Eng426 20th century english literature

Spectacular Use of Language: Modernist writers use language in ways that are different from how the Victorians used it. The language use in Lady Chatterley’s Lover is simple and coherent, but there are some spectacular uses. In some instances, there are lewd descriptions like Fuck and cunt used to qualify the sexual acts in the narrative. For instance, in the letter that ends the novel, Mellors writes:
And if you’re in Scotland and I’m in the Midlands, and I can’t put my arms round you, and wrap my legs round you, yet I’ve got something of you. My soul softly flaps in the little Pentecost flame with you, like the peace of fucking. We fucked a flame into being. Even the flowers are fucked into being between the sun and the earth. But it’s a delicate thing, and takes patience and the long pause. (268)
Symbolism: The novel is symbolic especially in the treatment of Clifford and all he embodies. Clifford’s paralysis and impotence is a symbol of most men of his sort and class who are both paralysed physically and sexually. It is also an expression of the dehumanising nature of technology and industrialisation. The wounded landscape of Tevershall is also symbolic. It represents the dehumanising force of industrialism which has left so many wounded and unproductive in the society.
The love created and the deep intimacy between Connie and Mellors, suggests the solution that can heal the wound of war and the one created by the industries. The love affair between Connie and Mellors begins in the wood, and the sexual scenes take place either in the hut or in the wood itself. The wood, a remnant of Sherwood Forest, "the great forest where Robin Hood hunted" (79), stands for the lost potential of an older England that is now circumscribed by the industrial system that surrounds it. Although the wood still retains a "power" and a "vital presence" (106), its power is increasingly precarious and threatened. Nevertheless, Lawrence's lyrical descriptions of the wood evoke a Romantic vision of nature as a moral alternative to the debased city.
The symbolic significance of this world as an embattled refuge from the industrialisation of modern England is clearly established in such scenes as Clifford's visit to the wood in his mechanical chair, where he "rides upon the achievements of the mind" (156). As Clifford argues with Connie about the miners and said they "are not men . . . but animals" (159), his chair ploughs through flowers, "squashing the little yellow cups of the creeping-jenny . . . making a wake through the forget-me-nots" (161). It is within the
context of this world of trees and flowers, and against Clifford's world of the industrial mines, that Connie and Mellors make love.