Holliday Grainger and Richard Madden as Connie and Mellors
in the BBC's Lady Chatterley's Lover.
Photo: Josh Barratt/BBC Pictures/Hartswood Films (2015)
The BBC is soon to broadcast a new adaptation of Lady Chatterley's Lover, written and directed by Jed Mercurio, starring Holliday Grainger as Connie and Richard Madden as Mellors.
The story, as most people know, is one of social division and sexual politics in post-War England, in which a gamekeeper fucks, impregnates, and runs off with his upper-class employer's wife. Connie thus abandons (and brings shame upon) not only her husband, Clifford, but her own class; more than merely a private act of infidelity, hers is a public scandal that challenges convention, authority, and the old order.
Clifford is not surprisingly upset and outraged at her betrayal of him and her wilful attempt to destroy the very fabric of civilized society. In his view, she ought to be "wiped off the face of the earth!" He then goes on to tell Connie that she's abnormal and not in her right senses: "You're one of those half-insane, perverted women who must run after depravity".
Interestingly, Clifford also holds Connie's sister, Hilda, partly to blame, and informs his runaway wife "I have no doubt she has connived at your desertion of your duties and responsibilities, so do not expect me to show pleasure in seeing her".
But what Clifford doesn't do is demand that Hilda be raped and paraded naked through the streets with her face blackened, which is the fate that has befallen Meenakshi Kumari and her fifteen-year-old sister, following the decision of an all-male village council of elders in India.
The girls face this disgusting punishment because their brother eloped - à la Mellors - with a married woman from a higher caste. Such decrees, made by unelected council members, are illegal, but punishments are often carried out regardless of the law of the land.
I would encourage readers of this post and viewers of the forthcoming BBC drama to sign Amnesty International's petition demanding that the Indian authorities intervene and offer protection to Meenakshi, her sister, and their family. Click here to go to the relevant page of the Amnesty website. Or text SAVE3 to 70505 with your full name.
Note: The quotes from D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, can be found on pp. 296 and 293 of the Cambridge University Press edition (1993), ed. Michael Squires. It's amazing how this novel remains vital and culturally relevant almost ninety years after it was written and first published.
