Lady Chatterley's Lover

In Lady Chatterley's Lover we see D. H. Lawrence, amidst enough realistic depiction of sex that it caused the book to be banned, trying to portray the unconscious mind. This analysis of Lady Chatterley's Lover will demonstrate the techniques the author uses to portray this intangible organic element of human personality. However, to understand Lawrence's preoccupation with the unconscious mind, we must first understand something about the author and his struggle to develop a "whole" personality, one based on a reconciliation of the superego, ego and id. The image with which D. H. Lawrence most associated was the Phoenix, whose presence rises eternal from its own ashes. Plagued by tuberculosis, complex psychological issues between himself and his mother and wife, and the suppression of his works because of their frank sexual depictions, Lawrence has arisen from the ashes of a premature death at age 44 to represent one of the most influential literary artists of the 20th century. Lawrence's birth occurred in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, on September 11, 1885 and his death in a sanatorium on the French Riviera came on March 2, 1930 (Encarta, 1).

Lawrence was the son of a coal miner who drank to excess and beat his wife and children. This caused him to become deeply attached to his mother, "Lawrence's affections were fixed upon his mother, an almost crippling attachment which is disclosed in Lawrence's best novel, the autobiograp

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ontact. Sir Clifford and Mellors both long for human contact, but Sir Clifford achieves it in a false and unnatural way�he tries to buy or own it. Mellors achieves it sexually by allowing his instincts and authority to share it with others. The unconscious mind is symbolized by sexuality. The more one is in touch with their sexual nature, the healthier one is in their personality. Those who try to repress, oppress, sublimate or otherwise quash the unconscious mind become unbalanced of mind and body. Thus, the crippled Sir Clifford represents a man who has moved away from his natural or animal self, and thus sublimated his sexual power for material and class power. Connie, too, is becoming overwhelmed from loneliness and frustration because by being trapped in an impotent, materially-oriented marriage, she cannot be herself or fulfill her real, i.e., unconscious, desires and needs. Thus, Lawrence equates biology (genetics) and sex with the unconscious. We see this plainly in the sexual encounter in the woods when Connie has her repressed unconscious mind stirred. However, we see becoming aware of the unconscious mind is a systematic process that works in three stages and continuously repeats from Lawrence's point-of-view,

Category: Literature - L