On Marriage, Adultery and Slut Shaming (With Reference to the Case of Lady Chatterley)

Illustration by Flavia Felipe for an article on 

slut shaming in Teen Vogue (3 June 2016)

 

 

I. 

 

Slut shaming is the practice of denigrating a young woman for acting in a manner that violates social norms regarding sexually appropriate behavior. 

 

It's not something I would normally condone or engage in, but, in the case of Constance Chatterley, who, arguably, is one of the most selfish and conniving figures in 20th-century literature, I'm prepared to make an exception ...

 

 

II. 

 

By the author's own admission, Lady Chatterley's Lover is "obviously a book written in defiance of convention" [a]. A book which not only elevates profanity to the level of a phallic language, but lends support to the idea that adultery is justified if at least one spouse is bored or sexually frustrated. 

 

"Far be it from me to suggest that all women should go running after [...] lovers" [b], says Lawrence. 

 

But, actually, that is precisely what he suggests. That because her marriage to Clifford is sexless, it is therefore an empty sham and Connie is entitled to seek her pleasure elsewhere and stage a passionate revolt against her wedding vows to love, honour and obey her husband, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, etc. 

 

This may or may not make her a slut - and, as indicated, it's not a word I would normally use (or feel comfortable using) - but it certainly places her amongst those who experience "an intense and vivid hatred against marriage [...] as an institution and an imposition upon human life" [c].  

 

Although, according to Lawrence, that's because Connie is one of those unfortunate modern women who only know counterfeit marriage, i.e., marriage that is personal rather than phallo-cosmic [d]. 

 

And that's why she's justified in cheating on Clifford and running off with another man; because her marriage is false (based on an affinity of mind and shared interests), whereas her relationship with Mellors is authentic (based on fucking and shared passion).   

 

 

III.

 

Constance Chatterley is the sort of privileged young woman who, when considering the terrible consequences of the war, only thinks of how it brought the roof crashing down on her hopes for the future. 

 

Never mind the forty-million casulties, including her own husband, Clifford, who was shipped back to England from Flanders more or less in bits and paralysed from the waist down. After all, he could wheel himself about quite happily - but what was she going to do? For she was still young and despite her teenage love affair with a sulky musician in Dresden before the war -  twang-twang! - her body was full of unused energy ... 

 

And so this bonny Scotch trout with big blue eyes and "rather strong, female loins" [e] finds herself a lover; a successful young Irish playwright, called Michaelis, whom she fucks in her parlour at the top of the house, then seeks his assurance that he'll not let on to Clifford - because what her husband doesn't know can't hurt him. At no time does Connie consider her adulterous behaviour immoral.  

 

Connie and Mick meet whenever possible after this for what in modern parlance is known as a quickie - and it is quick, because he was "the trembling, excited sort of lover whose crisis soon came, and was finished" [29]. 

 

Thus, Mick fails to satisfy Connie (even though she eventually learns how to keep him inside her after he has come, just long enough so that she can achieve her own orgasm) and they soon break up (even though he does ask her to divorce Clifford and marry him, promising a good time). 

 

After their final act of illicit coition, however, Michaelis turns on Connie and attempts to shame her for bringing herself to climax after he has already ejaculated:

 

"When at last he drew away from her, he said, in a bitter, almost sneering little voice:

      'You couldn't go off at the same time as a man, could you? You'd have to bring yourself off! You'd have to run the show!'" [53]

 

Unsurprisingly, this shocks and humiliates Connie; she was "stunned by this unexpected piece of brutality" [54] - especially as it was due to the unsatisfactory nature of his own performance that she was obliged to be active [f]. If she's a slut, then he's something far worse and Connie is well-shot of this irritating little prick. 

 

Her next lover is her husband's gamekeeper - Oliver Mellors; the ultimate Lawentian bad boy who despite having certain physical advantages over Clifford and Michaelis - and able to write a fine letter when he wants to - remains a thoroughly bad son, bad husband, bad father, bad employee, bad citizen, and - unless one likes it rough and Greek style - a bad lover [g].          

 

 

IV.

 

Connie's affair with Mellors is so-well known, that I needn't go into explicit detail here. Although we are told that, after Michaelis, Connie's sexual desire for any man collapsed, it isn't long before she seeks out a bit of rough in the woods, initially engaging in a spot of voyeurism as she spies on Mellors washing himself, "naked to the hips, his velveteen breeches slipping down over his slender loins" [66]. 

 

This, apparently, is a visionary experience for Connie; one that hits her in the middle of her body and which she receives in her womb. And so, that night, she takes off her clothes and stands naked before the huge mirror in her bedroom, admiring her bottom - where life still lingered - but mostly feeling sorry for herself and resentful of Clifford. She was unloved and old at twenty-seven and married to a man with crippled legs and a cold heart. The injustice of it all! 

 

And so to the keeper's hut ... where she seduces Mellors with her tears, allowing him to fuck her on an old army blanket spread on the floor. Then she hurries home in time for dinner, with no real afterthought about what she's done. 

 

The next evening, she returns to the woods and to Mellors, telling him that she doesn't care about anything; her marriage, her status, her reputation ... She just wants him to fuck her again - and quickly, so she can be home once more in time for dinner.

 

The affair blossoms and Connie begins to weave her web of deceit; something that isn't too difficult for a woman to whom lying comes "as naturally as breathing" [147]. Only Mrs. Bolton guesses what's going on and she's full of admiration for Connie being able to lie to Clifford with such brazen nonchalance.

 

Before long, Connie's pregnant; which, arguably, had been her intention all along - Mellors simply being a convenient means to this end, like a stud animal (which he suspects, but Connie denies; see p.169).  

 

Connie plans a trip to Venice, partly to provide a cover story for her pregnancy; Clifford can believe she had an affair with a wealthy gentleman abroad, or her old artist friend Duncan. Her sister, Hilda, is told about Mellors - much to her outrage. She tells Connie: "'You'll get over him quite soon [...] and live to be ashamed of yourself because of him'" [238] [h].

 

Ironically, when Hilda meets Mellors, he tries to make her feel bad about herself as a woman, telling her, for example, that whilst a man gets "'a lot of enjoyment'" [245] out of a woman like her sister, she would fail to sexually satisfy any man, being, he says a sour crab-apple, in need of proper graftin'. Until then, he adds, she deserves to be left alone. 

