Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Nknown for his humor, DH Lawrence thought of Lady Chatterley’s Lover as an important novel about the sanctity of sex. But some of the scenes between Connie and the actor Mellors are funny, either unintentionally (as he decorates naked bodies with flowers) or with a delightfully childish realization: his penis is “disgusting” and sex involves “stupid butt shaking”. Some of the humor still in the book: customs officers confiscating banned copies, large courtrooms, countless skirts and artwork. As Guy Cuthbertson points out in his hilarious book, “It’s not a comic book as such, but somehow, it makes you laugh.”
On the steam railway in Devon, you can ride a carriage called Lady Chatterley. Shoes, blouses, laces, earrings, pens, postcards and saris also bear her name and there have been endless variations of jokes on the theme: Lady Chatterley’s Pullover, Lady Chatterley’s Loofah, Lady Loverley’s Chatter and so on. The book’s prophecies appear everywhere from the hearts of lonely people to the most well-dressed groups. And as John Profumo and David Mellor discovered, if you get caught with your pants down on the subject of sex there may be a joke about the moral decline that followed the removal of the book.
The most controversial came in the same case, in 1960 – Regina v Penguin Books – where Mervyn Griffith-Jones, for the Crown, asked: “Would that be a book you would want your wife or your servants to read?” The 35 defense witnesses, who were graded A to D based on what they were concerned about, were an impressive group, including EM Forster, Rebecca West and the Bishop of Woolwich, and star English teacher Richard Hoggart. The prosecution did not appeal to any authors, although Evelyn Waugh and Enid Blyton favored the ban. To support their verdict, members of the jury spent the week before the trial sitting on the benches at the Old Bailey reading the book, with morning coffee. The judge’s intention was to decide the case but they refused him. Around 400 people lined up outside Foyles in London before the shop opened on its first day of sales. The paper quickly sold 2 million copies.
One of those in court was Sylvia Plath, who bought a copy of the book as a student and, after marrying Ted Hughes, told her writings that she was a woman “with his bodyguard” (Hughes had really wanted to be an actor, as had his brother Gerald). How the book influenced his work and thinking is unclear, but, as Cuthbertson points out, it left its mark on George Orwell’s fiction and on Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm. Philip Larkin thought it was a “great” book (“parts of it made me laugh”) and, while other librarians refused to keep it even after the trial, he organized a special exhibition to celebrate its release.
All kinds of entertainers were drawn to Lady C. Screaming Lord Sutch repeated his words on his pirate radio. David Bowie called the book one of his favorite books and wore red trousers, as Mellors encouraged. Jimmy Edwards decided on Desert Island Discs. The book was told in Mad Men, featured in a song by Tom Lehrer (who called it “philately”), and has drawn everyone from Joanna Lumley to Sylvia “Emmanuelle” Kristel to appear in movie versions. Only Field and Stream magazine failed to share the enthusiasm, finding the book lacking as a guide to gamekeeping.
Deeply English though the events were, with class divisions and industrial problems among its subjects, the book caused controversy around the world. In the US, it was debated in the Senate. In Japan, translator Itō Sei was found guilty of obscenity. In Egypt, King Farouk’s wife used to keep a paper copy next to her bed. My mother did the same, putting it in the bedside cabinet that I sneaked into as a teenager. You may be ridiculed or embarrassed by reading “obscene”. People hid it in brown covers or other good books.
What may offend today’s readers is not the sexism and the use of four-letter words, but Mellors’ problematic and homophobic wisdom. Connie’s anti-Semitism, too: “You’re just a troublemaker with your money like any Jew,” she tells her husband, whose disability also offends him. If Lawrence wanted to emphasize Clifford’s weakness and powerlessness, couldn’t he have done so less than putting him in a wheelchair?
Guy Cuthbertson has been a diligent researcher, spending many hours walking through archives and clippings. He also looked at the judge’s book, which contained abusive language. If he highlights the importance of Kate Millett’s attack on the novel’s phallocentrism, it is because he is making light of things. After all the heavy lifting that went into this book, it’s a great way to go. He has created an interesting history, a Leavisite presentation less committed than the comedy of Ealing Studios.
