CLIFFORD CHATTERLEY’S SELF DEFENSE MECHANISM
IN D.H. LAWRENCE’S LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER
A Thesis
A Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement For the Bachelor Degree Majoring Literature In English Department, Faculty of Humanities
Diponegoro University
Submitted by : Anggi Andyaningsih
A2B309042
FACULTY OF HUMANITIES
DIPONEGORO UNIVERSITY
SEMARANG
▸ Baca selengkapnya: my brother…….this novel yesterday * reading reads read readed
(2)PRONOUNCEMENT
The writer states truthfully that this thesis is compiled by her without taking the results from other research in any university, both in S-1 degree and in diploma. In addition, the writer ascertains that she does not take the material from other
publications or someone’s work except for the references mentioned in bibliography.
MOTTO AND DEDICATION
“Sesungguhnya segala kesulitan itu pasti ada kemudahan dan jika kamu telah selesai dari sesuatu urusan maka kerjakanlah urusan yang lain dan hanya kepada Allah SWT-lah
hendaknya kamu sekalian berharap”. Qs. Al-Insyiroh 6-8
If you obey all of the rules, you miss all of the fun.
--Katharine Hepburn—
Melanconglah selagi muda!!
Berkelanalah sebelum menikah,jelajahi dunia 1 atau 2 kali sebelum kesulitan bahkan untuk merencanakannya sendiri. Setiap perjalanan akan sangat berharga bagi kehidupan -Anonim-
APPROVAL
Approved by: Advisor,
VALIDATION
This Thesis Certified and Approved
by the Thesis Examination Committee S-1 English Department
Faculty of Humanities, Diponegoro University Day : Thursday
Date : 26 September 2013 Chief Examiner
Dra. Dewi Murni, M.A NIP. 194912071976032001
First Member Second Member
Eta Farmacelia Nurulhady,S.S., M.Hum., M.A Ariya Jati, S.S.,M.A
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Praise to Allah SWT who has given the strength, ability and ways to complete this thesis entitled “Clifford Chatterley’s Self Defense Mechanism in D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover”. The writer would like to extend her gratitude to everyone who has supported her and has contributed to the completion of thesis. She would like to thank:
1. Dr. Agus Maladi Irianto, M.A. as The Dean of Faculty of Humanities, Diponegoro University,
2. Dra. Wiwik Sundari, M.Hum. as The Head of English department, Faculty of Humanities, Diponegoro University,
3. Eta Farmacelia Nurulhady, SS, M.Hum, MA. as the writer’s thesis advisor for her patience and guidance,
4. The writer’s mother, brother and late father for giving the writer support in many aspects and worthy prayers,
5. All the lecturers for teaching and giving the writer knowledge,
6. The writer’s family and colleagues in Dean Office Faculty of Engineering for supporting the writer to finish this thesis,
7. The writer’s fellow students from 2009, especially those in Literature Class, and 8. Bayu Agung Dewanto for his support and his unconditional love.
suggestion, or correction. The writer also hopes this thesis will be useful in both academic and social aspects.
Semarang, September 2013
TABLE OF CONTENT
3.2.1. Personality Structure and Its Dynamic 15
4.2. Analysis of Setting 32
4.3. Analysis of Conflict 38
4.3.1. Internal Conflict 38
4.3.2. External Conflict 40
4.4. Clifford Chatterley’s Self Defense Mechanism 44
4.4.1. Sublimation 48
4.4.2. Denial 51
4.4.3. Regression 54
CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION 58
ABSTRACT
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1. Background of the Study
Literature is an expression of human beings, an experience of life that is written by its author in order to be enjoyed. Novel as a form of literature is also inspired by human’s life. Therefore when people read it, they may experience the real life. Kennedy and Gioia in their book Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry,
Drama and Writing write: “a novel is a book-length story in prose, whose author tries
to create the sense that while we read, we experience actual life” (2007: 275). As novel is inspired by human experience, it is a picture of real life and manner. The readers often find conflicts which also happen in real life while they are reading novel.
easily get hurt. They will feel restlessness and emptiness that may lead to divorce or affairs. The description of unhealthy married is also found in DH Lawrence novel, which is entitled Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
DH Lawrence’s novel is one of the famous works around 1928 (Hoggart, 1960: 1). The way Lawrence describes the existence of The Chatterley family is interesting. Clifford Chatterley is not the main character of this novel; however he has a complex emotion and conflict in his life. Clifford is a good looking man and has everything in his life before the war makes the lower half of his body, from hips down ward, paralyzed forever. The struggle of Clifford Chatterley to overcome the conflicts in his life by doing some defense mechanism is the main point of this study. Therefore this study is entitled Clifford Chatterley’s Self Defense Mechanism in D.H
Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
1.2. Research Problems
1.3. Objectives of the Study
In order to write this study, the writer has a number of purposes to be achieved as the result of the study. The purposes of this study are:
1. To analyze character of Clifford Chatterley and its development;
2. To study the setting of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and its impact on Clifford Chatterley;
3. To analyze conflict happened in Clifford Chatterley’s life;
4. To study Clifford Chatterley’s self defense mechanism to cope with the problem in his life.
1.4. Methods of the Study
This study uses library research to explain the problems. The library research sources are from books. The books provide some data and information to be analyzed as the research object. The theory and information gained from the library research helps this study to analyze and solve the problems found in the analysis of the novel.
Novel is considered as a creative process and has to be analyzed from intrinsic and extrinsic aspect to bring this creative process into a literature. (Nurgiyantoro, 2009: 8-9). This study analyzes the character, setting, conflict and defense mechanism by using a psychological approach. Some literary critics have borrowed concepts from other disciplines, such as the psychological approach to analyze the literature since the era of Aristotle.
literature. Literary critics have borrowed concepts from other disciplines, such as philosophy, history, linguistics, psychology, and anthropology, to analyze imaginative literature more perceptively (Kennedy and Gioia, 2007: 2177).
Some literary critics also believe that the psychological approach helps them to analyze literature. Literature has such profound insight into human nature that the character displays the depth and the complexity of real people.
Psychological approach examines the surface of the literary work, customarily speculates on what lies underneath the text, the unspoken or perhaps the unspeakable memories, motives and fears that covertly shape the work” (Kennedy and Gioia, 2007: 2193).
The psychological approach is needed to interpret the character and the experience portrayed since it can afford many profound clues toward solving literature work (Guerin.et al, 2005: 152). To limit the object, this study uses Freud’s psychoanalytic theory which deals with the mental function and the mental development.
