Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-9q27g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-18T18:25:01.289Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Interpenetrating Metaphor: Nature and Myth in Lady Chatterley's Lover

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

John B. Humma
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Critics generally dismiss Lady Chatterley's Lover as a polemic, preferring to consider its content and ignore its form. Yet Lawrence meticulously shaped his strategy to reinforce his meanings. When we compare Lady Chatterley with earlier Lawrence novels and with the second of the novel's three versions, we discover the novelist using imagery in a way that is new for him. Similes and metaphors from plant, animal, mineral, and human sexual realms blend, or interpenetrate, to give depth and add texture to the novel's central action, Mellors' sexual awakening of Connie. Moreover, Lawrence strategically reshapes scenes from the second version, published as John Thomas and Lady Jane, to enrich the mythic dimensions of the novel. Lawrence's careful orchestrations of the novel's images and of the details of Mellors' character as Green Man produce, finally, a satisfying organic unity.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 98 , Issue 1 , January 1983 , pp. 77 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Curtius, E. R. European Literature and the Middle Ages. Trans. Trask, Willard R. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Davis, Walter R. A Map of Arcadia. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Jackson, Dennis. “The ‘Old Pagan Vision’: Myth and Ritual in Lady Chatterley's Lover.” D. H. Lawrence Review 11 (1978): 260–71.Google Scholar
Lawrence, D. H. Aaron's Rod. London: Heinemann, 1967.Google Scholar
Lawrence, D. H. John Thomas and Lady Jane. New York: Viking, 1972.Google Scholar
Lawrence, D. H. Lady Chatterley's Lover. New York: Grove, 1959.Google Scholar
Lawrence, D. H. Women in Love. New York: Viking, 1960.Google Scholar
Moore, Harry T. D. H. Lawrence: His Life and Works. Rev. ed. New York: Twayne, 1964.Google Scholar
Squires, Michael. “Pastoral Patterns and Pastoral Variants in Lady Chatterley's Lover.” ELH 39 (1972): 129–46.Google Scholar
Widmer, Kingsley. “The Pertinence of Modern Pastoral: The Three Versions of Lady Chatterley's Lover.” Studies in the Novel 5 (1973): 298–313.Google Scholar