's one of the reasons I think I like so much.
My rating is based on the final version as I just can't recall in detail this first draft. But I do remember thinking - apart from some details - that each novel draft was quite similar in intent: all trying to deal with Victorian moral hypocrisy. This was a concern for Lawrence that, by that time, had well and truly become a central theme of his work as a fiction author.
I loved his ability to write about the gulf between men and women in terms of their innermost thoughts and feelings. In spite of the tenderness and occasional animal intercourse between the sexes, Lawrence keeps arguing that neither men nor women can breach the other sex's boundaries, can never truly "connect" with one another and thus they are doomed to go on coming together and moving apart. It's sort of like that saying I've heard men use about women: "Can't live with them, can't live without them."
Of course, that's waaaay too simplistic. I really think Lawrence understood that each PERSON is an island. Not just men and women being different. His views are never some kind of crass "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" crap. But he does seem to think that women are an important civilising influence on men - or at least they can be. And that women have some elemental connection between each other that no man can truly understand or breach. Maybe this novel, more than any of his writings, tries to describe two people who have found a way into each other's souls. It's one of the reasons I think I like so much.
October 24, 2023
It’s been so long since I’ve read Lady Chatterley’s Lover that I don’t recall if the style was very different. This one had no chapters. The conversations were repeated over and over. I didn’t feel the same chemistry between the lovers as I did with the other. I know this is supposed to be the greater version, but I prefer the other.
February 28, 2025
Different than the third version, but just as beautiful.
Unique, lucid, deep thoughts everywhere.
This is psychologically explicit, but not sexually explicit... at all. I guess the only reason this was banned was because no married man wanted their wife to read this.
Unique, lucid, deep thoughts everywhere.
This is psychologically explicit, but not sexually explicit... at all. I guess the only reason this was banned was because no married man wanted their wife to read this.
April 17, 2023
Man hat es halt gelesen.
Read
May 21, 2018Lawrence wrote three versions of the Lady Chatterley story. This, the first version, is the one I've always preferred. The gamekeeper is called Oliver Parkin in this version, and it is much more pastoral, less overtly sexual, than the final published (third) version. The basic background to the story is similar in all three versions: Clifford Chatterley, badly wounded during the First World War, is paralysed and confined to a wheelchair. His wife Constance, aged twenty-three when her husband is brought home 'smashed', accepts her life as Clifford's wife but cannot renounce the sexual side of life.
Clifford, on the other hand, in spite of his injuries, 'seemed almost happy, more happy than before his catastrophe'. He symbolises the intellectual, rational, passionless and bloodless man, literally and metaphorically dead from the waist down. He is also, of course, a member of the upper classes - as is Constance, but she questions her social position whereas Clifford accepts it.
Clifford tells Constance that he accepts her need for a sexual relationship and condones any extra-marital affair she has (although he assumes she will take a lover of her own class rather than a working-class gamekeeper): 'Give me a son, Connie! It's all I ask of you.' There is tenderness and desire between Constance and Parkin, but she knows she could never live with him as his wife, even if they moved abroad. Parkin represents passion, the body, sexuality ('I'm not ashamed o' what I've got atween my legs').
I think one of the reasons why this novel succeeds better than the final version is that, in this version, Lawrence avoids direct descriptions of the sexual activity between Connie and Parkin. There's only one small lapse, where Lawrence devotes a page to a somewhat eyebrow-raising paean to the penis ('And with the mystery of the phallus goes all the beauty of the world, and beauty is more than knowledge'). If that weren't bad enough, it gets worse: 'It is the penis alone which saves man from utterly destroying the world, and the phallus alone is the symbol of our unison in the blood.' The vagina, presumably, is merely a negative space in this view of things, into which the mighty penis fits.
When the book ends, Constance is pregnant by Parkin and determined to leave Clifford and live with Parkin: "Ah, she felt happy! To be going, to be going for ever!" The reader is left with the question, can a woman of Constance's social class live contentedly - as an equal - with a man of Parkin's? From all that has gone before in the novel, it seems unlikely. [October 2006]
Clifford, on the other hand, in spite of his injuries, 'seemed almost happy, more happy than before his catastrophe'. He symbolises the intellectual, rational, passionless and bloodless man, literally and metaphorically dead from the waist down. He is also, of course, a member of the upper classes - as is Constance, but she questions her social position whereas Clifford accepts it.