1.5.Organization of the Writing
The writing organization of thesis is divided into five chapters and each chapter is separated into many sub chapters. The chapters are:
Chapter I : Introduction discusses the background of the study, the scope of the study, the purpose of the study, methods of research, and approach, include the writing organizing.
are discussed in this chapter including the synopsis of his novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which is used in this thesis.
Chapter III : Theoretical Framework. The study conveys the nature of intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of the novel. The intrinsic aspects discussed are character, setting and conflict. Meanwhile the extrinsic aspects are Freud’s psychoanalytic theory on self defense mechanism.
Chapter IV : Discussion. The chapter discusses the character of Clifford Chatterley, Constance Reid, Ivy Bolton, setting and conflict in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. This chapter also talks about Clifford’s self defense mechanism
CHAPTER 2
D.H. LAWRENCE AND SYNOPSIS OF LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER
2.1. D.H. Lawrence and Lady Chatterley’s Lover
David Herbert Lawrence, also known as D.H. Lawrence was born at Eastwood, Nottinghamshire as written in his novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1960) in 1885, fourth of the five children of a miner and his middle-class wife. Lawrence was educated at Nottingham High School, to which he obtained a scholarship. He worked as a clerk in a surgical appliance factory and then for four years as a pupil-teacher. After his study at Nottingham University, Lawrence briefly pursued a teaching career.
Lawrence's best known work is Lady Chatterley's Lover, first published privately in Florence in 1928. It tells of the love affair between a wealthy, married woman, and a man who works on her husband's estate. The story’s background is the coal mining in Midland. Lawrence took inspiration for the setting of the novel from Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, where he grew up. Lawrence was intimately familiar with the region of the Nottinghamshire coalfield. The significance of coal in the background to Lawrence's novels cannot be overstressed, when considering his treatment of social class issues.
say openly, honestly and tenderly (Hoggart, 1960: 5). The main subject of Lady
Chatterley's Lover is not the sexual passages that were the subject of such debate but
the search for integrity and wholeness. The key to this integrity is cohesion between the mind and the body for body without mind is brutish; mind without body is a running away from our double being. Lady Chatterley's Lover focuses on the incoherence of living a life that is all mind, which Lawrence saw as particularly true among the young members of the aristocratic classes,
2.2. Synopsis of Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1960’s novel version)
Lady Chatterley's Lover begins by introducing Connie Reid. She was raised as
a cultured bohemian of the upper-middle class, and was introduced to love affairs--intellectual and sexual liaisons--as a teenager. In 1917, at 23, she marries Clifford Chatterley, the scion of an aristocratic line. After a month's honeymoon, he is sent to war, and returns paralyzed from the waist down ward, impotent.
A nurse, Mrs. Bolton, is hired to take care of the handicapped Clifford so that Connie can be more independent, and Clifford falls into a deep dependence on the nurse, his manhood fading into an infantile reliance. Mrs. Bolton influences Clifford and even gives him courage to put interest in coal mining industry. Clifford starts to read again his technical works on coal mining. He studies the government reports and he reads with care the latest things on mining and the chemistry of coal. Then he becomes successful businessman.
Connie has so much time for herself now because she does not need to take care of Clifford. She often walks to the wood in which she meets Oliver Mellors. He works as the gamekeeper on Clifford's estate, newly returned from serving in the army. Connie and Mellors have affair after they meet several times. This is a revelatory and profoundly moving experience for Connie; she begins to adore Mellors. When Connie enjoys her affair with Mellors, Clifford inwardly knows that her wife is having an affair. However Clifford believes that his wife will never leave him since they agree to live the integrated life. The integrated life in Clifford’s mind is living together day to day, the life-long companionship.
Clifford. He begins to behave like a child with Mrs. Bolton. He asks Mrs. Bolton to kiss him and he will lean on Mrs. Bolton’s bosom. Clifford slowly thinks the betrayal of his wife and Clifford asks her to come back. When she comes back, Connie admits to Clifford that she is pregnant with Mellors' baby, but Clifford refuses to give her a divorce. The novel ends with Mellors working on a farm, waiting for his divorce, and Connie living with her sister, also waiting: the hope exists that, in the end, they will be together.
CHAPTER 3
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The aspects which build the novel can be separated into two aspects namely intrinsic and extrinsic aspects. To study the intrinsic aspect, the study has to interpret and analyze the works of literature themselves. Wellek and Warren state that to study the extrinsic aspect of literature is concerning themselves with its setting, its environment and its external causes (1962: 73). To sum up, the intrinsic aspects are the aspects which come from the novel itself whereas the extrinsic aspects come from the outside of the novel.
This chapter is divided into two sub chapters. The first sub chapter is intrinsic aspects which focus on the character, setting and conflict in the novel. The second sub chapter is an extrinsic aspect and the aspect describes the psychological traits which support the analysis of the novel. The theory which is used in analyzing the psychological traits of the novel is Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis.
3.1. Intrinsic Aspect
In literature, intrinsic aspects are the important aspects which consist of character, theme, plot, setting, diction, and point of view. The points which are described in this chapter are the character, setting and conflict.
3.1.1. Character
Character is the persons represented in a dramatic or narrative work, who are interpreted by the reader as being endowed with particular moral, intellectual, and emotional qualities by inferences from what the persons say and their distinctive ways of saying it and from what they do (1999: 32).
Character is considered as the inhabitant of the novel who moves in the imaginary world of the novel.
Character can be classified into static or developing. The static character stays in the same sort of person from the beginning to the end of the story. Developing character undergoes a change in some aspect of character, personality or outlook. “The change may be large or small one, it may be for better or for worse however it is something important.” (Perrine, 1987: 69). The change in developing character makes a great change in the story no matter how small the change is.
The change in developing character has three conditions. These conditions are within the possibilities of the character that make it, sufficiently motivated by circumstances in which the character is placed, and allowed sufficient time for a change (Perrine, 1987: 69). These conditions must meet each other to allow the character to be called as a developing character.
3.1.2. Setting
statement above, the study may conclude that setting is not only place, and time but also the nuance of the story. Setting can give experience to the readers when the readers are reading the story to the fullest.
The settings which are discussed in this study are setting of time, setting of place and setting of society. Setting of time is related to the matter of when the incidents happen in the story.
The problem of when is usually connected to the factual time such as day, month, and year. When the reader begins to read a historical story then they will soon be aware that they are not reading about life in twenty-first century. (Kennedy and Gioia, 2007: 112).
Based on the setting of time, the reader can imagine the situation at the time of the story happens.
Setting of place is related to the matter of where the story takes place. Setting of place directs the location of the event happen in the novel. It includes the physical environment of the story such as a house, a street, a city, a landscape. (Kennedy and Gioia, 2007: 112).