 

Afterwards, even Connie complains that he was rude to Hilda, but Mellors is unapologetic. In fact, he suggests that what Hilda had needed was not only a good fucking, but a beating: "'She should ha' been slapped in time'" [246] to stop her becoming so wilful. 

 

One might have expected Connie to object to this remark also. But, actually, she finds his anger and violent misogynistic fantasies sexy and obediently retires to the bedroom at his suggestion, allowing Mellors to fuck her up the arse in order that she may discover her ultimate nakedness and overcome all sense of shame:

 

"It was a night of sensual passion, in which she was a little startled, and almost unwilling [...] Though a little frightened, she let him have his way, and the reckless, shameless sensuality shook her to her foundations [...] burning the soul to tinder. 

      Burning out the shames, the deepest, oldest shames, in the most secret places. [...]

      [...] She would have thought a woman would have died of shame. Instead of which, the shame died. [...] She felt, now, she had come to the real bed-rock of her nature, and was essentially shameless. She was her sensual self, naked and unashamed. She felt a triumph, almost a vainglory!" [247]

Now, I used to think that was unquestionably a good thing; that Nietzschean innocence involves the defeat of all bad conscience (i.e., involves becoming-fearless, guilt-free and devoid of shame). But now, living in a brazen, barefaced, shameless society that has forgotten how to blush, I'm not so sure. 

 

Shame may be an unpleasant and negative emotion, but perhaps it's a vital one after all if it enables us to act with restraint and a little modesty; enables us, paradoxically, to take pride not only in what we are and what we do, but in what we're not and what we don't do. To transgress boundaries and violate norms isn't always admirable; it can, in fact, just be despicable and dishonourable behaviour 

 

This is not to say that Connie should have a scarlet letter A sewn on her clothing à la Hester Prynne, but I'm not sure she should be held up as a role model either; she's selfish, narcissitic, snobbish, deceitful, and shameless.   

Even so, Clifford goes a bit far when Connie finally reveals the true details of her affair; telling his wife, for example, that she ought to be "'wiped off the face of the earth!'" [296] and despairing of the "'beastly lowness of women!'" [296].

 

Her desire to marry Mellors and bear his child proves, says Clifford, that Connie is abnormal and not in her right senses: "'You're one of those half-insane, perverted women who must run after depravity, the nostalgie de la boue.'" [296] 

 

Which is perhaps the last word in slut shaming insults ...     

 

     

Notes

 

[a] D. H. Lawrence, 'A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover', in Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of "Lady Chatterley's Lover", ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 334. 

 

[b] Ibid., p. 308. 

  

[c] Ibid., p. 319. 

 

[d] Although Lawrence suggests that "at least three-quarters of the unhappiness of modern life" can be blamed on marriage, he then goes on to make a passionate defence of it, agreeing with those who consider marriage the greatest contribution to social life made by Christianity. 

      Crucially, however, he wishes to re-establish marriage as a sacrement "of man and woman united in the sex communion" and place it back within a phallo-cosmic context, so that the impersonal rhythm of marriage matches the rhythym of the year. For there is no marriage, asserts Lawrence, which is not "basically and permanently phallic, and that is not linked up with the sun and the earth, the moon and the fixed stars and the planets [...] that is not a correspondence of blood" (blood being the substance of the soul within Lawrence's philosophy). 

      On the other hand, there is counterfeit marriage; marriage that takes place "when two people are 'thrilled' by each other's personality: when they have the same tastes in furniture or books or sport or amusement, when they love 'talking' to one another, when they admire one another's 'minds'". This is "an excellent basis of friendship between the sexes, but a disastrous basis for marriage". Such personal marriages, lacking blood-sympathy, always end in "startling physical hatred".    

      See 'A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover', op. cit., pp. 319-326.

[e] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, op. cit., p. 19. Note that future page references to the novel will be given directly in the post. 

[f] Later, however, this complaint against modern women as either frigid or sexually wilful, is repeated by Mr. Tenderness himself, Oliver Mellors, in an infamous and prolonged rant against his ex-wife and former girlfriends, that leaves Connie in no doubt about his views on female sexuality: women should be sexually receptive (though not passive) and at other times active, though not too active and certainly shouldn't grind their own coffee; they shouldn't be too pure, but neither should they be like old whores with beaks between their legs; they shouldn't make a man come too soon or in the wrong place (the vagina being the only right place to ejaculate); and, finally, they should absolutely never ever display any signs of lesbianism, either consciously or unconsciously. See chapter XIV, pp. 200-203. One imagines that Connie must have been mortified to hear all this and reminded of what Michaelis had said to her, although she simply says: "'You do seem to have had awful experiences of women'" [204].  

[g] See the lengthy character analysis of Oliver Mellors published on Torpedo the Ark on 6 July 2020: click here.

[h] This is an interesting remark. For it shows that it's not only men who practice slut shaming as a form of regulatory criticism; women will also slut shame a peer or, as in this case, sister, if they dress a little too provocatively, behave a little too promiscuously, or otherwise transgress accepted codes of conduct or boundaries of class, for example. Thus Hilda later tells Connie: "'But you'll be through with him in a while [...] and then you'll be ashamed of having been connected with him. One can't mix up with the working people." [240]

      Without wishing to oversimplify matters, we might say that when men slut shame, they are usually just being sexist pigs playing a game of double standards which benefits them; when women do it, however, it seems to betray some form of intrasexual competitiveness and be a more visceral reaction. Perhaps this is why Connie is so happy to escape the dominion of other women: "Ah! that in itself was a relief, like being given another life: to be free of the strange dominion and obsession of other women. How awful they were, women!" [253].     

That City of Dreadful Night: D. H. Lawrence's Letters from Paris

Paris est toujours une bonne idée

 

 

I. 

 

I'm currently reading a big fat book of essays, short stories, and poems by over seventy authors, edited by Andrew Gallix [1], exploring the fascination that writers from the English-speaking world have for the French capital - although, as becomes clear, they are mostly enchanted by a myth of their own invention, rather than by Paris as a place that can be located on a map.       

 

Of course, not all English writers have been enamoured with the City of Lights. D. H. Lawrence, for example, famously wrote in 1919: "Paris is a nasty city, and the French are not sympathetic to me." [2] 

 

Five years later, however, Lawrence had changed his tune: "Paris isn't so bad - to me much nicer than London - so agreeably soulless" [3]. 

 

Indeed, in almost every letter and postcard sent to friends at the beginning of 1924 from Le Grand Hotel de Versailles (on the Boulevard Montparnasse), Lawrence was saying much the same thing: "Paris looking rather lovely in sunshine and frost - rather quiet, but really a beautiful city" [4]. He even cheerfully informed his mother-in-law that the Parisians were very friendly [5]. 

