The Masculine Market on Free Love

I graphed a diagram on D. H. Lawrence’s masculine perceptions on free love in Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100181h.html. In chapter four, four men come together to intellectually talk about sex and marriage. Lawrence's book, for its time was rebellious, since it went through a period of not being published for its content to being published for its content on free love. The setting of this story is 1917 during a continued fight for women’s suffrage. This was three years before women had the right to vote.

Lawrence's Cast of Characters

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According to Luce Irigaray, the feminine economy has always been exchanged man to man (Irigaray 574). Hence, woman’s input on free love would be foreign or perverse. Clifford and his male companions are resentful when Connie interjects her opinion on free love. This explores how D. H. Lawrence exposed a greater issue concerning the problems with sexual intercourse. The problem with sex is that Connie is not allowed to talk about it in the masculine presence. Connie is not given the same intellectual power in defining sex even though it takes two partners to create sexual chemistry. In the beginning of chapter four, Connie is open to the opinions of the men who are visiting her husband. Before she is cut out of the conversation, she finds their talk amusing yet cold (Lawrence 35). Clifford’s belief in marrying to “get it done” suggests marriage as a hurtle to get over; marriage is a duty a man performs to fit into societal norms. Clifford’s trust in traditional institutions only makes him more sterile and colder. Dukes' disbelief in love stems from his inability to attract intimacy. His failure to find a good woman is not his fault. Thus, Dukes indifferently laughs it off—the subject of love is meaningless to him but amusing. In addition, Charlie May believes the feminine body was made to satisfy masculine hunger; this hunger being a one-way transaction. For May, “sex” and “talk” are basically the same thing since both are types of communication.

Men talking on free love illustrates how Lawrence was more inclined in creating a “new phallus” than a new woman. They do not need Connie to continue their conversation on free love but she needs them. This new phallus examines the problems men face in “not” conforming to traditional sex roles; this nonconformity gives power back to the masculine economy (Miller 94). This conversation on free love was more on a man’s penis and where it goes. When Connie speaks up, she tells them good women exist. