We have to confess that, just like Lawrence criticized, we are shameful to talk about sex because we think it is not an honorable thing and we should not mention it all the time. To explore this book, first we have to see what sex in Lawrence’s eyes is. What is sex? Maybe few people would like to talk about it. Let’s see what Lawrence said. Though universally thought Lawrence was influenced by Freud, Lawrence had his own ideas about the nature and the function of sexual love. Lawrence's doctrines of sexual freedom aroused obscenity trials, which are still part of the relationship between literature and society. He saw sex and intuition as a key to undistorted perception of reality and a way unburden individual's frustrations and maladjustment to industrial culture. According to what Lawrence said in one of his essay Sex and Beauty: “sex is an instinct of human nature. Where there is life, there is sex. ……Sex and beauty are the same just like fire and flame. Hatred for sex is hatred for beauty. If you love the beauty that is alive, you respect sex deeply.” (姚暨荣，2006，P126-127)Lawrence thought sex should be respected. In his eyes, sex itself is value; sex is the only healthy power to oppose the morbid modern civilization. In most people’s eyes, sex is only the tool of birth. But Lawrence thought the function of sex is joy, instead of birth.
Ⅳ. The Sexual Love in Lady Chatterley?s Lover
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Lady Chatterley?s Lover was full of over blank descriptions of sexual love. The descriptions of sexual love also aroused debates of whether there was only sexual love between Connie and Mellors or there was still spiritual love. In fact, “Lawrence expressed his idea through Mellors’ mouth that the sexual love of human beings was healthy, natural and beautiful, which had essential difference from the sexual action of animal.”(Liu Yuli, 2003)
Connie already had sexual experience with a German young man when studying in Dresden. But that didn’t give her much impression. Both of them were clear that “love” had gone through them, the physical experience. When she married to Clifford, they only had a month’s honeymoon then Clifford came to the war and came back home impotent. She did not even have time to experience the real meaning of sexual love with her husband. After that, her desire for sexual love was depressed for a long time. Though she had a brief affair with a young visiting playwright, Michaelis, to someway, she was dead inside. She was a walking corpse.
In Chapter 6, P65, there was a scene describing Connie seeing Mellors washing himself half naked by chance:
Yet in some curious way it was a visionary experience: it had hit her in the middle of the body. She saw the clumsy breeches slipping down over the pure, delicate, white loins, the bones showing a little, and the
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scene if aloneness, of a creature purely alone, overwhelmed her. Perfect, white, solitary nudity of a creature that lives alone, and inwardly alone. And beyond that, a certain beauty of a pure creature. Not the stuff of beauty, not even the body of beauty, bur a lambency, the warm, white flame of a single life, revealing itself in contours that one might tough: a body!
This paragraph perfectly described the beauty of a human body. It was praise of human body. Human body was only beautiful when it was in nature. Connie was deeply drowned to Melllors. It was life! Alive! The muscle, the power! Her long-depressed sexual desire was awaken, strongly but unpredictably. Though she did not notice the change inside herself, it did happen silently and continuously. “The momentary sexual desire was unusually for Connie because it was an inspiration of life for the nature of human beings.” (Liu Yuli, 2003)
Mellors, the former subordinate of Clifford, “was a rebel against the industrial civilization. Though born in a lower class family, he was learned. Compared with Clifford, he was a man of strong physique. At the same time, he had experienced much than many people. So he had a deeper acknowledge of the real world.” (蒋家国，2003，P345) He left the army with great disappointment. He knew the great harm that the industrial civilization had done to the society so he didn’t want to serve the authority. He also knew that he could do nothing to help change the
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situation. So he chose to be a gatekeeper. The wood was his private sky. Seldom people could break the quietness. He was isolated from the real world. Nature was his best friend. And he believed in feelings. He thought human beings could gain the most happiness only in the nature. One day, his isolated life was broken by Connie. At first he wanted to be cold to her. But his heart melted when he saw Connie’ tear. Men were easy to be moved by the tear of women. This was the breakthrough of their relationship. On the soldier’s blanket, they had their first sexual experience. It was in Chapter 10, P115-126.
He drew down the thin silk sheath, slowly, carefully, right down and over her feet. Then with a quiver of exquisite pleasure he touched the warm soft body, and touched her navel for a moment in a kiss. And he had to come in to her at once, to enter the peace on earth of her soft, quiescent body. It was the moment of pure peace for him, the entry into
the body of the woman. This paragraph described the scene vividly. The actions, every action that Mellors did, were described so detailed. It also described the feeling of Mellors. It was totally a new experience to him. He had sex with his Ladyship! He enjoyed the sensorial pleasure. But that was all, no other thing. After that, he just went out the hutquietly.
The naked body was so beautiful that Mellors was afraid of damaging the beauty. He touched it so softly and so carefully as if it were an icon.
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“His finger caressed the delicate, warm, secret skin of her waist and hips. He put his face down and rubbed his cheek against her belly and against her thighs again and again.” (Chapter 10, P125) He appreciated it with strong worship. Before him, it was a perfect body. He did love it because the body could bring him the extreme happiness.
Though Connie couldn’t find the beauty of sexual love with Mellors at first, soon she found it under the leading of Mellors. In Chapter 10, P133, one afternoon after Connie visiting Mrs. Flint, she met Mellors on her way back through the wood. In a place where was a little space and a pile of dead boughs, they had sex again. This time both of them came off together:
“He too had bared the front part of his body and she felt his naked flesh against her as he came into her. For a moment he was still inside her, turgid there and quivering. Then as he began to move, in the sudden helpless orgasm, there awoke in her new strange thrills ripping inside her. Ripping, ripping, ripping, like a flapping overlapping of soft flames, soft as feathers, running to points of brilliance, exquisite and melting her all molten inside.” “The voice out of the utmost night, the life! The man heard it beneath him with a kind of awe, as his life sprang out into her.” Mellors was so proud that Connie came off with him this time. For a man, the greatest proud was not he himself enjoyed it, but at the same time he let his lover enjoyed it together.
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