The description of place is important to give the impression to the reader so that the reader can create their own imagination where the story happens.
In fiction, the setting is not only a background, in which it shows where and when the story goes but also the nuance of the story. A novel or even a short story must have happened in such a certain place and time. In the novel, the setting can profoundly affect the character in the story. The author seems to describe a setting to evoke atmosphere.
3.1.3. Conflict
As a work of literature, novel is a portrait of actual life which sometimes contains a clash. “The clash creates a drama in the story. Drama in fiction occurs in any clash of wills, desires, or power.” (Kennedy and Gioia, 2007: 8). This clash is called conflict and it may happen between characters and character against society. The main character may be pitted against something. The conflict may happen when the character is against some other person (man against man), he may be in conflict with some external force such as physical nature, society of fate (man against environment), or he may be in conflict with some elements in his own nature (man against himself) (Perrine, 1987: 42). Therefore the study may conclude that conflict is situation in which a contradiction occurs in a person. This tells the person to decide (not) to do a particular activity.
A character may experience internal and external conflict at the same moment during the story.
3.2. Extrinsic Aspect
The extrinsic aspect deals with all kind of aspects come from the outside of the literature and enrich the existence of the literature work (Warren and Wellek, 1962: 221). The extrinsic aspect can be considered as a part of aspects which build a novel in which it gives an influence to the whole structure of the novel. The novel may be written as the result of the external expression of the author’s unconscious mind. Therefore, this external expression can be analyzed by using psychoanalysis based on Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, which include personality structure and personality dynamics.
3.2.1. Personality Structure and Its Dynamic
According to Freud, the mind is divided into three parts in a different but related way. “The mind is composed of three parts, each with a very different function: the id (das es), the ego (das ich), and the superego (das uber ich).” (Lahey, 1986: 426). The distinction of these areas is certainly not real because the theory is not based on the real body, but it is based on the mind. Freud calls it as “useful aids to understanding” that he invents to help explain things that can be observed (Myers, 1986: 398). This useful aid which was invented by Freud has helped him to explore and analyze human mind.
3.2.1.1. The Id (das Es)
The id is not capable of making decisions on the basis of value or to distinguish the good from the bad. The id is something amoral, not immoral or norms breaking. “Id pours all the energy for the purpose of seeking pleasure without caring whether the pleasure is appropriate or not to display.” (Feist, 2010: 32). The id only exists to have satisfaction without knowing any other reason to be considered.
The id seeks to satisfy its desires in ways which are totally out of touch with reality. The id has no conception whatsoever of reality. The id attempts to satisfy its needs using what Freud calls primary process thinking, by simply forming a wish-fulfilling mental image of the desired objects (Lahey, 1986: 427). The wish-wish-fulfilling mental image is considered as the image which is attempted to fulfill whatever need to be satisfied. The critics use the primary process when a person daydream about eating a plate of chicken steak when someone is hungry or angrily thinking of how he would like to get a revenge on the person who embarrasses him this morning. The primary process satisfies motives through imagination rather than reality.
3.2.1.2. The Ego (das Ich)
The ego is formed because the id has to develop realistic way to satisfy the needs and also avoids troubles caused by selfish and aggressive behavior. The ego operates according to the reality principle. This means that it holds the id until a safe and realistic way has been found to satisfy its needs. As the only one part of the mind which can be related to the world therefore the ego takes on the role of executive or decision maker of personality (Feist, 2010: 33). The ego uses its abilities to manage and control the id and balances its desire against restriction of reality and the superego
The ego has abilities that the id does not have. The ego can distinguish fantasy from reality. The ego can tolerate tensions and create approval through rational thinking. Unlike the id, the ego changes over time with the development of complex function during childhood (Cervone, 2011: 106). Because of its ability to distinguish fantasy from reality, the ego operates by means of a secondary process. This secondary process involves realistic, logical thinking and planning to meet the needs. 3.2.1.3. The Superego (das Uber Ich)
needs or desires to be satisfied immediately, chaos could probably happen in society. Therefore the society creates the superego to control the id and the ego.
Mischel quotes Freud view on the superego as follows:
The long period of childhood, during which the growing human being lives in dependence on his parents, leaves behind it as a precipitate the formation in his ego of a special agency in which parental influence is prolonged. It has received the name of superego. In so far as this prohibitions. The superego is the judge of wrong or right, good or bad in accordance with the standard of parents and also of society since parents are the main agents of society to create the superego. The superego represents the ideal and it seeks perfection because the superego is the standard of the good in society.
The superego forces the ego to consider not only the real but also the ideal. Myers explains that
“as the individual internalizes the morals and values of parents and society, the superego provides booth of our sense of right and wrong and our ideal standards; it strives for perfection and judges our actions with accompanying feelings of guilt or pride.” (Myers, 1986: 398).
A person with strong superego may be continually upright, while the person with weak superego may be self indulgent.
always in conflict (Mischel, 1981: 38). Each of them is seeking the way to meet their role. The id wants to meet the needs or desires while the superego is controlling the ego so that the ego can find the right way to fulfill the id’s desire without causing any troubles or chaos in society.
The conflict between these three divisions of physic structure causes tensions or anxiety. Based on Sumardi Suryabrata (2003: 141), personality develops in connection with some source of tensions such as the development of physiological process, frustration, conflict and impendence. Anxiety is the result of painful tensions and the human beings seek the way to reduce it. When anxiety cannot be handled by realistic methods, the human beings seek the unrealistic defense. In this condition the ego acts looking for the way to reduce anxiety by doing self defense mechanism. 3.2.2. Self Defense Mechanism
Freud states that defense mechanism is a strategy which is used by individual to defend against the id and oppose the superego. The ego reacts to the danger caused by the id in two ways; they are fortifying impulse so it cannot be conscious behavior and deflecting impulse so that the original intensity can be attenuated (Alwisol, 2011: 22). By doing these ways, the ego finds the solution to overcome the tension and danger.
Sublimation is therefore socially adaptive (Myers, 1986: 400). Sublimation is particularly significant in the development of culture. The objective of sublimation is clearly articulated through the creative cultural achievement such as art, music and literature. In most people, sublimation directly mixes to produce a balance between the achievement of social and personal enjoyment. Sublimation is the only self defense mechanism that can be accepted by society.
Some of the people in society had received their achievement as a result of sublimation process. Freud believes that all the cultural and economic achievements of society were the result of sublimation (Lahey, 1986: 430). The person who sublimates his id energy is going to be able to fit the society. They are considered as successful people and deserved to be followed.
problem. Denial eliminates the danger from outside by disowning or assuming that there is no danger.