Clifford tells Constance that he accepts her need for a sexual relationship and condones any extra-marital affair she has (although he assumes she will take a lover of her own class rather than a working-class gamekeeper): 'Give me a son, Connie! It's all I ask of you.' There is tenderness and desire between Constance and Parkin, but she knows she could never live with him as his wife, even if they moved abroad. Parkin represents passion, the body, sexuality ('I'm not ashamed o' what I've got atween my legs').
I think one of the reasons why this novel succeeds better than the final version is that, in this version, Lawrence avoids direct descriptions of the sexual activity between Connie and Parkin. There's only one small lapse, where Lawrence devotes a page to a somewhat eyebrow-raising paean to the penis ('And with the mystery of the phallus goes all the beauty of the world, and beauty is more than knowledge'). If that weren't bad enough, it gets worse: 'It is the penis alone which saves man from utterly destroying the world, and the phallus alone is the symbol of our unison in the blood.' The vagina, presumably, is merely a negative space in this view of things, into which the mighty penis fits.
When the book ends, Constance is pregnant by Parkin and determined to leave Clifford and live with Parkin: "Ah, she felt happy! To be going, to be going for ever!" The reader is left with the question, can a woman of Constance's social class live contentedly - as an equal - with a man of Parkin's? From all that has gone before in the novel, it seems unlikely. [October 2006]
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 21, 2015
At the beginning, this book made me feel like a part of Bacovian universe; all was gray: gray sky, gray mansion, gray words, gray smoke and the monotony of everyday. Also the talking is lacunar, there are no well explained subject, nothing makes sense and the logic is absent. This made me feel every word, to imagine the beginning of XX century and to realize the pathological boredom Constance felt.
Then there is the forest: painted in green and flowers, even if the sky is still gray. A new norrow mind appears: Mellors. They talk, they have "bed-fun" and they start talking about love... Yeah, love even though they know nothing about each other except the naked image of the other. In other words, they only know the bodily love, they can only feel that love on their skin and genitals and imagine that is the deepest love. Lady Chatterley seems to lack the ability to think logically as a condition imposed by the men society around her. She appears as misfit incapable to take care of herself and in need of a men (with a functional phallus). Yet, she wants a baby to feel complete again.
Extrapolating, all the gray is like the sadness of the Victorian world that is about to end, is a dying universe where human souls matter less. Also, the gray is a symbol for the mechanization of technologies, while the green comes in antithesis as a symbol of nature fighting to survive.
In the end, i liked and disliked the book. I liked it because the description of that period and for the beginning when they were all afraid of modernization. I disliked last hundred pages because they lack the description of a real love, defining it as all that 2 people do in bed.
Then there is the forest: painted in green and flowers, even if the sky is still gray. A new norrow mind appears: Mellors. They talk, they have "bed-fun" and they start talking about love... Yeah, love even though they know nothing about each other except the naked image of the other. In other words, they only know the bodily love, they can only feel that love on their skin and genitals and imagine that is the deepest love. Lady Chatterley seems to lack the ability to think logically as a condition imposed by the men society around her. She appears as misfit incapable to take care of herself and in need of a men (with a functional phallus). Yet, she wants a baby to feel complete again.
Extrapolating, all the gray is like the sadness of the Victorian world that is about to end, is a dying universe where human souls matter less. Also, the gray is a symbol for the mechanization of technologies, while the green comes in antithesis as a symbol of nature fighting to survive.
In the end, i liked and disliked the book. I liked it because the description of that period and for the beginning when they were all afraid of modernization. I disliked last hundred pages because they lack the description of a real love, defining it as all that 2 people do in bed.
July 11, 2022
This is not so much a review as a comment. There seems to be some confusion between this book "The First Lady Chatterley" and Lawrence's final version of the story, "Lady Chatterley's Lover".
This first draft which was published is in essence incomplete. The version I read published in paperback by penguin books is based on a copy of the manuscript by Lawrence which has pages missing in various parts of the story. Whether the missing pages allowed for for further development by Lawrence or whether they had been mislaid is not entirely clear. However once such spot in the text where there are missing pages resumes mid sentence which would indicate the latter.
As for the difference between this and the final text, this initial version while covering the affair between the Lady Chatterley and the gamekeeper (called Oliver Parkin in this version) rather than concentrating on the physical side of their relationship, explores the the class differences between the Lady and the 'working man'.
While there a a few crude words used here and there in the text, I doubt this version would have caused the 'controversy' surrounding the final (third) version.
