Eng426 20th century english literature

Self- Assessment Exercise

Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover is about class struggle and upturn of the aristocracy. Discuss.

4.0 CONCLUSION

Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover is about the notions of vitality and paralysis, vitality intellectually as well as sexually. Clifford, a highly placed aristocrat, is portrayed as a man of words and intelligence who he has no regards for his servants and the vegetations or life around him. He hosts a group of friends and they engage in intellectual discussions that the lower class like Oliver Mellors is seemingly incapable of. Clifford lives with his wife after the war, physically paralysed man who thinks that intellectual engagements and living in the mind is enough to make his wife happy but it is the gamekeeper who is in touch with the fields, plants and animals who knows what it takes to live actively. Oliver is the symbol of physical and in a way intellectual vitality, he lives as a semi educated man but he is in touch with life and so gives Connie what she is deprived of in her rational marriage to Clifford and there lies the irony of the novel, the Lord’s paralysis gives way to the break in class boundaries in the novel as Clifford in his helpless state become dependent on Mrs. Bolton and Connie runs to Mellors for companionship.

5.0 SUMMARY

In this unit you have learnt about D.H Lawrence’s contribution to the modern novel through his techniques and the themes he deploys in his novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSISNMENT

Describe the ways in which modernism is reflected in Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s

7.0 REFERENCES/ FURTHER READING

Lawrence, D.H. (2005).Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth. Hough, G. (1975). The Dark Sun: A Study of D.H Lawrence. Britain: Duckworth.