Lady Chatterley's Orang-Outang

Oliver Mellors as we might imagine him

Although Lady Chatterley's Lover was set in England and not the rainforests of Borneo or Sumatra, it sometimes amuses me to think of Mellors as an orang-outang and, indeed, there is plenty of good reason to do so ...

For one thing, Mellors has reddish fair-brown hair like one of these great apes and prefers to spend most of his time alone among the trees; so much so that he is known to French readers as l'homme des bois. He is also highly intelligent and adapt at using a variety of tools with his nimble-fingered hands - again, just like an orang-outang.  

Further, as a gamekeeper, his life is endangered by poaching and he knows that his wooded home is under increasing threat of destruction by the modern world, whose inhabitants he regards with suspicion and hostility.  

Of course, the comparison between literature's most famous gamekeeper and King Louie only stretches so far. Physically, for example, there isn't much resemblance; Mellors being relatively slim-bodied with handsome limbs, whereas the latter is a large and bulky beast, with a thick neck, very long arms and short, bowed legs.

Nor does Mellors possess the distinctive cheek flaps made of fatty tissue, known as flanges, that characterise adult male orang-outangs, though one can't help wondering if Connie would have found him more or less attractive if he did (female ourang-outangs certainly display a marked preference for males with such, over those without). 

This might seem like a rather ridiculous question, but the sexual relationship between humans and orang-outangs is an interesting one. Amongst the native peoples of Sumatra and Borneo, for example, there are legends and folk tales involving interspecies shenanigans, including acts of copulation - some of which were said to involve rape.*

No wonder then that Connie is a little frightened by Mellors, the ape-man, when she first sees him emerging from the trees with such swift menace - "like the sudden rush of a threat out of nowhere", as Lawrence writes. He may not have flanges, but he does possess a gun and gaiters, a red moustache and the strange potency of manhood - ooh-bi-doo!

*Note: this is not simply a belief amongst supposedly primitive peoples; it is also a popular and persistant fantasy within the pornographic imagination of Westerners that apes, including male orang-outangs, find white women sexually irresistible and will kidnap and forcibly copulate with them if given the opportunity. The racial - and, indeed, racist - overtones of this King Kong complex are well-documented.

Some readers may also be interested to discover that a female orang-outang, named Pony, was rescued from an Indonesian brothel in 2003; she had been shaved and chained and made available for sexual exploitation by customers with zoosexual proclivities.   
 
See: D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993). The line quoted from is in Ch. 5. 

Musical bonus: a magnificent instrumental track by Bow Wow Wow entitled 'Orang-Outang', from the album See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah! City All Over, Go Ape Crazy! (1981): click here.