Lady Chatterley's Lover

Connie’s trip removes her from the isolated setting that dominates most of the novel. However, the expansion of the setting does not change her narrow focus, as she spends most of her trip longing for Mellors. This disappointment reveals that Connie did not simply need novelty and change, as many other characters have hinted; if that was the case, the trip would satisfy her, and she might even forget about her lover. Instead, Connie still needs the genuine connection that she has found with Mellors; as she tells Hilda, “you have never known either real tenderness or real sensuality; and if you do know them, with the same person, it makes a great difference” (268). Connie’s certainty that she is going to have a child with Mellors also confirms that they are now bound with an irrevocable bond: this natural and biological tie competes with the legal and social ties that continue to bind Connie and Mellors with their respective spouses.

Those legal and social ties, nonetheless, create significant challenges, especially because Connie craves the social legitimacy of eventually marrying Mellors. Mellors’s first wife Bertha (perhaps not coincidentally also the name of Rochester’s first wife in Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre) creates disruption by being stubborn, assertive, and unwilling to be passive. The distaste displayed towards Bertha becomes an outlet for the social shaming that Connie is largely spared as a result of her privileged class position. The entire village is quickly gossiping about Bertha turning up naked in her husband’s cottage and making a scene. Bertha flouts convention and refuses to go quietly, but her behavior is not really more reckless than Connie’s behavior (indeed, Bertha has a legal claim to the man she is pursuing). Connie breaks rules more discreetly, and with more resources, whereas Bertha causes problems by being outspoken and public. Ironically, Bertha is the woman who technically gets Mellors fired from his position as gamekeeper, whereas Connie seems like the person who posed a greater risk.

Whereas the relationship between Connie and Mellors could be simple when it existed in isolation and secrecy, it becomes complex as it moves into the social world. Their meeting in London reflects the new reality that they now have to move forward in a public way, where their choices will be impacted by other people. Since Mellors has lost his job, they have lost access to the Edenic space of the Wragby woodlands where they could luxuriate in a secret relationship. The influence of Connie’s family also leads to a deception wherein Connie will lie to Clifford about the identity of her lover: Despite Connie’s seeming commitment to following her heart, she initially backs down from freely claiming Mellors as her lover. These plot events reveal that there is no possibility of truly free love in the modern world—as soon as Connie and Mellors come out of seclusion, they have to grapple with social pressures and constraints.

However, Connie eventually does rebel by telling Clifford the truth: “who I really love, and it’ll make you hate me, is Mr. Mellors, who was our gamekeeper here” (315). At the novel’s climax, Connie synthesizes the lessons about authenticity and shamelessness that she has internalized while pursuing her relationship, and tells the truth without fear of consequences. She is not necessarily rewarded for this bravery, since Clifford staunchly refuses to divorce her, but Connie makes a choice to live an honest life, not one governed by polite lies. Connie wants to own who she truly is, and stand up for a controversial relationship even when no one seems to support it.

The novel comes to an ambiguous conclusion, reflecting Modernism’s uncertainty about what the future might hold. Unlike a long tradition of earlier novels depicting adultery or other forms of illicit sexuality, Connie is not fatally punished at the end of the plot. Rather, there is very real hope that she and Mellors will be able to be together in the future, since he reassures her that “[Clifford] will want to get rid of you at last, to cast you out. And if he doesn’t, we’ll manage to keep clear of him” (322). The plot hints that a world may be approaching where women can make their own choices about their lives and sexuality, but hesitates to fully commit to a fully happy ending.

The mood of the novel’s conclusion focuses on a sense of waiting and hopeful expectations; this mood aligns with the attention given throughout to the cycles and rhythms of the natural world. Connie and Mellors begin their relationship in a lush and optimistic springtime setting, and their child is due to arrive in February, just as the subsequent spring will be arriving. In his letter, Mellors portrays the period of their separation as aligned with the restful and ultimately fecund winter season: “I love being chaste now. I love it as the snowdrops love the snow […] and when the real spring comes, when the drawing together comes, then we can fuck the little flame brilliant and yellow” (321). The sexual and romantic relationship between them mirrors seasonal cycles of blossoming and repose, and the novel ends “with a hopeful heart” (322). Given the attention throughout to the possibility of whether meaning can be achieved in a modern, industrial, and post-war world, the plot concludes with the suggestion that authentic connections, including sexuality, are the only way for individuals to revitalize themselves.