The denial of the reality can be seen when the person says or assumes by saying something will never happen to her/him although there is a clear evidence of the incident. Denial may give temporary composure from the emotional trauma and help people to avoid anxiety or excessive depression. Cervone believes that denial can be adaptive where the individual cannot do something like when someone has a fatal disease yet it may be maladaptive when denial prevent someone from taking constructive steps to address the situation that can be changed (2011, 112). Denial may be the primitive way of self defense mechanism but people can be exhausted if they keep denying.
CHAPTER 4
DISCUSSION
4.1. Analysis of Character
4.1.1. Clifford Chatterley
Clifford Chatterley grows up in the rich family. His family is an aristocrat because her father, Sir Geoffrey, is a baronet and his mother is a viscount’s daughter. Growing up in the rich family, he is used to behave selfish and stubborn. He is aware of his position of the heir of the Chatterley, moreover his brother, Herbert Chatterley, died because of the war. He is used to live with the power over the lower class.
He is a young man in her twenty two when he meets his future wife, Constance Reid or Connie. Young Clifford Chatterley is handsome and well-bred man.
“He remained strange and bright and cheerful, almost, one might say, chirpy, with his ruddy, healthy-looking face, and his pale-blue, challenging bright eyes. His shoulders were broad and strong, his hands were very strong.” (Lawrence, 1960: 6).
Clifford, Herbert and their sister Emma live isolated in Wragby. They live isolated from the surrounding environment due to the remote location of Wragby. They are also isolated from another upper class because their father is an introvert.
The Chatterleys, two brothers and a sister, had lived curiously isolated, shut in with one another at Wragby, in spite of all their connexions. A sense of isolation intensified the family tie, a sense of the weakness of their position, a sense of defencelessness, in spite of, or because of, the title and the land. They were cut off from those industrial Midlands in which they passed their lives. And they were cut off from their own class by the brooding, obstinate, shut-up nature of Sir Geoffrey, their father. (Lawrence, 1960: 12)
The Chatterleys are cut off from the Midlands in which they spend their lives. The ways they live in Wragby build Clifford personality. The three of them said that they will live together. However, Herbert has died and his father wants Clifford to marry and present a heir to the Chatterley.
He marries to Constance Reid and has a month honeymoon before Clifford goes back to Flanders. He fights for English Army. His handling for life is amazing, he is shipped back home smashed after six months. He remained in doctor’s hand for two years before he is pronounced a cure. He can return to life again with the lower half of his body paralyzed forever. He is crippled and knowing that he will never have children then he comes back to Wragby, the Chatterley place. He lives with his wife.
expensively dressed, and wore handsome neckties from Bond Street.” (Lawrence, 1960: 6). He does not disable completely since he has wheeled chair and bath-chair with motor so he can motor himself around the garden.
Being paralyzed and suffering for a long time leaves a great shock in Clifford’s life even though he looks healthy with his bright eyes. Some people may say that they see watchful look, seems to be emptiness of being crippled. He may be proud of being alive however he has been hurt so much that something in his heart is vanished. Clifford is self conscious about how lame he is now. He really hates when people, except his wife and personal servants, sees him for being in wheeled chair. He still looks so smart and impressive from the top. However, when he speaks, his voice reveals his nature.
But Clifford was really extremely shy and self-conscious now he was lamed. He hated seeing anyone except just the personal servants. For he had to sit in a wheeled chair or a sort of bath-chair. Nevertheless he was just as carefully dressed as ever, by his expensive tailors, and he wore the careful Bond Street neckties just as before, and from the top he looked just as smart and impressive as ever. He had never been one of the modern ladylike young men: rather bucolic even, with his ruddy face and broad shoulders. But his very quiet, hesitating voice, and his eyes, at the same time bold and frightened, assured and uncertain, revealed his nature. His manner was often offensively supercilious, and then again modest and self-effacing, almost tremulous (Lawrence, 1960: 16)
his wife beside him to make sure his existence no matter how big and strong he is. just a negation of human contact. (Lawrence, 1960: 16-17)
Although his wife is an upper class, Clifford is more upper class than her. “Clifford Chatterley was more upper-class than Connie. Connie was well-to-do intelligentsia, but he was aristocracy. Not the big sort, but still it. His father was a baronet, and his mother had been a viscount's daughter.” (Lawrence, 1960: 10).
It is his nature, a man of his own class, to be supercilious and arrogant to everyone not in his class. He sees his own men as an object not a human, a part of the pit rather than part of his life. He stands his ground to control people in lower class with his power.
After a while Clifford is no longer a handsome and well built man. When Hilda, Connie’s sister, meets him to talk about Connie’s condition, Clifford sat square in his chair, his hair is sleek and his expression is unfathomable. Hilda thinks that he is sulky and stupid.
“He sat square and well-groomed in his chair, his hair sleek and blond, and his face fresh, his blue eyes pale, and a little prominent, his expression inscrutable, but well-bred. Hilda thought it sulky and stupid, and he waited.” (Lawrence, 1960: 79).
Hilda never thinks that her sister’s husband has changed into the stupid and sulky man.
Hilda is not the only one who knows that Clifford has changed. Connie also feels that something has changed from Clifford especially since Mrs. Bolton came to Wragby. Clifford becomes a little vulgar, uncommon and rather fat. “To Connie, Clifford seemed to be coming out in his true colours: a little vulgar, a little common, and uninspired; rather fat.” (Lawrence, 1960: 103). Moreover, under Mrs. Bolton’s influence, he begins to have a new interest in the mines. Clifford starts to realize the distinction between popular success and working success. He has already gotten the popular success by writing stories and now he wants to get the working success. Clifford is tempted to fight in the other way of success in industrial production.
world. He presents the world the result of his mind because he can gain more power to preserve his position. Clifford’s development is also caused by the influence of his nurse, Mrs. Bolton. She encourages Clifford by telling him the stories about Tevershall in England in which these stories put a new interest in Clifford’s mind. 4.1.2. Constance Reid
Constance Reid is also known as Connie in Lawrence’s novel. She is Clifford’s wife. She is a girl with big, wondering eyes and soft voice. She looks like a country girl with soft brown hair.
“Constance, his wife, was a ruddy, country-looking girl with soft brown hair and sturdy body, and slow movements, full of unusual energy. She had big, wondering eyes, and a soft mild voice, and seemed just to have come from her native village.” (Lawrence, 1960: 6).
She comes from an upper middle class noble family. Her father is Sir Malcolm Reid, a Scottish noble man.