But of course, Lawrence being Lawrence, there were sudden (and frequent) mood changes during his short stay in Paris, as this letter written to Catherine Carswell illustrates:

 

"Today it is dark and raining, and very like London. There really isn't much point in coming here. It's the same thing with a small difference. And not really worth taking the journey. Don't you come just now: it would only disappoint you. Myself, I'm just going to sleep a good bit, and let the days go by [...] Paris has great beauty - but all like a museum. And when one looks out of the Louvre windows, one wonders whether the museum is more inside or outside - whether all Paris, with its rue de la Paix and its Champs Elysée isn't also all just a sort of museum." [6]   

Several days later, and Lawrence is still lying low in Paris (whilst Frieda buys some new clothes), but feeling a little more positive about the city and its residents:

 

"Paris is rather nice - the French aren't at all villain, as far as I see them. I must say I like them. They are simpatico. I feel much better since I am here and away from London." [7]

 

And so, despite informing one correspondent that the city was far from gay, Lawrence mostly enjoyed his short stay: "Paris has been quite entertaining for the two weeks: good food and wine, and everything very cheap." [8]  

 

II.

 

In 1929, Lawrence returned to Paris where he oversaw publication of a new (inexpensive) edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover to try and stop the pirated editions then in circulation. If, five years earlier, he had been mostly positive in his response to the city, now he was as hostile to it as he was to most (if not all) large cities:

 

"I don't a bit like Paris. It is nowadays incredibly crowded, incredibly noisy, the air is dirty and simply stinks of petrol, and all the life has gone out of the people. They seem so tired." [9]   

 

Sadly, of course, it was Lawrence himself that the life had almost entirely gone out of; he was to die eleven months after writing this, aged 44, in Vence (428 miles south of Paris, as the crow flies).           

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Andrew Gallix (ed.), We'll Never Have Paris, (Repeater Books, 2019). If I ever manage to work my way through the book's 560+ pages, then I'll doubtless post some kind of review of the work here on Torpedo the Ark.  

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Lady Cynthia Asquith, 18 November 1919, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 417. It should be noted that Lawrence hadn't at the time of writing this letter actually been to Paris and wasn't to make his first trip there until January 1924.

[3] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Mark Gertler, [2 February 1924], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. IV, ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elzabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press 1987), p. 567. 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Catherine Carswell, [24 January 1924], in Letters IV, p. 561. 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Baroness Anna von Richthofen, 24 January 1924, in Letters IV, p. 561. In the original German, Lawrence wrote: "Paris ist doch netter wie London, nicht so dunkel-grau. Die Leute sind ganz freundlich."

[6] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Catherine Carswell, [25 January 1924], in Letters IV, p. 563. 

      This letter has parallels with a short essay written at the same time in which Lawrence asserts that whilst Paris is still monumental and handsome, it has lost its true splendour, and become "like an old, weary peacock that sports a bunch of dirty twigs at its rump, where it used to have a tail". He blames this sorry state of affairs on: (i) modern democracy; (ii) too much bare flesh on display in French works of art;  (iii) an overly rich diet; and (iv) the dead weight of history and its architecture.

      See: 'Paris Letter', in Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde, (Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 141-146. The line quoted is on p. 143.

      As for the idea of Paris disappointing: 

      "Disappointment, according to Stuart Walton, is actually a 'constitutive factor' in English speakers' experience of France, and its capital in particular: 'It is at least as important to the British, for example, that Paris should fall short of what they expect of it as it is to the Parisians that les Anglais have never really understood it' (p. 332)." 

      See Andrew Gallix's Introduction to We'll Never Have Paris, p. 29. And see also the TTA post 'On Disappointment' (24 May 2020) in which I discuss (amongst other things) le Syndrome de Paris: click here.  

        

[7] D. H. Lawrence, letter to S. S. Koteliansky, [31 January 1924], in Letters IV, p. 565. 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Hon. Dorothy Brett, [4 February 1924], in Letters, IV, p. 568. The fact that Paris was, at one time, cheap to live in, was absolutely crucial:

      "Hemingway described Paris in the 1920s as a place 'where there was a way of living well and working, no matter how poor you were', adding that this was 'like having a great treasure given to you'. That treasured lifestyle was swept away by the onset of the Depression in the 1930s. As Will Ashon remarks, artists thrive where there is 'affordable, preferably semi-derelict, real estate. Which is to say, you can't be an artist in Paris, anymore, or in London either' (p. 301)." 

      See Andrew Gallix, Introduction to We'll Never Have Paris, p. 24.   

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell, 3 April 1929, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VII, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 234. 

Those interested in knowing more about Lawrence's 1929 visit to Paris - and how his stay at 66, Boulevard de Montparnasse has now been officially commememorated with a plaque - might like to read Catherine Brown's blog post of 29 May 2019, available on her website: click here.     

 

And those interested in Lawrence's wider relationship with French culture, might like to read the following essay by Ginette Katz-Roy: 'D. H. Lawrence and "That Beastly France"', in The D. H. Lawrence Review, Vol. 23, No. 2/3, (1991), pp. 143-156. This essay is available to download or read online via JSTOR: click here.   

 

 

Musical bonus: the debut single from Adam and the Ants, Young Parisians (Decca, 1978): click here. 

 

 

Cum Play With Mellors: On the Sexual Politics of Ejaculation

Faith Holland: Ookie Canvas (detail) [1] 

faithholland.com 

 

 

I. 

 

Readers familiar with D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) will doubtless remember the long and explicit tirade that Mellors delivers when Connie asks him why he married Bertha Coutts. 

 

Detailing his frustrating sexual experience not only with the latter, but also with several other women - some of whom he describes as unresponsive and some of whom he labels lesbian - Mellors also informs Connie of the fact that, in his view, the vagina is the only place in which it is right and proper for a man to ejaculate.

Mellors hates those women who find coitus distasteful and simply lie there waiting for him to finish. And he also hates those women who prefer to actively bring themselves to orgasm after he has already come [2]. But so too does Mellors despise women who love "'every kind of feeling and cuddling and going off [...] except the natural one'" [3]. 

 

That is to say, women who, for example, prefer oral to vaginal sex and "'always make you go off when you're not in the only place you should be, when you go off'" [4].  

 

 

II.            

