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].