Young Connie and her sister, Hilda, had gone to many countries in Europe to study. Both of them has extensive social and involved in various activities such as music, socializing, debate and they discuss some kind of social, cultural and philosophical relations with some men.
matters, they were just as good as the men themselves: only better, since they were women. (Lawrence, 1960: 6)
Their life in Europe has placed them in the same position as equal as a man. During their life in Europe, both sisters also have love relationship with their beloved men. They love to be with a man who can have some discussion with. Sometimes they argue about social and cultural problems.
After marrying Clifford and becoming Lady Chatterley, her physical appearance has changed. Looking at her body in mirror, she knows that her body which looks fresh and young has become thin and unattractive.
Instead of ripening its firm, down-running curves, her body was flattening and going a little harsh. It was as if it had not had enough sun and warmth; it was a little greyish and sapless. … Her breasts were rather small, and dropping pear-shaped. But they were unripe, a little bitter, without meaning hanging there. And her belly had lost the fresh, round gleam it had had when she was young, in the days of her German boy, who really loved her physically. Then it was young and expectant, with a real look of its own. Now it was going slack, and a little flat, thinner, but with a slack thinness. Her thighs, too, they used to look so quick and glimpsy in their female roundness, somehow they too were going flat, slack, meaningless. (Lawrence. 1960: 73)
life of the mind. Moreover the monotonous life she have in Wragby makes her suffer more and she does nothing about her monotonous life.
Connie realizes, however, that her body is fresh and flushed when she finds her happiness from her relationship with Mellors. Mellors is a Tevershall man and Clifford’s game keeper. Her psychological condition gets better after her affair with Mellors. She is no longer passive but she becomes active to begin her life. She also starts to leave her sister domination in her life.
“She had always let herself be dominated by her elder sister. Now, though somewhere inside herself she was weeping, she was free of the dominion of other women. Ah! that in itself was a relief, like being given another life: to be free of the strange dominion and obsession of other women.” (Lawrence, 1960: 264).
She finally realizes what she really wants for her life. She wants to live and raise a family with the man she loves, Mellors.
Connie’s presence in Clifford’s life has given so much influence. Connie is the person who gives him a spirit to live. She gives him support and spirit to write some stories. Clifford talks everything over with her and she has to response with all her might. Connie’s support means a lot in writing his stories. His writing success is considered as one of the self defense mechanism which is performed in his life. 4.1.3. Ivy Bolton
in her rather pale cheek. She was forty-seven.” (Lawrence, 1960:82). Her husband, Ted Bolton, is a collier who was killed in an explosion in the mines. After the death of her husband, she starts to take a nursing course and gets qualified. She enjoys her life as a nurse for the lower class.
Mrs. Bolton is a new voice in Wragby but she gives different atmosphere by her coming to Wragby. As a lower class she is thrilled by studying and learning what the upper class do, all what makes them upper class, apart from the money. She practices how to type and Clifford will dictate a letter to her. Clifford is amazingly patient to spell the difficult words to her. He even teaches her chess, he is educating her and he enjoys it since it gives him a sense of power. Mrs. Bolton and Clifford often spend the time after dinner together to play chess. Mrs. Bolton even has a strong influence on Clifford. It is Mrs. Bolton who encourages Clifford to manage his coal mining, which is inherited from his father. “But under Mrs Bolton's influence, Clifford was tempted to enter this other fight, to capture the bitch-goddess by brute means of industrial production.” (Lawrence, 1960: 111). Mrs. Bolton makes him a man. She makes her position almost equal to him since her success of making him come back to industrial production.
been able to pass his terrible shocked after his wife leaves him. She declares that she is the person who makes Clifford a real businessman man.
Connie and Mrs. Bolton are the people who contribute a lot in Clifford’s life. He is attached to Connie’s presence because her presence makes him comfortable. He does not feel like a lost person when Connie stays with him. He needs her to assure him that he exists at all. Connie makes him conscious of his own self. Meanwhile Mrs. Bolton gives him the courage which he does not get from Connie. Mrs. Bolton makes him aware of the outside thing.
4.2. Analysis of Setting
Lady Chatterley’s Lover is set during Post World War I. Clifford and
Connie’s youth life is before the war. They get married in 1917, when the war is still going on. The condition after the war is difficult and depress. People have to struggle to bring up back their life after the war.
Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen. (Lawrence, 1960: 5)
In 1920, Clifford and Connie come back to Wragby. They start their married life in Wragby when Clifford is thirty one and Connie is twenty five. “This was in 1920. They returned, Clifford and Constance, to his home, Wragby Hall, the family 'seat'.” (Lawrence, 1960: 5). Clifford lives in Wragby with Connie since her brother and father had died, her sister, Emma, left home to stay in London. Emma left home because she disagreed with Clifford’s married.
It is two years later when Connie realizes that she lives monotonous life in Wragby. She is twenty seven. Connie feels that her life is boring and not exciting. “What hope was there? She was old, old at twenty-seven, with no gleam and sparkle in the flesh.” (Lawrence, 1960: 72). She feels insecure about her condition. Her life with Clifford that he said integrated life is meaningless. The length of the year in which Connie and Clifford live their youth life until the day Connie left Clifford is about ten years. During that ten years there are a lot of important thing happen in their married life.
Besides setting of time, setting of place is also important discussion in the study. The novel mostly takes place in Wragby and Tevershall, England. Wragby is an old house where the Chatterley lives since the eighteenth century. It is a long low old house in brown stone and located in fine old park of oak trees.
This house is big and there are a lot of rooms that nobody used. The house is cold, old and boring. Everything in the house goes on in pretty good order, strict cleanliness. Connie describes Wragby as a dreary place.
The atmosphere around Wragby is awful. The air smells sulfur, iron and coal from the Tevershall pit. When people stay inside of a room in Wragby, they can hear the rattle of the screens at the pit, the engine and the locomotives. Wragby is always gloomy as if something cheerful and bright cannot be found. Meanwhile Tevershall is as dreary as Wragby.
Tevershall is a village started from a park gate until some miles in the hills. The houses are described as brick houses with black slate roofs for lids. When the wind is that way, the houses are full of the stench of sulfur. The Tevershall pit chimney with its cloud of steam and smoke can be seen from Wragby. Tevershall is described as an ugly mining village.
… the long squalid straggle of Tevershall, the blackened brick dwellings, the black slate roofs glistening their sharp edges, the mud black with coal-dust, the pavements wet and black. It was as if dismalness had soaked through and through everything. The utter negation of natural beauty, the utter negation of the gladness of life, the utter absence of the instinct for shapely beauty which every bird and beast has, the utter death of the human intuitive faculty was appalling. The stacks of soap in the grocers' shops, the rhubarb and lemons in the greengrocers! The awful hats in the milliners! all went by ugly, ugly, ugly. (Lawrence, 1960: 138)
the people who lives in the house are the upper class and Tevershall people are the lower class.
