Alright, I’m switching things up a bit on the blog. Not only have I started posting on a Tuesday-Thursday schedule instead of Monday-Wednesday-Friday, but I’ve now decided to change up how I do these book club introduction posts. Instead of throwing all of this knowledge at you the day before I post about the book, I thought it might be nice to give you the better part of a week to contemplate my questions, let the story soak in, and create your own posts to linkup on book club day. Sounds much better, right? I certainly hope it will be, and do let me know what you think in the comments!
Now then, let’s take a look at D.H. Lawrence and his frequently banned book, Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
After finishing Lady Chatterley’s Lover, I was very eager to delve into Lawrence’s life and see what I could find about his social and political opinions. Unfortunately none of the information that I found gave me any concrete answers, and I’m still grasping at straws to understand the reasons he did certain things in his final, and perhaps most infamous, novel.
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was born on September 11, 1885 in a small, industrial town that sounds a bit like Tevershall. His parents weren’t very educated, but he attended good schools on scholarship and eventually earned his teaching degree before becoming a writer.
He eloped with Frieda Weekley, the wife of one of his college professors, They were together for the rest of his life and were married once she procured a divorce from her husband; however, after his death, she claimed that he had had homosexual relationships with at least one of his close male friends. Due to his elopement and political tensions surrounding the period before and during World War I, Lawrence spent most of his life in exile from England and lived all around the world, including in the United States. He died of tuberculosis in France when he was just forty-four years old.
Overall, his biography didn’t give me much to go off of, so I figure we might as well get around to some questions pertaining to the book itself:
- What aspects of Lady Chatterley’s Lover led it to be banned and censored frequently throughout history?
- Does Connie represent a good type of female? A bad one? Does it change during the course of the story?
- What is the significance of Mrs. Bolton’s role as a sort of in-between classes figure?
- Why do you think Lawrence chose to incorporate such explicit sexual scenes within the novel?
- Is there significance behind Mellors’ ever-changing accent?
- Does Lawrence adopt a feminist view of female sexuality?
I’ll be back next Wednesday for book club, which should give you plenty of time to finish up this banned book! Don’t forget that there will be a linkup for any posts on Lady Chatterley’s Lover or any other classic books you wish to share.
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