There is a quote that 'Frieda Lawrence and many scholars have long claimed' this version to be the best, on the back cover. However, you would need to read all three versions of the story in order to reach a conclusion disputing or in agreement with this claim.
Personally I found this version got bogged down in the 'social ramifications' of their affair, particularly as the book progressed to it's conclusion.
This first draft which was published is in essence incomplete. The version I read published in paperback by penguin books is based on a copy of the manuscript by Lawrence which has pages missing in various parts of the story. Whether the missing pages allowed for for further development by Lawrence or whether they had been mislaid is not entirely clear. However once such spot in the text where there are missing pages resumes mid sentence which would indicate the latter.
As for the difference between this and the final text, this initial version while covering the affair between the Lady Chatterley and the gamekeeper (called Oliver Parkin in this version) rather than concentrating on the physical side of their relationship, explores the the class differences between the Lady and the 'working man'.
While there a a few crude words used here and there in the text, I doubt this version would have caused the 'controversy' surrounding the final (third) version.
There is a quote that 'Frieda Lawrence and many scholars have long claimed' this version to be the best, on the back cover. However, you would need to read all three versions of the story in order to reach a conclusion disputing or in agreement with this claim.
Personally I found this version got bogged down in the 'social ramifications' of their affair, particularly as the book progressed to it's conclusion.
Read
February 21, 2015D H Lawrence writes of love and sexual intimacy with such beauty. I loved that the sex between Parkin and Lady Chatterley wasn’t pornography. It wasn’t specific rather general and focused on the feelings between the two. He particularly described the look of the eyes. The changing features within the eyes and not just Parkin and Lady Chatterley but all the characters. It is his way of capturing the moment, the changing moment during communication between people. He allows us to then interpret our feelings about these people and situations in the novel. The language of the novel allows for intensity. There is some of Iris Murdoch in that intensity and the precise nature of the written word. One of the main themes is class. In the early 20th century class was still a major issue. The separation between working class and aristocracy is massive. We see both Parkin and Lady Chatterley struggle with these differences. There are so many issues stopping them from committing fully to one another. In the end those differences have the potential to be overcome. Overall, this is a special novel. I have also read the third and final version of this book and found both brilliant in their own way. Both represent a unique novel crucial for the time they were written but still relevant today in a different way.
October 31, 2009
Not badly written, just too Lawrence for my taste. Too much spirituality of animals and common people (insulting) and idolization of nature and hatred of technology. Too much time spent going back and forth between Constance and Parkin as to whether or not they can live together in some fashion. He doesn't want to live on her money, she can't be brought down to his level, sounds like a helpless case. But it's a case they keep revisiting every ten pages, one more talk, one more of her whining binges where she asks him to tell her he really loves her, blah blah blah. I know this sounds absurd to those that love the novel, but I just don't see what the fuss was all about. Well, I know why it was banned, the sexual content, the adultery, etc., but why is it a classic? Does it really deserve the title?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 25, 2011
I have mixed thoughts on this book.
Initially, I found this book to be really dull. The author just keep ranting on how inhumane society has become, which of course, is the main theme throughout the novel. The novel gradually becomes interesting as Mellors and Connie's affair becomes intense. However, I'm not sure if their relationship is ultimately driven by love or lust. Mellors never directly tells Connie that he is in love with her, which left me a little disheartened. Also in the end of the novel, the author gives an unsettled feeling to the reader whether their relationship shall work out or not. Ultimately in this novel, I feel that the the author uses his characters to tell people how unsettled he feels in the progression of human society. The novel is engaging, but I don't think I will be re-reading this book in a very long time.
Initially, I found this book to be really dull. The author just keep ranting on how inhumane society has become, which of course, is the main theme throughout the novel. The novel gradually becomes interesting as Mellors and Connie's affair becomes intense. However, I'm not sure if their relationship is ultimately driven by love or lust. Mellors never directly tells Connie that he is in love with her, which left me a little disheartened. Also in the end of the novel, the author gives an unsettled feeling to the reader whether their relationship shall work out or not. Ultimately in this novel, I feel that the the author uses his characters to tell people how unsettled he feels in the progression of human society. The novel is engaging, but I don't think I will be re-reading this book in a very long time.