This awful atmosphere in Wragby and Tevershall more or less has influenced the people living around there, including Clifford, although he professes to like Wragby better than London. The people are haggard, dreary and unfriendly. There seems to have a gap between the miners and the Chatterleys. With no communication between the Chatterleys and the people live in Tevershall village, the atmosphere is rather awkward. Once when Clifford walks through Tevershall the miners are only staring, the tradesmen awkwardly lift their caps and nod. Clifford just leaves them alone without even looking at them.
revolution which took place from eighteenth to nineteenth century. There are bourgeois and working class. The bourgeois means those who own the means of production, the factories and the lands while the working class means those who perform the labor necessary to extract something valuable from the means of production. The bourgeois class in the novel refers to the upper class and the working class refers to the lower class. By performing this distinction, Clifford Chatterley belongs to the upper class.
The social structure which consists of upper class and lower class is seen in everyday life in Wragby. When Clifford decided to hire Mrs. Bolton, a woman from lower class, he is aware of his class position. Mrs. Bolton is shy, rather frightened and quite. Clifford likes that and he recovers his self possession, he soon becomes rather superb, lordly with his nurse. He lets her do things without even noticing her.
“When he had to deal with them, Clifford was rather haughty and contemptuous; one could no longer afford to be friendly. In fact he was altogether rather supercilious and contemptuous of anyone not in his own class.” (Lawrence, 1960: 16).
him, and he was made a lieutenant”. (Lawrence, 1960, 95). This position put Mellors in the middle class. Clifford thinks that Mellors gets his position unreasonably. Therefore Clifford thinks that it is natural for someone like Mellors comes back to his own class when he works as a game keeper for Clifford.
'I think he's quite a nice fellow, but I know very little about him. He only came out of the army last year, less than a year ago. From India, I rather think. He may have picked up certain tricks out there, perhaps he was an officer's servant, and improved on his position. Some of the men were like that. But it does them no good, they have to fall back into their old places when they get home again.' (Lawrence, 1960: 71)
The way Clifford responses to Mellors’s past shows that he never acknowledges the lower class raise their position as the same as him.
The behavior of the upper class towards lower class refers to the appreciation of the lower class towards the upper class. The lower class cannot appreciate the upper class who is always proud of their power. This pride can be seen from Clifford’s statement:
“'Nothing quite so lovely as an English spring.' 'I can do my share of ruling.' 'What we need to take up now is whips, not swords. ''The ruling classes!'” (Lawrence, 1960: 197).
This point of view distinguishes the difference between the ruling class and the serving class.
and the difference condition between Wargby and Tevershall. The setting contributes in the way Clifford develop his slef defense mechanism.
4.3. Analysis of Conflict
4.3.1. Internal Conflict
Clifford Chatterley may experience the internal conflict due to the series of incident or event. The internal conflict occurs in Clifford’s life is when he has to decide to hire nurse and let her take care of his personal matter which should be taken by his wife or his wife’s family will take her away from him. This can be shown from the conversation between Hilda and Clifford below.
'And here are the addresses of two women; I saw one of them, she would do very well; a woman of about fifty, quiet, strong, kind, and in her way cultured...'
Clifford only sulked, and would not answer.
'Very well, Clifford. If we don't settle something by to-morrow, I shall telegraph to Father, and we shall take Connie away.'
'Will Connie go?' asked Clifford.
'She doesn't want to, but she knows she must. Mother died of cancer, brought on by fretting. We're not running any risks.' (Chapter 7, 82) Clifford, however, inside himself, never quite forgave Connie for giving up her personal care of him to a strange hired woman. It killed, he said to himself, the real flower of the intimacy between him and her. (Lawrence, 1960: 85)
two years when he gets severe injuries from the war. He does not want to repeat the same experience because he never thinks that he is a disabled person.
What is difficult a decision since the time when Connie takes care of his personal care is considered as the intimacy between Connie and Clifford. Clifford feels that he will never forgive Connie for letting a strange hired woman to take care of his personal care. Clifford believes that the long living together and doing the same habit of intimacy is better than having sex. Clifford calls this as an integrated life. However, Connie does not completely agree with Clifford’s point of view about married life.
Clifford’s decision, however, soon influences all his life. Mrs. Bolton, his nurse, gives him a lot of influence and courage from the beginning. Mrs. Bolton almost does everything for him and he feels more at home with her than with Connie. Mrs. Bolton puts a new interest of industrial production in Clifford’s life. He starts to come to his coal mining and he wants to make Tevershall come back to its golden time. He plans to use a new concentrated fuel which is burnt in small quantities at a great heat to increase the production of his coal mining. It is all her courage that Clifford can be a successful businessman.
“He was afraid. And Connie could keep the fear off him, if she would. But it was obvious she wouldn't, she wouldn't. She was callous, cold and callous to all that he did for her. He gave up his life for her, and she was callous to him. She only wanted her own way. 'The lady loves her will.'” (Lawrence, 1960: 145).
Clifford feels uneasy and uncomfortable with Connie, however he needs her to stay by his side. Clifford hides his uncomfortable feeling because he needs her presence in his life. Clifford has been dependent to Connie’s presence.
The internal conflict which happens in Clifford’s life contributes to his self defense mechanism. Clifford’s dependence towards Connie makes him believes that he has to make Connie stays with him even though their relationship is without love. Clifford makes Connie agrees with his concept of married life. This agreement has become a reason to deny the reality that Connie may leave him.
4.3.2. External Conflict
Clifford experiences not only internal conflict but also external conflict. This external conflict somehow occurs because of his arrogant and stubborn behavior as an upper class who rules the lower class. The external conflict happens when he wants to go to the wood with Connie and they have some arguments because the motor in the wheeled chair is broken. Clifford stubbornly tries to run the motor of his chair on the way up the hills. He rejects Connie’s help to push the chair and also rejects to call Mellor for a help.
'We'll let her breathe,' said Clifford. 'Do you mind putting a scotch under the wheel?'
Connie found a stone, and they waited. After a while Clifford started his motor again, then set the chair in motion. It struggled and faltered like a sick thing, with curious noises.
'Let me push!' said Connie, coming up behind.
'No! Don't push!' he said angrily. 'What's the good of the damned thing, if it has to be pushed! Put the stone under!' (Lawrence, 1960: 194)
Connie insists Clifford that she should push the chair however Clifford keeps saying no. They are arguing whether she should push the chair or sound the horn. Clifford feels that he can solve his chair’s problem by himself. He does not need any help. He does not want the other people saw him that he needs help. Clifford wants to show that he already has the wheeled chair as a substitute for her legs. This is his nature as the upper class that he does not need the lower class to help him or depends on them. He yells at Connie and then Clifford pushes the horn stridently. He is angry. This can be seen in the conversation between Connie and Clifford below.
When Mellors comes to help Clifford, he snaps Mellors. Clifford tells him to see whether he knows about motors and ask him to see anything broken under his chair. Mellors does not see anything broken with the motor so he suggests Clifford to run the motor a bit hard and give it a push. Clifford snaps him to keep off, not to push it. They argue whether the motor will make it or not. The chair runs only for a while, and then it is broken. Clifford needs someone to push the chair if he wants to move.
Mellors helps Clifford to push the chair to the home. He needs to heave the back of the chair to loosen the wheel because the brake is jammed. He pushes Clifford’s chair and he looks pale because of the exhaustion. Connie never sees him paler as this. They rest a bit at the top of the hills. They make it to the house with the sweat from their faces. Clifford says his thank to Mellors and asks him to have a meal in the kitchen however Mellors refuses it saying that he will go to his mother for dinner. Connie cannot help to realize that she has consciously and definitely hated Clifford for what he does to Mellors.
This argument continues to be serious since Connie speaks out her anger to Clifford.
'And your nasty, sterile want of common sympathy is in the worst taste
imaginable. NOBLESSE OBLIGE! You and your ruling class!'
'And to what should it oblige me? To have a lot of unnecessary emotions
'My game-keeper to boot, and I pay him two pounds a week and give him a house.' (Lawrence, 1960: 201)
Connie cannot restrain her anger for Clifford’s behavior towards Mellors. He does not think that his behavior is wrong since he has paid Mellors as his game keeper. Mellors works for Clifford therefore he can do anything to him. He is a ruling class and it is his right to rule them. He has paid Mellors for his service. Connie who already has no interest in the ruling class disagrees with Clifford’s behavior. She yells at Clifford.
'You, and RULE!' she said. 'You don't rule, don't flatter yourself. You have only got more than your share of the money, and make people work for you for two pounds a week, or threaten them with starvation. Rule!
What do you give forth of rule? Why, you're dried up! You only bully with your money, like any Jew or any Schieber!'
'You are very elegant in your speech, Lady Chatterley!'
'I assure you, you were very elegant altogether out there in the wood. I was utterly ashamed of you. Why, my father is ten times the human being you are: you GENTLEMAN!' (Lawrence, 1960: 202)
From the conversation above, Connie shows her disagreement towards the ruling class. In Connie’s point of view, the ruling class does not have anything that should be owned by the ruler.
“What was the point, when even the smartest aristocrats had really nothing positive of their own to hold, and their rule was really a farce, not rule at all? What was the point? It was all cold nonsense.” (Lawrence, 1960: 74).
Starting from this argument, Connie feels that she does not fit with the upper class. She would like to throw away her title as Lady Chatterley. She does not know what the benefit of her sacrifice, her devoted life to Clifford. For her, this does not make any sense to behave so cold and rude towards the lower class.
The external conflict in Clifford’s life partakes in his self defense mechanism. His argument with Connie loosens his relationship with her. He becomes more dependent towards Mrs. Bolton. From his dependence, he can develop his life as a successful businessman.
4.4. Clifford Chatterley’s Self Defense Mechanism
The married life between Connie and Clifford is based on Clifford’s married concept. The married life in his mind is to live together for the rest of the life. By living together, they can live the integrated life even without sex. Clifford believes that they have the habit which is important than any other excitement.
“You and I are married, no matter what happens to us. We have the habit of each other. And habit, to my thinking, is more vital than any occasional excitement.” (Lawrence, 1960: 46).
Clifford always thinks that the intimacy is the secret of the married and he tries to convince Connie.
“But you do agree with me, don't you, that the casual sex thing is nothing, compared to the long life lived together? Don't you think one can just subordinate the sex thing to the necessities of a long life? Just use it, since that's what we're driven to?” (Lawrence, 1960: 46-47).
The integrated life that Clifford said does not fit Connie. She starts to feel the emptiness in the relationship between them. Connie does not have any other activities except accompanying Clifford from day to day.
Vaguely she knew herself that she was going to pieces in some way. Vaguely she knew she was out of connexion: she had lost touch with the substantial and vital world. Only Clifford and his books, which did not exist...which had nothing in them! Void to void. Vaguely she knew. But it was like beating her head against a stone. (Lawrence, 1960: 21).
The months that she passes while living in Wragby with Clifford are really depressing. It is the months of suffering and patience. She is afraid of Clifford and his thought.
It was two years after they lived together in Wragby that Connie starts to realize her condition. She feels restlessness. She feels out of connection because of the way they live in Wragby. She becomes thinner, and she wants to run away from everything she has in Wragby.
“Connie was aware, however, of a growing restlessness. …. It made her heart beat violently for no reason. And she was getting thinner. It was just restlessness. She would rush off across the park, abandon Clifford, and lie prone in the bracken. To get away from the house...she must get away from the house and everybody. (Lawrence, 1960: 21)
She runs away from Wrabgy to the wood, the place where she can be alone. Her ego cannot do anything because her superego wants her to accept her condition.
in her life. She misses the warmth so much. The changes are not only physical but also emotional. Connie emotionally feels that she is older that she should be.
Now it was going slack, and a little flat, thinner, but with a slack thinness. Her thighs, too, they used to look so quick and glimpsy in their female roundness, somehow they too were going flat, slack, meaningless. Her body was going meaningless, going dull and opaque, so much insignificant substance. It made her feel immensely depressed and hopeless. What hope was there? She was old, old at twenty-seven, with no gleam and sparkle in the flesh.(Lawrence, 1960: 72)
All she needs is the physical contact and it is something that she cannot get from Clifford. Their relationship now is not mutual feeling. Connie feels that she gives everything he needs; he gets everything he needs from her. On the other hand, Connie cannot get what she needs because Clifford is impotent. The only thing that Clifford gives to her is a social status as a Lady Chatterley.
47). As long as Connie stays as her wife in Wragby, Clifford welcomes the child. The child will be his child and inherits Wragby as a Chatterley. Connie is shocked and confused at the same time about how Clifford can ask her to have a child from another man that she does not even love. As for love affair, she still could understand, but having a child is seriously considered by Connie. She wants to have a child from the man she loves. The only thing that is in Clifford’s mind is that this child is the heir of the Chatterley. Therefore a baby is just a possession, a thing that he can be possessed.
