LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER

copyright: Helen Croom (1996)
 

CHAPTER ONE - The First Lady Chatterley
"Why Lawrence altered the novel three times is a matter mainly for speculation. But that he altered it disastrously is, in my view, beyond question."1
This statement is from an essay entitled The First Lady Chatterley by Geoffrey Strickland. Mr Strickland's point is that as the novels progressed Lawrence narrowed the class gap between Lady Chatterley and the gamekeeper.
This chapter will attempt to define this version of Lawrence's work, paying particular attention to the point made above. Examined from the class distinction angle, this version shows the enormous gulf between the middle and working classes, and does so in style. However, having portrayed this incompatibility Lawrence is then left with the difficulty of how to conclude the story. He has the task of either narrowing the breach or allowing the lovers to recognise the impossibility of their relationship and admit defeat. The novel ends with Constance escaping from Wragby; but to what we are not told.
In TFLC, Parkin (the gamekeeper) is very much a working class man. He speaks solely in dialect and although he has a profound dislike for Sir Clifford's 'governing classes' he treats him with a respect absent in the gamekeeper, Mellors, in the final novel. When Parkin notices Connie for the first time he is aware of her troubled look, thinking "ay, the war hit the gentry hard," (23) a thought unlikely to occur to the rather bitter Mellors, perhaps.
Connie is very definitely a 'Lady' in this version; she feels a shrinking horror of the common people, is dismayed by the ugliness of Tevershall and wonders that such surroundings can occasionally produce someone with Oliver Parkin's individuality. Whilst finding solace in Parkin's arms she realises, when out of them, the futility of trying to make a life together. She cannot reconcile their differences, even in her mind. She feels that if he lived with her he would be bound to change and with that change would come resentment on his side and a lessening of his attraction for her. In the same way she cannot become a gamekeeper's wife; denied her books, music, theatre and stimulating conversation she would become resentful and she would no longer be the same person. In a humorous passage, Connie imagines them together in the cottage, eating the most common meal she can think of (grilled bloaters), but outside of her imagination such a scene is impossible. Whereas her relationship with Clifford is solely reliant on language for communication, her relationship with Parkin is purely sensual. Each relationship is exclusive, with all the limitations that this imposes. The conflict which Lawrence so often portrays between the sexes is much more in evidence in this version than in the later ones.
Lawrence poignantly portrays the powerlessness of the working man when Parkin tells her passionately of the torture of being entirely at her mercy:
"But what about me, when I wait and watch across the park, an' you never come? An' I say to myself: 'She wants none o' thee tonight lad!'...But I know right enough... You look down on me." (95)
He too, sees the impossibility of them bridging the social gap which separates them.
Lawrence's insistence on the working man sticking to his principles means that there is little that can be done by way of uniting the lovers; it seems to be a complete impasse. Parkin insists that he, and he alone, must provide for his woman, but there is no hope of him being able to support Connie in the manner which he feels is necessary. Likewise, he cannot accept her offer of a farm which they could work together because the Communist in him feels that this would be a betrayal of all the other working men, who have no means of escape from their drudgery.
Once the lovers are unable to meet in the sanctuary of the wood, and are subject to the world around them, they are less easy with each other. At the Tewson's they are both ill at ease; Connie is pained by the deterioration of his physical condition that the unaccustomed hard manual labour has caused, and irritated by his obstinacy about her giving him a start somewhere else. Even the matter of tea emphasises the distance between the classes; 'tea' to Connie is a ritual, whereas it will be the last meal of the day for the Tewsons and they eat heartily. Lady Chatterley is totally ignorant of the fact that Mrs Tewson despises her for omitting the 'mister' when referring to Parkin; to Connie it is a normal form of address, to Mrs Tewson a gross insult and insinuation of superiority.
Lawrence makes plain that the working man (in the form of Bill Tewson) is interested in the mind of the governing class, whereas the representative of that class, Sir Clifford, doesn't believe the working man has a mind: "He's just a half-tamed animal with a certain animal niceness and a certain half-tame nastiness." (115)
The story ends when Parkin tells Duncan Forbes (a radical but middle class young man, definitely on the side of the lovers in this version) that he cannot leave the steelworks as he has become secretary to the Communist League there and feels strongly about it. Connie realises that she must get away from Wragby, whether or not she has a future with Parkin as she passionately wants her child to "be born into life" (249) which would not be possible at Wragby. Whether this ending is successful or not depends on what Lawrence was trying to show. If he intended to show a way in which the classes might be brought together, then the attempt has failed; it seems unlikely that Connie and Parkin could ever live together. However, Lawrence has succeeded in showing a way in which one insignificant (in class terms) person has freed the mind of a socially superior one and opened her eyes to the shallowness of the middle classes. (This, however, is a favourite gripe of the feminists; it took a man's sexuality to free a woman.) Lawrence himself made the point in A propos Lady Chatterley's Lover that there was never intended to be any certainty about the lovers living together. This, however, begs the question of where in the social scale their child will fit.
This draft, then, was a tentative forming of ideas and solutions; it was not altogether successful and so Lawrence 'had another go'. It is this which makes it so interesting to compare the three versions of Lady Chatterley, as it gives a unique insight into the author's thought processes.
There are no explicit sexual descriptions in this book, as there are in the others, and it must be said that if the book is read after either of the others then the omission is noticeable. The want of these descriptions detracts from the feeling of the book, until it is tempting to suspect that Parkin is no more than 'My Lady's Fucker'.
There is also much less of the 'plain language' in this version and, interestingly, Lawrence develops the way in which it is used along the lines of his stated intentions in his defence of its use in A propos:
"'What do you call me, in your sort of talk?' 'My lover!' she stammered. 'Lover!' he re-echoed. A queer flash went over his face. 'Fucker!' he said, and his eyes darted a flash at her, as if he had shot her. The word, she knew from Clifford, was obscene, and she flushed deeply and then went pale. But since the word itself had so little association to her, it made very little impression on her. Only she was amazed at the diabolic hate - or fury - she did not know which it was - that flashed out of him all at once, like a cobra striking." (127)
Here then, Parkin is using the word as an intended insult and profanity. It is Connie's unselfconscious use of the word which makes him see that words get their meaning from associated use.
"'But,' she stammered, 'even if you are - are you ashamed of it?'... 'Am I ashamed of it?' he questioned vaguely. 'Yes! Even if you are my 'fucker' as you call it, are you ashamed of it?'... 'Why shouldn't you take me if we both want it?' she said. 'Why shouldn't I fuck thee when we both want it?' he repeated in broad dialect, smiling all over his body with amusement as a dog does. 'Yes, why not!' she re-echoed... 'What amuses you so?... 'Yo' do!' he said. 'How?' 'Say it again! he said. 'Say it again! - What does it matter if I -' he tempted her. 'Yes! What does it matter if you fuck me, as you call it? - when you know I want you to!'" (128)
And so, Lawrence demonstrates his point that this word, disassociated from its profanity and given its literal meaning is purified - after this Parkin continues to use the word, but now simply as any other word, it has lost its association with anger for him. This seems to work better than the approach which Lawrence uses in the third version, in which he tends to bombard the reader with such words in the hope that familiarity will purify the word. Instead of which, it tends to become tedious.