December 13, 2011
Absolutely loved this book. So wonderful to be reading a 20th Century classic again. I read the first edition, not realising that Lawrence wrote three editions in an effort to fend off the critics with each attempt. His wife, Freda, liked the first edition best, so am glad I read that one. Unfortunately a few pages of Lawrence's notes were missing and so were unable to be published however I felt able to fill in the gaps. Great characters, gritty story line, addresses society's class prejudice which is just as topical today as it was then. Set in northern England the scenery was beautifully depicted. Took me no time at all to read and would recommend it to anyone who loves the classics.
February 6, 2014
Long before the famous indecent publications case, Lawrence wrote this first draft of one of his most famous works.
It makes for interesting reading especially in comparison to the later more famous version. In this telling the love story feels oddly more sincere and honest thatn the mire of self doubt and misery in the final version. The plot is basically the same, although certain elements, the rising power of the working classes, is painted in broader simpler strokes than the more unsettling air of decay and loss in the final version.
All in all it makes for an enjoyable and decidedly more cheerful take on the affair than the more famous later iteration.
It makes for interesting reading especially in comparison to the later more famous version. In this telling the love story feels oddly more sincere and honest thatn the mire of self doubt and misery in the final version. The plot is basically the same, although certain elements, the rising power of the working classes, is painted in broader simpler strokes than the more unsettling air of decay and loss in the final version.
All in all it makes for an enjoyable and decidedly more cheerful take on the affair than the more famous later iteration.
July 3, 2024
4,5/5 I really loved this book!
I preferred to read the first version and I wasn't wrong, I'm not a fan of romances in general, but this book is much more than the simple love story of Lady Chatterley who is divided between her husband and her lover. No, this book has a very important philosophical character, raising existential questions and leading to reflection throughout the story. From what I've heard, this first version is much less focused on the sexual side than the other versions, and emphasizes the characters' personalities, their beliefs. Class difference is one of the main themes, which for me gives the book a whole new meaning.
I preferred to read the first version and I wasn't wrong, I'm not a fan of romances in general, but this book is much more than the simple love story of Lady Chatterley who is divided between her husband and her lover. No, this book has a very important philosophical character, raising existential questions and leading to reflection throughout the story. From what I've heard, this first version is much less focused on the sexual side than the other versions, and emphasizes the characters' personalities, their beliefs. Class difference is one of the main themes, which for me gives the book a whole new meaning.
May 8, 2020
Türkçe çevirisi "Lady Chatterley'in Sevgilisi" olan 1951 ve 1981 yıllarında filmi de çekilmiş bir kitap. Dönemini yasıtmış fakat dünya klasiklerine girememiş. Jane Austen Aşk ve Gurur kitabının erkek bir yazar tarafından daha tensel aşka dönüştürülmüş hali gibi. Bence klasiklere girememesinin en büyük sebeplerinden birisi de budur. Aşk kavramı Jane Austen'in bakış açısından oldukça başka bir şekilde işlenmiş.Kitapta aşk, yazarın fantazilerine dönüştürülerek aktarılmış bu da okuyucu kitlesini oldukça etkilemiş bence.
February 3, 2017
Aaaaand you see why D. H. Lawrence re-wrote this book (twice.) Nothing that kills a book faster for a 21st century reader is painstakingly long debates on Communism. Every now and then there are breaks of "next three pages of original manuscript missing" which doesn't slow the already comatose plot since Lawrence liked to repeat himself so much.
December 19, 2007
What a beautiful, surprising story. An upperclass British lady at the turn of the century discovers sexual love and attachment with her husband's very common "gamekeeper." I loved the revolutionary theme! The lack of chapter divisions was a truly unique reading experience. Because of this, it almost felt like a fairy tale to me.
April 24, 2009
This book is not as indecent and alarming as everyone thinks!!! It actually has its point. I actually admire Lady Chatterley, how she was able to found her real love and life after being married to a cripple. However, there are so many scripts that i find no sense, as in their lost within the book.
March 23, 2011
I really didn't like this book, and not because of the explicit descriptions but because it goes goes on and on and on...I just got bored with it all. The story is little more than padding and the words are just dull, exactly how Connie describes the North!
May 9, 2013
I hadn't realized that D.H. Lawrence had written 3 versions of Lady Chatterley's Lover. It was interesting as a piece of history. For my taste though, there was much too much philosophizing and ruminating!
July 13, 2022
What a revelation of a read! The language and approach to matters of a sexual and sensitive nature are outlandish and down right honest and humbling. Should we always get what we want regardless of the cost?
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews