Lady Chatterley's Lover: Analysis of Major Characters
"Lady Chatterley's Lover: Analysis of Major Characters" explores the complex relationships and distinct personalities within D.H. Lawrence's novel. Central to the narrative is Sir Clifford Chatterley, a paralyzed war veteran and wealthy landowner, whose intellectual pursuits and emotional dependence on his wife, Constance (Connie), lead to a growing rift between them. Connie, a woman of artistic and intellectual background, finds herself unfulfilled in her marriage and seeks deeper connections, eventually leading to a transformative affair with Oliver Mellors, the estate's gamekeeper. Mellors, embodying both physical vitality and emotional depth, contrasts sharply with the other male characters, including the superficial playwright Michaelis and the idealistic artist Duncan Forbes. Other characters like Hilda Reid, Connie’s assertive sister, and Ivy Bolton, the Chatterleys’ housekeeper, further add layers to the social dynamics and class tensions depicted in the story. The relationships highlight themes of emotional disconnection, societal expectations, and the quest for authentic human connection amidst the constraints of class and circumstance. This analysis serves as a gateway for readers interested in understanding the intricate character studies that underpin Lawrence's exploration of love, desire, and social critique.
Lady Chatterley's Lover: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: D. H. Lawrence
First published: 1928
Genre: Novel
Locale: The English Midlands, Venice, and London
Plot: Psychological realism
Time: The early 1920's
Sir Clifford Chatterley, the owner of an estate at Wragby in the Midlands of England. He has a considerable income from coal mines that his family has controlled for generations. His father, Sir Geoffrey, Baronet of Wragby, reared him with the expectation that one of his sons would carry on the family tradition of service to England. When Clifford's older brother Herbert is killed in World War I, Clifford is encouraged by his father to marry; after a brief courtship, he marries Constance Reid. A war injury paralyzes the lower half of his body. At the age of twenty-nine, though his physical handicap is devastating, he is a handsome man, with a ruddy face and broad shoulders, and always dresses in expensive clothes. Big and strong, with a quiet, hesitating voice, he is extremely dependent on his wife, who supports his ideas and assists him in the physical functions he can no longer manage by himself. In an effort to make his mark on the world, he attempts to write short fiction and is moderately praised by critics and social commentators. This work proves to be an unsatisfactory outlet for his energies and ambitions. He had studied the technicalities of coal mining in Bonn before the war and now turns his attentions to improving coal production in his mines. Although he describes himself as a “conservative anarchist,” he is interested in the working class only in terms of theoretical speculation and is very much a man of his social background. As he and his wife gradually discover the great gulf between them in terms of intellectual and temperamental matters, Clifford regresses into an almost infantile dependence on Ivy Bolton, his housekeeper; he becomes, pathetically, almost a part of the wheeled machine he uses for transportation. His hopes for an heir and his fear that Connie may leave him permanently lead him to encourage her to have contacts with other men. He sees things in an intellectual, abstract fashion, and this approach to life is instrumental in driving him and his wife apart.
Lady Constance (Connie) Reid Chatterley, Clifford's wife. Brought up in an artistic and intellectual socialist milieu, she was educated on the Continent and had a number of casual love affairs before her marriage to Clifford at the age of twenty-three. In spite of the social refinement of her background, she has the freshness and openness of a country girl and the physical traits of her Scots ancestry, including lustrous light brown hair, a ruddy complexion, a strong, athletic body, and “big, wondering eyes” that express her curiosity about and interest in the world. She has both the intelligence to understand the world and the appetite to enjoy its physical sensations, but both of these qualities have been underused during her marriage. After four years with Clifford, she has “no gleam and sparkle in the flesh” and realizes with horror that she has not had any sexually satisfying encounters for ten years. Her affair with the playwright Michaelis is sterile and isolating because she is unable to make any connection with him beyond the emptiness of his social and intellectual ideas. Although she has been living on a country estate, her contact with the natural world has been reduced and her capacity to respond to its wonders considerably diminished. Her desire to have a child, an impulse she is afraid to acknowledge, is an expression of her need to develop a relationship that is complete, a true marriage. She is not class-bound like her sister. Meeting Mellors begins a process of healing and recovery in which she moves toward a maturity with a consciousness “like a flowering wood.”
Oliver Mellors, the gamekeeper at Wragby, a miner's son of about forty. Sexually active since the age of sixteen, he married a local girl, Bertha Coutts, and then discovered that they were sexually and emotionally mismatched. He studied languages at grammar school and took a job as a clerk, but then he became a blacksmith, hoping to live on a three-hundred-pound legacy with his bride. Their relationship became brutal and cruel, so he enlisted when the war started, just after their only child was born. The army gave him the opportunity to continue his education. When he was sure that his wife had taken up with another man, he left the army and returned to England to work as a gamekeeper. Although weakened by pneumonia while abroad, he is still strong, agile, tall, and wiry; with warm blue eyes and dark hair, he has a figure of “exquisite, delicate manliness,” projecting an image of youthful freshness when at his ease but seeming much older and slightly stooped when tired or worried. In essence, he has become a member of the upper classes in manner and educational background, though he despises the established methods of dealing with business and commerce. He has not divorced his wife because he does not want to mix with the authorities in any way, and he often speaks articulately in the Derby dialect as a gesture of defiance or rebellion, although he has a full command of standard English. His ability to conduct conversations on conceptual matters with real depth is in contrast to the stale intellectualism of the conversations at Wragby among Clifford's acquaintances. He is most comfortable in the natural world, whose subtle beauty he understands and appreciates. Although he claims he is not unhappy to be done with passion for a woman, he is glad of his response to Lady Chatterley. He believes in being warmhearted with other people, but his disappointments have led him to build some formidable defenses. He is a semisocialist but not a subversive, and he is willing to stake everything on love. He recognizes that Connie Chatterley is the first woman who combines all the qualities he admires, and he is willing to risk further pain and disappointment to live with her.
Michaelis (Mick), a minor playwright and family friend of the Chatterleys, with whom Connie has a brief, unsatisfying, and empty affair.
Duncan Forbes, an unmarried modern artist who is enamored of Connie Chatterley. He is something of an idealist who claims kinship with the working class and paints in a modern-ist style. Mellors thinks his work is “cruel and repellent” but respects Forbes's sincerity of commitment. Forbes's spiritual impotence parallels that of Michaelis and limits his possibilities for growth.
Tommy Dukes, a brigadier general in the army and an old friend of Clifford. His contempt for a purely mental existence, his disdain for systematic, coldly rational thinking, and his belief in bodily awareness are ironically undercut by his background and training, which leave him, like other “modern” men, trapped in the intellectualism he criticizes and cut off from the sensory and emotional experiences for which he longs.
Hilda Reid, Constance's sister. Very sure of herself and confident of the rightness of her opinions on everything, she is an attractive woman with “golden, glowing skin” and a “natu-rally strong, warm physique” who has “a very hell of a will of her own.” Her husband is divorcing her, and she is “off” men. She despises Mellors and is blind to his virtues, trapped by preposterous ideas about class status. She is genuinely concerned about her sister and helps to arrange some of the details of Connie's life.
Ivy Bolton, the Chatterleys' housekeeper, widowed in her early twenties when her husband is killed in a mining accident. She thinks all men are “big babies.” She becomes Clifford's nursemaid and then a kind of half mistress and half foster mother to him. She likes contact with the upper classes and knows when to give in to a man. She sympathizes with Connie and provides many of the things Clifford needs, although her attention encourages his regression toward infantilism as well as his industrial ambition.