Love Machine

 

David Herbert Lawrence

 

David Herbert Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. Wikipedia

Born ; September 11, 1885, Eastwood

Died ; March 2, 1930, Vence

QUOTE

Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law,

and must be plucked where it is found,

and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.

Read more at More Quotes

 

 

Lady Chatterley's Lover

D. H. Lawrence

I was struck at how one could insert Freud and Marx parallel into the text, considering the sexual and class issues in the book. I noticed types or ways of loving and the constraints placed on those relationships.

The novel is a look at what sparks the individuals vitality.

Love and money- the manias (82)

People's agendas and connecting with like minded or kindred spirits

Stifling Manors and Men

Connie notes how the relationship with Clifford, his story telling, thrilled her (11) and later that it is chemical. Although initially there was intimacy (8) later it felt like a void (13), nothingness (41). Out of contact (14).

Connie was raised with art and socialist, political ideals (2). As youg girls for Connie and her sister talking was key to interest in a “boy” (3) later all the talk bothers Connie

“The beautiful pure freedom of a woman was infinitely more wonderful that any sexual love” (3).

“Men insisted on the sex thing like dogs” (3).

Clifford motive for marriage is to produce an heir, complicated by the paralysis war injury. I wonder why he did not use his mouth and hands to pleasure his wife. Probably because sex for Clifford is about procreation otherwise it was not necessary (8).

Clifford had the “defence of privilege” and Connie “suffered from the steady drizzle of resentment that came from the village (9). Connie and Clifford were a different “species” from the colliers ( 9). think Darwin. Marx

“Neither my mind nor will is crippled..and I do not rule with my legs.” (160)

Last night at St. Patrick’s festivity.

An Irish bloke came up to my friend and I and said “we all work and we all drink so we are equal”

Connie resented Clifford's lack of sense of humanity of the colliers. Does not see the individual (160)

The masses are unalterable (159) and can not rule themselves (160).

He views them as objects, a means to and end.

This lack of warmth Clifford exhibited changed Connie’s feelings for him (12) She begins to hate him

Chapter Thirteen - Connie accuses Clifford of taking away the people from their natural life and giving them an industrial horror (159)

The (organic) Connection to the world was lacking (15). Pluck the apple from the tree and you have severed the organic connection (30). living life is an organic connection with all life (30). Mental life is the plucking of the apple (30).

Clifford and Michaelis are interested in the bitch-goddess, Success. (16). Money is the seal and stamp of success (43) and all you need (52) ”capture the bitch goddess by brute means of industrial production ( 91)

Power gives Clifford Life ( 92) he is reborn, The integrated life with Connie had been a brake. (84-85)

Think of scene; the wheelchair chugging up the hill. The failed phallus, the machine is not all powerful, needs strength of whole person to move it. The elite life style is only supported by the working class struggling to eat. Its not a wonder people do rise up in revolution its a wonder that they don’t. Death, arrests are inevitable. Question of risk and courage.

Compassion and Sympathy are confused as feelings of love (18).

Sympathy flowing and recoiling determines our lives (86)

The outsiders intrigue Connie - M & M.

Orgasms called crisis?

Definition
CRISIS
/ˈkraɪsɪs/ Show Spelled [krahy-sis] Show IPA noun, plural cri·ses /-siz/ Show Spelled [-seez] Show IPA , adjective

noun

1. a stage in a sequence of events at which the trend of all future events, especially for better or for worse, is determined; turning point.

2. a condition of instability or danger, as in social, economic, political, or international affairs, leading to a decisive change.

3. a dramatic emotional or circumstantial upheaval in a person's life.

4. Medicine/Medical .

a. the point in the course of a serious disease at which a decisive change occurs, leading either to recovery or to death.

b. the change itself.

5. the point in a play or story at which hostile elements are most tensely opposed to each other

Hopelessness versus Power

Sex a physical conversation (17) versus the life of the mind (27).

Discussion between the men on sex and the mind made me think of Plato's symposium (24-33)

Hammond “ forcing ideas onto life, instincts and feelings = driving ourselves with a formula like a machine (31).

Sex is likened to a cocktail quick, short pleasure (53).

Laura’s comment on Clifford as half man half machine was great!

I can not vibrate in unison with a woman (33), OR OTHER CLASSES OR OTHER RACES ETC... THE OTHER...

The men M &M get mad when Connie does not “go off” with them (45)

the goal = lifelong companionship’s

versus Connections and the integrated life - the habit of being together (37) (47)

natural instinct of decency (36) versus “intellectually I believe in having a good heart” (32)

Connie talks about the bruising of the soul (41) It makes me think of bruised apples, rotten apples. F there is one bad apple in a bag of good apples eventually all the apples will go bad.