'It would almost be a good thing if you had a child by another man, he said. 'If we brought it up at Wragby, it would belong to us and to the place. I don't believe very intensely in fatherhood. If we had the child to rear, it would be our own, and it would carry on. Don't you think it's worth considering?' Connie looked up at him at last. The child, her child, was just an 'it' to him. It...it...it! (Lawrence, 1960: 45)
Clifford never considers Connie’s feeling. He just performs the relationship efficiently. The relationship will never get his heart.
4.4.1. Sublimation
Clifford is an aristocrat with high and arrogant manner toward people who are not in his class. Although he is paralyzed because of the war, he is still ambitious. He wants to satisfy his sexual desire and also confirm his existence. Clifford truly understands that he cannot fulfill Connie’s sexual needs. This condition makes him feel that he is not perfect to Connie. In order to cover his imperfection, he turns his sexual desire into something that he can be proud of. Then he writes stories, personal stories about the people he had known before. “He had taken to writing stories; curious, very personal stories about people he had known.” (Lawrence, 1960, 17). His writing is considered as a successful writing and he gets praised. His story is also published in the magazines.
“Clifford was almost morbidly sensitive about these stories. He wanted everyone to think them good, of the best, ne plus ultra. They appeared in the most modern magazines, and were praised and blamed as usual.” (Lawrence, 1960: 17).
He is proud of his works and his new status as a writer.
Wragby. They come to Wragby to talk about his stories, to praise him. Some of them are invited by Clifford.
“Clifford had quite a number of friends, acquaintances really, and he invited them to Wragby. He invited all sorts of people, critics and writers, people who would help to praise his books. And they were flattered at being asked to Wragby, and they praised.” (Lawrence, 1960: 20).
The people who are invited by Clifford are flattered. They are flattered because they get invited by an upper class man. Clifford strengthens his existence and also satisfies his desire.
Besides writing stories, Clifford releases his desire by inviting some of his friends. As an upper class, he must have some friends who have the same point of view as he does. “There were a few regular men, constants; men who had been at Cambridge with Clifford.” (Lawrence, 1960: 32). He can invite them to have conversation about modern life. Clifford and their friends are considered as the young intellectual of the day. They believe in the life of the mind. By inviting them to Wragby, Clifford feels that he is not the only person who thinks that sex is not the important thing in life. He feels the same as them that glorifies the mind.
mining engineering. Clifford is under the influence of Mrs. Bolton who makes him read the technical works of coal mining industry. His id needs to be satisfied .He is a crippled man who has power to rule the lower class. By having great power, he devotes his sexual desire to control other people.
His ego starts to find solution to fulfill his hunger for power. He rouses himself to go to the mines and goes down to the tub. He is interested in the technicalities of coal mining industry now and he wants to put Tevershall out of the hole. Therefore, he goes to the mines day after day and has the managers, the engineers under his order.
“He went down to the pit day after day, he studied, he put the general manager, and the overhead manager, and the underground manager, and the engineers.” (Lawrence, 1960: 112).
He feels it, the sense of power overflowing his body, the power over all of his workers, colliers. He feels the power and re born.
Power! He felt a new sense of power flowing through him: power over all these men over the hundreds and hundreds of colliers. He was finding out: and he was getting things into his grip.
And he seemed verily to be re-born. NOW life came into him!
It gave him a sense of power, power. He was doing something: and he was GOING to do something. He was going to win, to win: not as he had won with his stories, mere publicity, amid a whole sapping of energy and malice. But a man's victory. (Chapter 9, 112)
He studies and puts all his effort into coal mining industry. He makes it; he is the real business man, sharp and reliable.
“This perverted child-man was now a real business-man; when it was a question of affairs, he was an absolute he-man, sharp as a needle, and impervious as a bit of steel.” (Lawrence, 1960: 306).
He has been succeeded both the popular success and the working success. This process has given him achievements and social valued. Clifford has successfully done his sublimation. The people from the upper class acknowledge him as a successful aristocrat.
4.4.2. Denial
The relationship between Clifford and Connie is not like the common husband and wife relationship. They lack physical and emotional contact. His wife feels the emptiness and restlessness with their married life. The physical contacts are merely impossible since Clifford is paralyzed. Clifford should realize that his invalid will be a problem for the married since his wife is a healthy woman. He knows that his wife needs intimate sexual contacts. However, Clifford has told his wife that the secret of married life is not sex, but the intimacy.
Clifford tells his wife that sex between two people is just like a mating bird and then it will pass the people by. He says that no matter what happens between them, they are married and that is the way it is. Clifford makes his wife agree with his concept of married. Having her agreement means so much for him since it does not matter if she has sex with another man as long as she is still together with him as her wife.
When Connie cannot help to satisfy her desire, she tries to have a lover. Vaguely, Clifford knows that she has another man with her. Normally a husband will be worried if he finds out his wife has a lover, but in Clifford’s case, he feels that it is normal for his wife to have a lover in order to satisfy her desire. It is just a matter of satisfying desire and it will not affect their relationship. Clifford believes that he and Connie are developing the integrated life which is more meaningful even though their life is without sexual contact.
Clifford’s integrated life, however, does not conform Connie. She does not only want to have sex but also have a baby. She wants a baby from the man she loves. Then she finds a lover, Mellors who is Clifford’s game keeper. She is in love with Mellors. Clifford should know that there is something which is changing in his wife. Connie who previously agrees with Clifford begins to express her own convictions. Seeing the changes in her wife, he is afraid that she will leave him.
Connie decides to accept her father invitation to Venice.
Connie prepares that she will find an excuse to leave Clifford if she goes to Venice. He is unconsciously aware that his wife is leaving him. He makes her promise to come back to him.
'You won't let me down, now, will you?' he said. 'How?'
'While you're away, I mean, you're sure to come back?' 'I'm as sure as I can be of anything, that I shall come back.' 'Yes! Well! Twentieth of July!'
He looked at her so strangely.
Yet he really wanted her to go. That was so curious. He wanted her to go, positively, to have her little adventures and perhaps come home 1960: 156). Clifford feels secure that she will come back to him. Connie is promised to come back but not for Clifford. She promises to come back for Mellors.
Clifford has lived in denial for his wife. He denies that his wife will leave him because he believes Connie’s promise.
“But no! He knew it, and all the time tried to kid himself it wasn't so. He felt the devil twisting his tail, and pretended it was the angels smiling on him.” (Lawrence, 1960: 304).