 

Ultimately, despite his penchant for anal sex, Mellors subscribes to a very conservative model of what constitutes legitimate and fulfilling sexual activity for adults: a heterosexual model which privileges genital penetration and terminates as soon as the man has deposited his semen inside the cunt. Freud would approve. But many men (not to mention many women), might find this model - one which is firmly tied to reproductive function rather than to erotic pleasure divorced from such - rather limited and restrictive [5].

 

Nice as it is to spend oneself inside the female genital tract, some men prefer to splash out in other ways, though it's interesting to ask to what extent this preference has been shaped by contemporary pornographic convention. For as Linda Williams reminds us, whereas earlier porn films occasionally included spectacles of external ejaculation, it wasn't until the 1970s and the rise of hardcore movies that the so-called money shot (i.e. cum shot) assumed "the narrative function of signaling the climax of a genital event" [6] and vouched for the scene's veracity. It has since become a standard feature - arguably to the point of cliché - loved by some, loathed by others [7].    

 

Thus, there's a whole politics involved around the question of when and where to come. Not only have options expanded (both on and off screen) to the point whereby men are encouraged to ejaculate on just about every part of a woman's body, but those who are jizzed-upon are expected to enjoy the experience and find novel ways to erotically play with semen; swallowing it, rubbing it in, forcing their partners to lick it off them, etc.    

 

Just don't tell Oliver (Quick! Let me come inside you) Mellors ... [8]

 

Notes

 

[1] Faith Holland's Ookie Canvases are pictures composed of cum shots sampled from pornography or submission, isolated from their background, colourised, and then collaged together to form an all-over composition.

 

[2] In this post I am using come as the verb and cum to refer to the resulting substance, but there is no established rule governing these spellings.   

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 203.  

 

[4] Ibid.

 

[5] What Mellor's doesn't seem to appreciate is that for a sexually active woman without access to reliable methods of birth control, coitus interruptus is perhaps her best hope of avoiding an unwanted pregnancy when her lover insists on vaginal penetration but refuses to wear a condom. 

      Interestingly, it has been suggested that the cum shot first became popular in hardcore circles only after the actresses decided that ejaculation inside their bodies was risky, inconsiderate, and unnecessary. In other words, it does not signify a secret male desire to visualise ejaculation, nor is it a dark desire to humiliate or degrade women in some manner. See: Joseph W. Slade, Pornography and Sexual Representation: A Reference Guide, Vol. 2., (Greenwood Press, 2001), pp. 654-56.

[6] Linda Williams, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible", (University of California Press, 1989), p. 93.

 

[7] As one commentator on this tricky (not to mention sticky) subject reminds us, since the '70s anti-porn feminists have often singled out the money shot for particular criticism, though their views have since been challenged by feminists writing from a more sex-positive perspective:

 

"'It is a convention of pornography that the sperm is on her, not in her,' Andrea Dworkin argued in 1993. 'It marks the spot, what he owns and how he owns it. The ejaculation on her is a way of saying (through showing) that she is contaminated with his dirt; that she is dirty.' But, as Lisa Jean Moore points out in Sperm Counts (2007), Dworkin ignores 'that these actresses exhibit pleasure and that it is their pleasure that many of their male partners enjoy. It is perhaps more accurate to theorize that men, both as spectators and actors, want women to want their semen.' In Moore's view, it's not the woman's humiliation, but her enthusiasm, that is so hot." 

      See Maureen O'Connor, 'The Complicated Politics of Where to Come', New York Magazine (13 July, 2015). It can be read online in The Cut by clicking here.   

 

[8] Connie, however, is a different kettle of fish. She has a fetishistic fascination with the male body, particularly the sexual organs, and at one point when admiring the erect penis of her lover, she goes "crawling on her knees on the bed towards him" and puts her arms around his white slender loins, "drawing him to her so that her hanging, swinging breasts touched the tip of the stirring, erect phallos, and caught the drop of moisture". 

      One imagines from this that Connie would be more than happy for Mellors to ejaculate on her tits, thrilling as she does to the feel of precum on her body and, later, the heavy rain in which she frolics naked and holds up her breasts.   

      - D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, op. cit. The line quoted is on p. 210 and the scene referred to in the rain is on p. 221. 

 

The Money Post

Alec Monopoly: Scarface Money Monops (2017) 

Acrylic on canvas with resin (30 x 48 inches)  

artsy.net

 

 

"Money makes the world go around / The world go around / The world go around 

Money makes the world go around / It makes the world go 'round." [1]

 

 

Despite this dynamic aspect - and all too predictably - D. H. Lawrence hated money - hated it! 

 

In one poem, for example, he calls it our vast collective madness and in another he says that money is a perverted instinct [...] which rots the brain, the blood, the bones, the stones, the soul [2]. 

 

In his 'Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine', meanwhile, Lawrence describes money as a golden wall which uniquely cuts us off from life; "not even the most fanatical dogmas of an iron-bound religion, can insulate us from the inrush of life and inspiration, as money can" [3].

 

Apart from these instances, there are many, many other occasions on which Lawrence delivers this anti-money sermon and even his fictional characters are obliged to trot out the same rhetoric. When not fucking Connie six ways from Sunday, for example, Mellors can't resist informing her that it is money - along with modern technology and forms of popular entertainment - which is to blame for sucking the spunk out of mankind [4].  

 

 

II. 

 

Interestingly, Lawrence's puritanical attitude towards money (and the love of money) aligns his thinking with those one might otherwise regard as his moral, political, and philosophical opponents: Christians, Marxists, and Freudians ...

 

This must surely make one suspicious of his thinking on this subject and question whether, as a matter of fact, money might be thought of in a more positive light; as that which creates happiness, rather than being at the root of all evil. 

 

That was certainly the view of the perverse materialist and utopian socialist Charles Fourier, who argued that happiness consists in having a number of diverse passions and - crucially - having the necessary financial means to satisfy them. In Fourier's ideal state, wealth is redeemed and money not only becomes desirable, but "participates in the brilliance of pleasure" [5].

 

Roland Barthes helps us understand why it is that Fourier insists that les sens ne peuvent avoir toute leur portée indirecte sans l'intervention de l'argent:   

 

"Curiously detached from commerce, from exchange, from the economy, Fourierist money is an analogic (poetic) metal, the sum of happiness. Its exaltation is obviously a countermeasure: it is because all (civilized) Philosophy has condemned money, that Fourier, destroyer of Philosophy and critic of Civilization, rehabilitates it: the love of wealth being a perjorative topos [...] Fourier turns contempt into praise [... and] everything, where money is concerned, seems to be conceived in view of this counter-discourse [...]" [6]

 

To advise his readers to seek out tangible wealth - gold, precious stones, and those luxury goods despised by our ascetic idealists - is, as Barthes says, a scandalous thing to do; a major transgression against the teachings of all those (including Lawrence) for whom money is something base and corrupting. 