Connie feels innocent in comparison to the male brutality (45) Men and woman no longer have “glamour” for one another (47) damn the artificial sex compulsion (48) its all “old and cold” (48)

Connie C. did not like Connie Mellors “the spoilt false little female (50). I think it is representative of Connie’s innocence and privilege. She wants to shed parts of herself to move on to liberation.

Ay Wragby Connie is despondent about family, feelings, hypocrisy (52) lies, lack of honour, (95)

She feels Frayed (52).

Finding Refuge in the Wood

So much talk , talk, talk, the continual rattle of it (63) at Wragy and walls, walls, walls ( 73)

Connie seeks solace with the silence of the trees ( 55).

I sensed Rousseau and Adam and Eve; back to the garden

She stumbles upon the creature alone (55) “white flame of a single life” (56) existence

Mellors solitude is his last freedom in life (74). Sees futility in class and money (123)

The eyes ; windows to the soul

Connie describes Mellors eyes as: smiling, quick, suffering, warmth, wicked, keen

The hut; inside from the cold, individuals between the classes.

Outsiders from the machine of the society.

Individuals alone in the garden/sanctuary

Nakedness; pathetic, unfinished, incomplete (58)

Page 194 -Dancing in rain naked - crossing the threshold of constraints.

Triumph, sudden desire, excitement, charged, movement,

OUT OF THE CLEARING AND DOWN The PATH

She's free and he captures her and brings her into the hut

tender caring between them

Page 193 lines 12-20; strange comments about nakedness and clothing that sound like uniforms by Mellors.

Shift Happens

Connie recognizes how men “defraud woman of their own body” (59) The sense of deep physical injustice burned to her very soul ( 59) a dangerous feeling once it is awakened (60)

questions what she is serving “a cold spirit of vanity...(60) senses low vitality (66)

Think Thoreau

inertia of her inner resentment paralyses her (80)

Lady Bennerly advice is to forget the body, if civilization is any good it will help us forget out bodies (62). Winterslow claims we need to improve our nature and nothing but the spirit is worth having ( 62-63). Connie wants the democracy of touch (63)

Aunt Eva -predicts the collapse of CIVILIZATION(63). Think Genesis

“all the modern lot get their real kick...making mincemat of the old Adam and Eve (191)

“the steam of so much boredom, and discontent and anger out of all the people, just kills the vitality in the air (79)

Cri de Couer

Clifford views Connie’s personal care of him as the intimacy between them (70). She gives it over to a “useful non-entity “ of a woman ( 69) Very judgemental, snobbish.

This detachment release Connie to breath and begin a new phase in her life (71).

For Clifford as well. He and Mrs. Bolton seem to have found companionship-love (84-85)

March the seasonal shift from winter to spring. The natural world is reawakening. “ In the wind of March endless phrases swept through her consciousness (72). The flowers are blooming and budding and so is Connie. She is in the current of her own proper destiny (73). Once fastened now adrift, (73) Think Rousseau on the lake

And alas on her path is a hut and a man alone....

Mellors - untamed, solitary, aloneness, silent, patient, motion and movement of body (contrary to Clifford) more organic and whole, touches Connie’s womb (75)

She is wanting a child and is moved by the new life of the chicks (97). Small yet no fear.

Also with the child; Fearless because defenceless (113) - contrary to Clifford s defence of privilege
Brooding hens give Connie sense of her female forlornness ( 97)

Mellor's is angered by his powerlessness against the self willed female (76) but does not like tameness and clinginess of dog ( 173)

but feeling “the old flame shooting and leaping up in his groins ( 98). sensation, fire, heat, lust, stirrings.... “without knowing” Mellors responds to Connie’s mute forlornness, anguish...(99)

A blind instinctive caress (99)

individual asserts will and instinct (82-83) Thoreau “The lady loves her will” ( 121)

obedience, sexual dream, physical freedom,desire

“give yourself over to absolute pleasure” Rocky Horror Picture Show

now he had taken the woman, now comes pain and doom (102) Think Genesis

Watch out for crazy x-wives - another Bertha - yikes

Mellors judges from past experiences from masses of woman (178)

although he says on page 179 that a relation with a woman is the core of his life

Mellors sees society as a malevolent insane beast (103)

penis stirs like live bird (103)

preserve the tenderness of life, woman and natural riches of desire (103)

Connie sense Mellors void of despair (181)

My favourite scene is page 173-174

Connie is by the fire arming up, Mellors hangs her coat up an brings bread, butter ...

they talk

Mellors

“I believe in being warm hearted (181)

“Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in kindred love (185).