Verified Document

20th Century Literature Term Paper

Lady Chatterley's Lover - DH Lawrence According to Lawrence, World War I was a tragic disgrace and resulted in a chaotic society in England. He felt that the English morals and guidelines changed drastically after the war. In the first chapter of "Lady Chatterley's Lover," Lawrence wrote: "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 (Lawrence, 1995, p. 2)."

Lady Chatterley's Lover is full of social, political, and cultural implications. By focusing on the forbidden relationship between Lady Connie Chatterley and Oliver Mellors, Lawrence reveals a great deal about the structure and politics of post-war society.

While the main theme of this book is love, the unproductiveness, inhumanity and ugliness of life in a local mining community play a large role in this book. The political elements of this book are clearly demonstrated by Lady Chatterley's life in a society devoted to making money. The book was extremely controversial when published because it is erotic.

However, Lawrence was not aiming to create a pornographic work. Instead, through his descriptions of physical love, he aimed to show that a relationship cannot exist without love and caring. In a society in which harshness and brutality run rampant, Lawrence aimed to show couples must overcome their surroundings to develop a loving, harmonious relationship together.

Mellors, a local gamekeeper, shows the...

In this respect, he gains the affection of Lady Chatterley. The compassion of Mellors for the wicked ways of Lady Chatterley is what attracts the couple to one another.
Their relationship involves many political elements, as it is considered an immoral relationship by the powers of England. Many of the defense witnesses were vulnerable - particularly the four Church of England clergy. However, it is apparent to most that the couple is guilty of immorality, which was greatly frowned upon by a society that desperately wanted to create an image of perfection.

The Chatterleys' marriage was main theme in the story, as society unfairly viewed its failure as the fault of Lady Chatterley, who had a difficult time maintaining a relationship with a husband who was half paralyzed and half crazy. She looks to Mellors to make her feel alive again. However, the prosecution fails to realize that the couple is building a strong relationship that has a good chance of leading to a successful marriage. They can only point finders and accuse the couple of immorality.

One of the main points of Lawrence's book is to show that love and lust are driven by the same impulses and problems as economics and politics. There is an obvious connection between society's sexual malaise, and the political and economic malaise of England during the time the novel was written, which is clearly demonstrated by the issues that arise as a result of Lady Chatterley's…

Sources used in this document:
Bibliography

Lawrence, DH. (1995). Lady Chatterley's Lover. New American Library, Mass Market Paperback
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

20th Century British Literature. Specifically
Words: 2023 Length: 6 Document Type: Term Paper

In fact, all these novels are concerned with the psychology and attitudes of the characters, and use them to represent the fragmentation and uncertainty in society. The characters own lives are uncertain and fragmented, and this represents these themes in society at large. Rhys also wanted to confront areas of British society that remained hidden and unacknowledged in her novel. In "Jane Eyre," the character's madness is simply alluded to,

20th Century Literature
Words: 1201 Length: 4 Document Type: Term Paper

Paul Valery was a French poet, essayist, and critic, who gave up writing for 20 years to pursue work in the scientific arena. His poetic style was based on symbolism and he believed that the mental process of creation was what was really important and that the poetry that he wrote was a by-product of the effort. "Enthusiasm is not an artist's state of mind," stated Valery. T.S. Eliot has

19th and 20th Century Literature
Words: 1660 Length: 5 Document Type: Term Paper

Balzac and Kafka: From Realism to Magical Realism French author Honore de Balzac defined the genre of realism in the early 19th century with his novel Old Man Goriot, which served as a cornerstone for his more ambitious project, The Human Comedy. Old Man Goriot also served as a prototype for realistic novels, with its setting of narrative parameters which included plot, structure, characterization, and point-of-view. The 20th century, however, digressed

20th Century U.S. the Development
Words: 378 Length: 1 Document Type: Term Paper

Even the success in the Spanish American war of 1898, which turned the U.S.A. into a "young empire" as it received such possessions as Puerto Rico, Guam, Philippines and unlimited control over "independent" Cuba didn't make the U.S.A. A world power, as the world politics until 1918 took place mainly in the Old World. High economical potential, which the U.S.A. acquired, by the beginning of the World War allowed it

20th Century Plays, the Three Sisters Chekhov
Words: 736 Length: 2 Document Type: Essay

20th century plays, The Three sisters Chekhov Happy Days Beckett. The theme essay, "How theatre address modern conditions loss, alienation futility human endeavor?" differences structurally stylistically? Tell realism absurdist plays. Alienation and stasis: Three Sisters by Chekhov and Happy Days by Beckett Both the Russian playwright and short story author Anton Chekhov and the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett are known for their serious plays that some audiences find 'depressing.' However, the

20th Century Humanities or Modernism Is the
Words: 830 Length: 2 Document Type: Term Paper

20th century humanities or modernism is the assumption that the autonomy of the individual is the sole source of meaning and truth. This belief, which stemmed from the application of reason and natural science, led to a perpetual search for unique and novel forms of expression (Keep, McLaughlin, & Parmar). Thus, it is evident that modernism discarded the Renaissance period's interest in the classical tradition and universal meaning, in

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now