      

I have to admit, I'm sympathetic to Fourier's view and have always smiled at a remark often attributed to Bo Derek: Whoever said money can't buy happiness simply didn't know where to go shopping.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lyrics from the song 'Money, Money', written by John Kander and Fred Ebb for the big screen version of the musical Cabaret (dir. Bob Fosse, 1972). To watch the song being performed by Joel Gray (as the Master of Ceremonies) and Liza Minnelli (as Sally Bowles): click here. 

      Whilst this is still my favourite song written about money, mention might also be made of ABBA's 1976 single 'Money, Money, Money', written by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus: click here. And 'Money (That's What I Want)', a rhythm and blues track written by Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford and originally recorded by Barrett Strong in 1959, but which I remember as a single by the Flying Lizards in 1979: click here.          

 

[2] See the poems 'Money-madness' and 'Kill money' in The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 421-22. 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 363.  

[4] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 217. See also the closing letter written by Mellors to Connie (pp. 298-302), in which he again expresses his hatred for money and complains about the fact that modern people have conflated living with spending.    

[5] Roland Barthes, 'Fourier', in Sade / Fourier / Loyola, trans. Richard Miller, (University of California Press, 1989), p. 85. 

[6] Ibid., pp. 85-86.

 

 

To read another recent post on Fourier, click here. 

On Erotico-Religious Lactation (Or Get Your Tits Out for the Saints)

St. Bernard of Clairvaux being treated to a squirt 

of fresh breastmilk by the Blessed Virgin Mary 

 

 

I. 

 

As I'm not a great lover of dairy products or female breasts, lactophilia has limited erotic appeal for me. 

 

However, for some individuals - and we're talking adults here, not babies - there's nothing more arousing (whilst, paradoxically, at the same time strangely comforting) than to suckle on a mammary gland swollen with rich, creamy milk.   

 

I suspect that had D. H. Lawrence chosen to develop the kinky relationship established between Sir Clifford Chatterley and Mrs Bolton, this is the direction it would have taken. For the former had already adopted an infantalised role in relation to the latter and liked nothing better than to feel her arms around his shoulders as he put his face on her bosom and allowed himself to be gently rocked and kissed like a baby:

 

"He would hold her hand, and rest his head on her breast [...] And he would gaze on her with wide, childish eyes, in a relaxation of Madonna-worship [...] letting go all his manhood, and sinking back to a childish position that was really perverse. And then he would put his hand into her bosom and feel her breasts, and kiss them in exaltation, the exaltation of perversity, of being a child when he was a man.

      Mrs Bolton was both thrilled and ashamed, she both loved it and hated it. Yet she never rebuffed or rebuked him. And they drew into a closer physical intimacy, an intimacy of perversity, when he was a child stricken with [...] an apparent wonderment, that looked almost like a religious exaltation: the perverse and literal rendering of 'except ye become again as a little child.'" [1]   

 

As I say, breastfeeding would seem to be the natural next step in this illicit love affair. But what really interests is how Lawrence stresses not just the erotic but also the religious aspect of the relationship - something that is crucial but often overlooked and which I'll pick up on below in section III ...

 

II. 

 

Breasts, particularly the nipples, are almost universally recognised as erogenous zones; certainly in Western culture. So it's no surprise that their stimulation is a common aspect of human sexual behaviour. But what some might find surprising is that milk production can be induced by regular suckling on the breast of a woman even when she's not pregnant or nursing an infant (note: this may require both patience and practice).  

 

Thus it isn't all that odd - and perhaps not even all that uncommon - that many couples proceed from oral stimulation of the nipples to actual breastfeeding. Indeed, lesbians regard this as a perfectly normal expression of affection and tenderness (much as they do golden showering, or so I'm told). 

 

That said, many people would still regard erotic lactation as a queer practice that goes against accepted norms and values, though that isn't something that troubles me; as I said at the opening of this post, I'm more lactose intolerant than intolerant of that which gives pleasure to others (be that producing milk, consuming milk, or just playing with breastmilk in a wet and messy sexual context).           

 

 

III.     

 

Those who know anything about the history of European art in the Middle Ages will be able to vouch for the fact that there are a number of erotico-religious works depicting the Virgin Mary breastfeeding not just the infant Jesus, but also adult males [2]. 

 

Perhaps the most famous example of this is the Lactation Bernadi (or, as it is known in English, the Lactation of Saint Bernard). An example of one work illustrating this visionary experience is shown above.

 

Now, you might think that it would be regarded as sinful or blasphemous to consume something intended to provide sustenance for Our Lord. But apparently not; apparently it's okay to drink Our Lady's sacred milk squirted straight from source (albeit from some distance). In fact, it's seen as a sign that the recipient is blessed and on the road to sainthood. 

 

Another interpretation of the story is that Mary allowed Bernard to sample her milk in order to demonstrate that she is Mother of the Church and, via the Church, the mother of all mankind. Or that she was attempting in her own manner to directly offer spiritual nourishment (her milk thus paralleling the role played by the blood of Christ). 

 

Either way, as someone once joked, it proves that Mary was the original MILF: Mother Imparting Liquid Faith ...  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 291.   

[2] After the Council of Trent (1545-1563), clerics discouraged nudity in religious art and the use of the Madonna Lactans iconography began to fade away. However, pictures involving St. Bernard being gifted milk by the Virgin survived even into the late Baroque period.

 

 

On Initiating Youth into the Democracy of Touch

Some youths playing football as imagined by D. H. Lawrence 

in a water colour entitled Spring (1929)

 

 

When D. H. Lawrence writes of the inspiration of touch, he is clearly thinking of how desire invests the lives of adult men and women, involving as it does, amongst other things, "the touch of hands and breasts, the touch of the whole body to body, and the interpenetration of passionate love" [1].

 

Nevertheless, this former school teacher was vitally interested in the education of the young and would doubtless have wanted to see children and adolescents initiated (or groomed) into his phallic-utopian new order, so that from an early age they too might learn to substantiate the mystery of touch and form a direct relationship with all things. 

