Reform in Ideals: Sensuality and Sexuality
Two books, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and The Well of Loneliness, stood as prominent examples of the 1920s. This was a time of change and radical ideas, particularly through sensuality and sexuality. Although the topic was still treated rather modestly, at least in English literature, two novelists, D.H. Lawrence and Radclyffe Hall, challenged constructs to write novels with ideas, themes, and morals revolved around sex and sexuality. In this respect, they changed the game in English literature and English culture. In bold contrast to other English novels of the time, D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness aided the charge of the change in England from …show more content…
In Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Connie, the main character, who shows strong sexual desires, subconsciously victim to this mechanized suppression. Therefore, her life is ordered by uncreativeness, social class. This leads to her oppression, and fall into affair (Koh 196). Lady Chatterley’s Lover symbolizes a change from the mechanical, the “disciplined and regulated” to the humane. Connie and Mellors, the man whom Connie has an affair with, represent this change (200). Lawrence’s answer to repression is to live naturally, and not artificially. He says at the beginning of his novel, “We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen” (Lawrence 5). He also says, “Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles” (Lawrence 5). He gives us hope and reason to break the social construct of sex. The “tragic age” refers to the Industrial Age, the age of mechanized mental state, and the effects of the War, and he gives hope for the destruction of the Industrial Age, and what the postwar era may hope to bring. Lawrence suggests through his novel that his era …show more content…
“A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it” (Lawrence 73). And he evokes powerful messages, or lessons. “Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass” (Lawrence 271). In other words, adhering to the mechanized mental state will stain the mind from realness and closeness and love. He makes this message, and the image of a postwar mechanized mental state as a product of the Industrial Age, very clear throughout the entirety of the text. Workers are dehumanized and industrialized by Chatterley. Fittingly, his two slogans are: “the industry comes before the individual,” and “the function determines the individual.” Both are dominated by Chatterley’s idea of the place and ruling of social class (Koh 193). But, perhaps more importantly to the idea of repression and why Connie yields a sexual desire and nature, is the effect of following an industrial life and mechanized mental state. The effect of industrialization, of machine-driven will, is seen in the episode with the breakdown of Chatterley’s wheelchair, showing his need to control everyone and everything, and most importantly, his reliance upon it (Koh 195). The introduction of the novel really says it all: “Ours is essentially a tragic
Two books, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and The Well of Loneliness, stood as prominent examples of the 1920s. This was a time of change and radical ideas, particularly through sensuality and sexuality. Although the topic was still treated rather modestly, at least in English literature, two novelists, D.H. Lawrence and Radclyffe Hall, challenged constructs to write novels with ideas, themes, and morals revolved around sex and sexuality. In this respect, they changed the game in English literature and English culture. In bold contrast to other English novels of the time, D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness aided the charge of the change in England from …show more content…
In Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Connie, the main character, who shows strong sexual desires, subconsciously victim to this mechanized suppression. Therefore, her life is ordered by uncreativeness, social class. This leads to her oppression, and fall into affair (Koh 196). Lady Chatterley’s Lover symbolizes a change from the mechanical, the “disciplined and regulated” to the humane. Connie and Mellors, the man whom Connie has an affair with, represent this change (200). Lawrence’s answer to repression is to live naturally, and not artificially. He says at the beginning of his novel, “We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen” (Lawrence 5). He also says, “Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles” (Lawrence 5). He gives us hope and reason to break the social construct of sex. The “tragic age” refers to the Industrial Age, the age of mechanized mental state, and the effects of the War, and he gives hope for the destruction of the Industrial Age, and what the postwar era may hope to bring. Lawrence suggests through his novel that his era …show more content…
“A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it” (Lawrence 73). And he evokes powerful messages, or lessons. “Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass” (Lawrence 271). In other words, adhering to the mechanized mental state will stain the mind from realness and closeness and love. He makes this message, and the image of a postwar mechanized mental state as a product of the Industrial Age, very clear throughout the entirety of the text. Workers are dehumanized and industrialized by Chatterley. Fittingly, his two slogans are: “the industry comes before the individual,” and “the function determines the individual.” Both are dominated by Chatterley’s idea of the place and ruling of social class (Koh 193). But, perhaps more importantly to the idea of repression and why Connie yields a sexual desire and nature, is the effect of following an industrial life and mechanized mental state. The effect of industrialization, of machine-driven will, is seen in the episode with the breakdown of Chatterley’s wheelchair, showing his need to control everyone and everything, and most importantly, his reliance upon it (Koh 195). The introduction of the novel really says it all: “Ours is essentially a tragic