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Trail: Melody Book20 2 2008-04-16 tetragrammaton LadyChatterleysLover

LadyChatterleysLover

FiftyBooks

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100181.txt

...like a flapping overlapping of soft flames, soft as feathers, running to points of brilliance, exquisite, exquisite, and melting her all molten inside. It was like bells, rippling up and up to a culmination... And she felt the soft bud of him within her stirring and in strange rhythms flushing up into her, with a strange, rhtthmic growing motion, swelling and swelling till it filled all her cleaving consciousness. And then began again the unspeakable motion that was not really motion, but pure deepening whirlpools of sensation, swirling deeper and deeper through all her tissue and consciousness, till she was one perfect concentric fluid of feeling.

--DH Lawrence

I feel that the book is not about sex at all. it goes so well from the bigness of the world... from industrialization down into the forest to a clearing and inside a little forgotten hut next to a coupe of pheasants to two lovers wrapped up in their own problems to the space between them to the skin that surrounds them into their bodies entering each other to what they make each other feel and the various defenses inside their heads and hearts letting go. i like it.
My favorite parts are where Mellors goes on a rant.


Let’s live for summat else. Let’s not live ter make money, neither for us-selves nor for anybody else. Now we’re forced to. We’re forced to make a bit for us-selves, an’ a fair lot for th’ bosses. Let’s stop it! Bit by bit, let’s stop it. We needn’t rant an’ rave. Bit by bit, let’s drop the whole industrial life an’ go back. The least little bit o’ money’ll do. For everybody, me an’ you, bosses an’ masters, even th’ king. The least little bit o’ money’ll really do. Just make up your mind to it, an’ you’ve got out o’ th’ mess.’ He paused, then went on:

An’ I’d tell ‘em: Look! Look at Joe! He moves lovely! Look how he moves, alive and aware. He’s beautiful! An’ look at Jonah! He’s clumsy, he’s ugly, because he’s niver willin’ to rouse himself I’d tell ‘em: Look! look at yourselves! one shoulder higher than t’other, legs twisted, feet all lumps! What have yer done ter yerselves, wi’ the blasted work? Spoilt yerselves. No need to work that much. Take yer clothes off an’ look at yourselves. Yer ought ter be alive an’ beautiful, an’ yer ugly an’ half dead. So I’d tell ‘em. An’ I’d get my men to wear different clothes: appen close red trousers, bright red, an’ little short white jackets. Why, if men had red, fine legs, that alone would change them in a month. They’d begin to be men again, to be men! An’ the women could dress as they liked. Because if once the men walked with legs close bright scarlet, and buttocks nice and showing scarlet under a little white jacket: then the women ‘ud begin to be women. It’s because th’ men aren’t men, that th’ women have to be.---An’ in time pull down Tevershall and build a few beautiful buildings, that would hold us all. An’ clean the country up again. An’ not have many children, because the world is overcrowded.

But I wouldn’t preach to the men: only strip ‘em an’ say: Look at yourselves! That’s workin’ for money!--- Hark at yourselves! That’s working for money. You’ve been working for money! Look at Tevershall! It’s horrible. That’s because it was built while you was working for money. Look at your girls! They don’t care about you, you don’t care about them. It’s because you’ve spent your time working an’ caring for money. You can’t talk nor move nor live, you can’t properly be with a woman. You’re not alive. Look at yourselves!’

There fell a complete silence. Connie was half listening, and threading in the hair at the root of his belly a few forget-me-nots that she had gathered on the way to the hut. Outside, the world had gone still, and a little icy.

...

If you could only tell them that living and spending isn’t the same thing! But it’s no good. If only they were educated to live instead of earn and spend, they could manage very happily on twenty-five shillings. If the men wore scarlet trousers as I said, they wouldn’t think so much of money: if they could dance and hop and skip, and sing and swagger and be handsome, they could do with very little cash. And amuse the women themselves, and be amused by the women. They ought to learn to be naked and handsome, and to sing in a mass and dance the old group dances, and carve the stools they sit on, and embroider their own emblems. Then they wouldn’t need money. And that’s the only way to solve the industrial problem: train the people to be able to live and live in handsomeness, without needing to spend. But you can’t do it. They’re all one-track minds nowadays. Whereas the mass of people oughtn’t even to try to think, because they can’t. They should be alive and frisky, and acknowledge the great god Pan. He’s the only god for the masses, forever. The few can go in for higher cults if they like. But let the mass be forever pagan.

But the colliers aren’t pagan, far from it. They’re a sad lot, a deadened lot of men: dead to their women, dead to life. The young ones scoot about on motor-bikes with girls, and jazz when they get a chance, But they’re very dead. And it needs money. Money poisons you when you’ve got it, and starves you when you haven’t.