 

The fact that children and adolescents are often denied intimacy with one another is something that also concerned the French author Michel Tournier. Like Lawrence, he argued that youngsters should be allowed (and, indeed, encouraged to experience) physical contact with the bodies of others and that our primary human need is for touch. 

 

Before eyebrows could be raised, however, and accusations begin to fly, Tournier quickly added:

 

"When I speak of physical contact, I mean of course something far more vast and more primitive than erotic games and sexual relations, which are merely a special case." [2]

 

Tournier was also keen to counter those who think that by giving children toys or pet animals to play with we can conveniently sublimate their desire for the forming of close physical and emotional bonds:

 

"Everyone likes to say that young children like to play with dolls and teddy bears, and sometimes they are permitted to play with small animals. It is also commonly said, however, that dogs like bones. The truth is that dogs gnaw on bones when they have nothing else, but you can take my word for it, they would prefer a good cut of steak or a nice veal cutlet. As for children, it is quite simply a dreadful thing that we toss them dolls and animals in order to assuage their need for a warm, living body. Of course sailors on long voyages sometimes avail themselves of inflatable rubber females, and lonely shepherds in the mountains have been known to mount a lamb or goat. But children are neither sailors nor shepherds and do not lack for human company. Their distress is the invention of a fiercely anti-physical society, of a mutilating, castrating culture, and there is no question that many character disorders, violent outbursts, and cases of juvenile drug addiction are consequences of the physical desert into which the child and adolescent are customarily banished in our society." [3]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, Version 2 of Lady Chatterley's Lover, in The First and Second Lady Chatterley Novels, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 323. 

 

[2] Michel Tournier, The Wind Spirit, trans. Albert Goldhammer, (Collins, 1989), p. 15.

[3] Ibid., pp. 16-17. 

 

 

On Eric Gill's Illustrations for Lady Chatterley's Lover

Eric Gill: Lady C. (1931) 

Early version of a wood engraving intended for 

D. H. Lawrence's novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover

 

  

I. 

 

A recent post on the D. H. Lawrence Society blog features an amusing exchange between Kate Foster and John Worthen on the merits (or otherwise) of a pair of drawings by Eric Gill originally intended as illustrations for Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928): click here.

 

Having previously written on the Lawrence-Gill connection - click here and here, for example - and being a fully paid-up member of the DHL Society, I figured neither of the above would object if I added my tuppence ha'penny worth to the discussion ...     

 

II. 

 

The piece opens by declaring that Gill's sexual inclinations - which included incest, paedophilia, and bestiality - shouldn't affect our appreciation of his work. He may have been a monster of perversity, but hey, his drawings were rather lovely and, we are assured, they are "not in the least pornographic".

This last claim made me smile: such is the continued horror of smut amongst followers of Lawrence, that they can't bear the thought that works that they happen to find beautiful might be anything other than the innocent laughter of genius, free from any "intention to titilate". 

    

I also smiled when, having gone to the trouble to separate the work from the man, the post backtracks and decides that maybe we cannot exclude the figure of the artist from the drawings after all, as they belong to a single history and the latter are, in a sense, portraits of Gill. 

 

To be fair, I understand this ambivalence and it certainly doesn't trouble me in the same way as the earlier refusal to consider the possibility that art and pornography are not always mutually exclusive. However, push comes to shove and for the record, I think it perfectly reasonable to judge a work without any reference to (or interest in) the biography of the artist.        

 

Moving on, we arrive at the $64,000 question: Would Lawrence have liked the drawings? First to answer is John Worthen and he seems in little doubt that the pictures are un-Lawrentian:

 

"I suspect he would have found them pornographic, in the way he spelled out in his essay 'Pornography and Obscenity', where he noted that 'In sexual intercourse, there is give and take.' In the drawings, it is all take (on the man's side), give on the woman's."

 

I have to confess, I have problems with this. For one thing, I cannot see how Worthen can possibly tell who is giving or taking what to or from whom in Gill's pictures. 

 

And, although Lawrence does indeed talk about give and take in the essay mentioned [1], he's not referring to some kind of conscious or consensual exchange between lovers. The reciprocity is, rather, inherent to the act of coition itself, be it between a man and a woman, two men, or one man and his dog; it's a flash of interchange between two blood streams and the question of who is active or passive, giving or receiving, is irrelevant (as well as a little tedious). 

 

We might also note that this is why Worthen's liberal concern that one party in an act of coition may serve in a purely functional and objectified manner as a machine à plaisir is also not really the issue here. For according to the logic of Lawrence's own position, any act of sexual intercourse is radically different from an act of masturbation (his real bête noire); even an act of violent rape results in a new stimulus entering as the old surcharge departs and only masturbation causes deadening. 

 

Just to be clear on this: Lawrence does object (vehemently) to pornography - and he may well have found Gill's drawings pornographic - but not on the grounds Worthen suggests above. 

 

Perhaps realising he needs an additional (more tenable) argument, Worthen now shifts ground slightly and implies that the pictures are the product of an obsessive (and presumably oppressive) male gaze and illustrate what is meant by the Lawrentian phrase sex in the head:        

 

"The drawings are, perhaps, examples of almost exactly what Lawrence was trying not to do in his novel: make the sex something to be looked at. He wanted it to be something felt. Gill is deeply, deeply fascinated by looking, I would say, and his gaze is obsessed; and that (oddly enough) is his limitation as an artist." 

 

This may or may not be true, but it's worth pointing out that Lawrence himself says the purpose of Lady C. was not to stimulate sexual feeling or incite illicit sexual activity, but, rather, help men and women think sex: "fully, completely, honestly, and cleanly" [2]. Surely this conscious realisation requires us to keep our eyes open ...? 

 

Other criticisms of the drawings made by Worthen just seem a little strange. For example, the fact that the female bottom is made the focus of the pictures. As Kate Foster asks, "isn't Gill just trying to capture what Mellors wouldn't shut up about: 'Tha's got the nicest arse of anybody. It's the nicest, nicest woman's arse as is!'"    

 

I agree with Foster that one of the interesting things about the drawings is that the woman is positioned on top of the man and that "she appears strong and healthy, it's the male figure who looks thin and rather weak" and in need of support. Her body is not simply put on passive display for an appreciative male spectator and, again as Foster points out, there's a real tenderness about these images; the couple do appear to be cradling one another, despite Worthen's denials of this. 

