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Chapter 17
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Intellect vs. Bodily Experience
Nature vs. Machinery
Class, Consumerism, and Money
Gender and Sexuality
Catastrophe, Continuity, and Tradition
Summary
Analysis
Despite her confused emotions, Connie makes a plan: she will leave Venice to meet Mellors in London. Connie travels back with Sir Malcolm, revealing on the trip that she no longer intends to return to Wragby. She also shares the news of her pregnancy, though she does not tell Sir Malcolm who the father is.
Connie’s confession to her father reminds readers how unusual Sir Malcolm’s approach to gender and sexuality was for the time; rather than begrudging his daughter her affair, he helps her make sense of it.
Themes
Sir Malcolm councils his daughter to go back to Wragby, despite her lack of love for Clifford (“[…] emotions change. You may like one man this year and another the next. But Wragby still stands”). Yet contrary to his advice, Malcolm is happy that his daughter has at last found a “real man,” and he treats Connie with new tenderness.
There are two vital, contradictory details in this passage. On the one hand, Malcolm echoes Clifford and Hilda, arguing that only solid structures—human-made things, forced out of the earth—will “stand.” But on the other hand, Malcolm shares Mellors’s view of “masculinity,” linking rugged potency to individual happiness; even as he counsels Connie to stay with Clifford, Malcolm knows why his daughter might not.
Themes
Connie and Mellors reunite, and she is surprised at how easily he blends into his nice clothes and London setting. Instantly, she feels at ease and realizes with delight that she is always happier when Mellors is around. After they catch up, Connie tells Mellors the news of her pregnancy. He refuses to celebrate, instead reminding her just how anxious the future makes him.
The way each character handles time again comes to the fore, as Mellors cannot focus on his intimate future—Connie and the baby—because he is so distracted by the more generalized threat of mechanization.
Themes
Connie teases Mellors by saying she could easily go back to Wragby and raise the baby as Clifford’s own. But when she gets serious (saying simply, “I want to live with you”), Mellors cannot resist his intense physical desire for her. Still, Mellors worries that he won’t be able to “offer” Connie enough status or security—and he refuses to be “just my lady’s fucker.” Connie reassures him that he has something no other man has: “the courage of [his] own tenderness.”
Mellors struggles now at the intersection of class and gender, believing that his male dominance should extend to finances; otherwise, he will become a tool for Connie to take advantage of—“just [his] lady’s fucker.” But in this important response, Connie emphasizes that “tenderness” is its own form of masculine courage—because every time Mellors delights in Connie’s body, he affirms the traditional gender roles that they both so seem to crave.
Themes
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This statement makes Mellors happy, and he brings Connie back to his rented room. While they have sex, Connie begs Mellors to celebrate their child. Mellors is still nervous about bringing a newborn into this grim future, but Connie reassures him: “be tender to it, and that will be its future.” Lovingly, Mellors kisses Connie’s belly, and they both orgasm. As he finishes, Mellors adjusts to the idea that, even if Connie has money and he has none, he will feel happy and proud of their life together.
Moments ago, Connie equated tenderness with courage and masculinity. Now, she equates it with futurity, suggesting that physical warmth and intimacy are a way to fix the broken time that Mellors (and everyone else in the narrative) struggles against. Perhaps nowhere else does the novel so cleanly articulate its project: rather than recovering from World War I with technology and brute force, as Clifford does, Connie and Mellors will move forward from this cataclysm through “tenderness.”
Themes
After having sex, Connie wants to hear about Bertha Coutts. She is worried that, just as Mellors once cared for Bertha and now loathes her, he will turn against her. But Mellors argues that people like Bertha and Clifford “only frustrate life” and that he could never feel about Bertha how he feels about Connie. Mellors also reveals that he will need to stay away from Connie until March in order for the divorce to go through. This upsets Connie, as her baby is due in February. Connie wonders if they could run away without getting divorces—but she knows that “the far ends of the world are not five minutes from Charing Cross, nowadays.”
As with their time at Wragby, reminders of the unnatural world around Connie and Mellors interrupt their warm, organic time together. As both Mellors and Connie have to admit, making a run for it would be impossible, because new technologies have shrunk the earth to a fraction of its former size.
Themes
Connie finally tells Sir Malcolm that her affair has been with Clifford’s game-keeper. Sir Malcolm, having fought for his family’s own wealth and status, is frustrated, especially because he fears that Mellors is a gold-digger. Still, Malcolm helps his daughter with her next steps: she will get Duncan to claim paternity over the child, so as not to add scandal to Mellors’s divorce. In exchange, Connie will allow Duncan to paint her, something he has wanted to do for years.
Unlike Hilda, Malcolm is able to put his daughter’s desire for love and passion over his own desire for status. By using Duncan as a cover, Connie can avoid staining Mellors with the kind of “scandal” that would make the courts rule against his divorce from Bertha.
Themes
Though neither Mellors nor Sir Malcolm particularly wants to meet, both agree it is necessary. After the men have a couple of drinks, however, Malcolm congratulates Mellors on getting Connie “warmed up,” and the two men connect over their shared commitment to sexual freedom. Malcolm is proud that Connie feels comfortable with her sexuality.
This moment marks the novel’s uneasy fusion of progressive and conservative views on gender and sexuality. Malcolm and Mellors share an appreciation of and frankness about sex, marking them as more progressive. But at the same time, Malcolm’s comment that his own daughter has been “warmed up” reflects a crude, more regressive form of objectification.
Themes
The next day, Mellors has lunch with Hilda, who is much less welcoming. To Connie’s surprise, Hilda rushes to broach the idea of having Duncan Forbes claim paternity over the child. Mellors is hesitant at first, but Connie and Hilda convince him that this is the most practical way forward. The next step is for the sisters to introduce Mellors to Duncan.
Hilda’s desire to introduce Duncan into the equation likely stems from anxiety about her own reputation. The depiction of Hilda as anxious and ill-behaved adds fuel to the novel’s mockery of upper-class mannerisms.
Themes
When the quartet has dinner, Mellors is struck by Duncan’s personality (like a “taciturn Hamlet”) and his art, which is all “tubes and valves and spirals.” When Duncan asks Mellors for his opinion of the work, Mellors is insulting, saying that the paintings murder compassion. Still, Duncan agrees to the plan—only, as predicted, on the condition that Connie models for him. Mellors is jealous that Connie will pose for Duncan, but Connie assures Mellors that she shares his antipathy towards the paintings.
Mellors compares Duncan to a Shakespeare character; in Connie’s framing, all poets are “liars.” Duncan’s work is mechanical, resembling the inside of an “iron man” or other coal-digging machine; Mellors works with the earth. By juxtaposing Mellors not only with Clifford but with Duncan, the novel makes clear how rare this natural, instinctual man really is.
Themes