 

Ultimately, there's a delicious irony here in a man explaining to a woman why the pictures are sexist and phallocentric (and trying to do so from a Lawrentian perspective).   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Pornography and Obscenity', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 233-253. The section relevant to our discussion here is on p. 245, lines 26-36. 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'A Propos of "Lady Chatterley's Lover"', in Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 308. 

On the Use of Dialect as an Erotico-Elementary Language in D. H. Lawrence

An aged priest of love sharing terms 

from his phallic vocabulary 

Image by Realitees on teepublic.com

 

 

I. 

 

It has been suggested that the use of dialect in Lady Chatterley's Lover - liberally interspersed with expletives - is an attempt by D. H. Lawrence to construct an erotico-elementary language that is expressive of what he terms phallic tenderness. An attempt, in other words, to translate feeling and desire more directly - more authentically - into words; to speak straight from the heart rather than the head. 

 

Readers of the novel can decide for themselves how successful he is in this; whether, for example, it's a real advance in the poetics of courtship and amorous discourse for Mellors to tell Connie that she's "'the best bit o' cunt on earth'" and how pleasing it is to him that she shits an' pisses [1]. 

 

But I would like to make the following points, if I may ... 

 

 

II.

 

Firstly, I quite admire the refusal by Mellors to speak standard English - the language of his class enemies - at all times and in all circumstances, even though he is perfectly capable of so-doing. If his lapsing into the vernacular and use of profanity is partly a defensive mechanism, so too is it oppositional and defiant. Perhaps he even has a duty to try and articulate his thoughts and feelings in his own words as far as is possible - as do all those who pride themselves on their singularity.   

 

Having said that, I'm not sure how far we can (or should) take this. I don't, for example, like the idea of individuals or small groups of people - tribes - retreating into semi-private languages in order to uphold some narrow identity and exclude others. I'm not arguing for a universal language which would somehow absorb all others and allow only a single vision to be expressed in but one tongue, but I do like the idea of being able to communicate.        

 

Secondly, I'm dubious when Lawrence suggests that a mixture of East Midlands dialect and a sprinkling of obscenities allows Mellors to articulate desire and display a proper reverence for sex and the body's strange experiences. He can't, of course, provide any evidence for this; it's ultimately just a personal preference for the language of his childhood based upon an intuitive understanding of physical consciousness. 

 

I'm inclined to agree with Richard Rorty's dismissal of this type of fantasy as, at best, lacking in irony, or, at worst, politically reactionary:

 

"What is described as such a consciousness is simply a disposition to use the language of our ancestors, to worship the corpses of their metaphors. Unless we suffer from what Derrida calls 'Heideggerian nostalgia,' we shall not think of our 'intuitions' as more than platitudes, more than the habitual use of a certain repertoire of terms, more than old tools which as yet have no replacements." [2]      

 

The problem is, Lawrence does - on occasion - suffer from something pretty similar to this form of philosophical sickness. He trusts his intuitions and, more, he believes his phallic vocabulary does a huge amount of work; i.e., that words such as tenderness, touch, desire, and fuck can be employed to bring about a revolutionary change in society; that such terms have almost a magical power and that they are closer to some vital primal reality and constitute what he terms blood-knowledge (a kind of instinctive common sense).  

 

Heidegger designated such terms as elementary - although, obviously, he privileged very different ones from Lawrence - and in Being and Time he claims that the "ultimate business of philosophy is to preserve the force of the most elementary words in which Dasein expresses itself" [3]. 

 

Now, as I confessed in an earlier post [click here], there was a time when I found this kind of thing seductive if never entirely convincing: I wanted to believe that there was an occult litany of words, letters, and phonemes that might somehow tear up the foundations of the soul and shatter eardrums and law tables alike; a kind of Adamic language, if you like.  

 

But now I fear this is precisely the kind of linguistic mysticism that Heidegger paradoxically practised whilst also warning against - not least of all because it's open to ridicule. 

 

Indeed, whenever Mellors shouts out arse! cunt! balls! like an erotomaniac with Tourette's, he reminds one of Father Jack Hackett, the foul-mouthed, lecherous old priest played by Frank Kelly in the Channel 4 sitcom Father Ted. His attempted display of authenticity is, ultimately, full of transcendental pretension and, as such, is laughable; Connie's sister, Hilda, is right to find him (and his use of dialect) affected. 

 

 

III. 

 

In sum: Lady Chatterley's Lover is an attempt by Lawrence to bring together the personal and the political, by showing us how sexual self-discovery and social revolution could be united in one project articulated via a phallic narrative spoken by Oliver Mellors.

 

Like Heidegger, Lawrence "thought he knew some words which had, or should have had, resonance for everybody" [4]; words which were relevant not just to the fate of people who happened to share his concerns and obsessions, but to the public fate of the modern world. He was unable to believe that the words which meant so much to him - words rooted in the body - don't necessarily excite the same interest or call forth the same response in others (not even from amongst his most sympathetic readers).

 

As Rorty concludes: "There is no such list of elementary words, no universal litany. The elementariness of elementary words [...] is a private and idiosyncratic matter" and the democracy of touch is simply a beautiful attempt by a poet and novelist to "fend off thoughts of mortality with thoughts of affiliation and incarnation" [5].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 177 and 223. 

[2] Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 21-22. 

[3] Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Blackwell, 2001), p. 262. 

[4] Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p. 118. 

[5] Ibid., p. 119. 

 

 

This is a follow up to an earlier post on the use of dialect in D. H. Lawrence as a form of defensive communication: click here.  

On the Use of Dialect as Defensive Communication in D. H. Lawrence

J. C. Green: D. H. Lawrence Portrait

(Pencil, pen, and acrylic on paper)
behance.net

 

 

Whilst it's debatable to what degree Lawrence might be considered a sophisticated dialectician, he was, according to James Walker, a master of dialect and his use of pit talk delivered in a broad East Midlands accent "frightened the life out of middle class Edwardian critics" [1]. 

 

Walker suggests that Lawrence primarily used dialect and "multiple variations of speech patterns" in order to help readers understand a character's social background, education, and intelligence. And I don't disagree with that. 

 

However, I also think Lawrence used dialect as an aggressive form of defensive communication, that is to say, verbally reactive behaviour adopted by individuals feeling anxious and self-conscious in a social context that differs from ones with which they are familiar and in which they feel more at ease. 

 

Freud was one of the first to research defensive communication from the perspective of his psychodynamic theory. But you don't need to be a qualified therapist to recognise that no one likes to feel insecure, inferior, or judged. Unfortunately, defensiveness doesn't help matters and often serves to further impede interaction. 

 

We see this, for example, when Oliver Mellors meets Connie's sister, Hilda, and doesn't quite know what to say or how best to behave and so gets defensive, slipping in and out of his expletive-laden vernacular in a manner that is almost a little insane and which comes across as affected and a form of play acting [2].  

 

Ultimately, it could be argued that his passive aggressive technique of using dialect in order to confuse and intimidate, is as ill-mannered as someone from a highly privileged background - such as Clifford - casually slipping in and out of Latin or ancient Greek when talking to someone who didn't have the good fortune to study classics at Cambridge [3].     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] James Walker, 'Tongue and Talk: Dialect poetry featuring D. H. Lawrence', a blog post on D. H. Lawrence: A Digital Pilgrimage (14 May 2018): click here. Although Walker doesn't tell us why it's a good thing to terrify people, he clearly approves and seems to personally resent the fact that these critics found Lawrence's use of dialect ugly and dismissed his plays set in the mining community from which he came as sordid representations of lower class life.   

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterey's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), chapter XVI. 

 

[3] Of course, there is a difference; the former being defensive behaviour by someone socially disadvantaged and the latter being offensive behaviour by someone in a socially superior position. Nevertheless, both types of behaviour involve an element of bullying and if the latter is snobbish, the former is, arguably, only an inverted snobbery. Being able to slip into a regional dialect or cant slang doesn't necessarily make you a better - more authentic - human being than someone who prefers to speak the Queen's English; the vernacular is not some sort of elementary language enabling a uniquely powerful expression of Dasein. 

 

 

For a follow up post to this one on the use of dialect in D. H. Lawrence as an erotico-elementary language, click here.      

D. H. Lawrence is all the Rage

 James K. Walker and an outsider art style portrait of DHL

 

I. 

 

There are not many joyous events to look forward to in November: All Souls' Day, Bonfire Night, and Katxu's birthday - that's really about it. However, I'm pleased to announce an addition to this short list; a presentation by bibliophile and promiscuous homotextual James Walker to the D. H. Lawrence London Group [1].  

James - a teacher, writer, and critic who describes himself as a digital storyteller - has assembled two major projects of note in collaboration with Paul Fillingham: The Sillitoe Trail (2012-13), which explored the enduring relevance of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning; and Dawn of the Unread (2014-16), a graphic novel celebrating Nottingham's literary heritage.

 

He is currently working on a transmedia project that will digitally recreate D. H. Lawrence's savage pilgrimage. It's this project - which James likes to describe as a Memory Theatre - which he'll be discussing in November, with particular reference to the subject of rage within the life and work of Lawrence. 

 

This obviously excites my interest, as I've recently been researching the ancient Greek concept of thymos (anger) which Plato named as one of the three constituent parts of the human psyche; the others being logos (reason) and eros (sexual desire) and which Peter Sloterdijk locates as central within Western history, arguing that an active form of this emotion - i.e., free of ressentiment - might actually be something vital and productive.

 

And so, without wishing to anticipate in too great a detail what James might be planning to say, here are a few thoughts on Lawrence and rage that I'm hoping he'll develop ... 

 

 

II.

 

James isn't, of course, the first to have noticed (and been amused by) Lawrence's semi-permanent fury with himself, with others, and with the world at large. 

 

Geoff Dyer, for example, picked up on this in his study of Lawrence entitled Out of Sheer Rage (1997) and, twelve years prior, Anthony Burgess had offered his own passionate appreciation of Lawrence in an episode of The South Bank Show which aired on 20 January 1985 under the title 'The Rage of D. H. Lawrence' [2].  

 

I don't know why Lawrence was so often so angry; some commentators have suggested it was symptomatic of his TB [3]; others take a more psychological approach and discuss Lawrence and his work in terms of behavioural disorders such as social anxiety disorder and intermittant explosive disorder. 

 

Again, I have no idea if Lawrence was bipolar, although he did seem to swing from periods of depression to periods marked by an abnormally elevated mood - but then, who doesn't? 

 

And it's important to note that Lawrence - perhaps aware of his own public image - often played up his anger for comic effect, as in the famous letter to Edward Garnett in which he curses his critics and fellow countrymen: 

 

"Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the snivelling, dribbling, dithering palsied pulse-less lot that make up England today. They've got white of egg in their veins, and their spunk is that watery it's a marvel they can breed. They can but frog-spawn - the gibberers! God, how I hate them! God curse them, funkers. God blast them, wish-wash. Exterminate them, slime." [4]

   

Only someone with no sense of humour would mistake this for genuine anger; it's Lawrence doing what writers love to do most, i.e., play with words.

Having said that, I think we can characterise even Lady Chatterley's Lover as a thymotic text and not simply an erotic novel or piece of romantic fiction. It's as much about Mellors raging against the class system, industrial capitalism, modern technology, poaching cats, crying children, ex-wives and girlfriends, lesbians, and contemporary art, as it is about Connie's sexual awakening. 

 

And I think we should also mention that there were occasions when Lawrence's rage was genuine and took a nasty, violent turn. I'm sure James will refer to the verbal and physical abuse suffered by Lawrence's wife Frieda, for example, and the incident involving poor Bibbles the dog (readers who would like reminding of these things can go to a post on the subject by clicking here).      

III.

 

Anger is an energy, as John Lydon once sang [5]. And, as a matter of fact, he's right; those experiencing rage have high levels of adrenaline and this increases physical strength and sharpens senses, whilst also inhibiting the sensation of pain. 

 

Rage, in other words, enables individuals to do things that they might otherwise be incapable of (and if you don't believe me or Rotten, ask Dr. Bruce Banner).  

 

And with that, it's over to you James ...

 

Notes

[1]  James Walker's presentation to the Lawrence London Group is via Zoom on 26 November 2020, between 6.30 and 8.30 pm local time. For further details of the event and for information on the DHL London Group, visit Catherine Brown's website by clicking here.  

 

[2] Readers who are interested in watching this episode of The South Bank Show [S08/E11] can find it on YouTube in four parts: click here for part 1.

[3] Katherine Mansfield, who was herself consumptive and "subject to outbursts of uncontrollable rage", also believed this. See David Ellis, Death and the Author, (Oxford University Press, 2008) p. 15. 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Edward Garnett, dated 3 July 1912, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp.420-22. Lines quoted are on p. 422. 

 

[5] Play 'Rise', by Public Image Ltd., a single release from the album Album (Virgin Records, 1986), by clicking here.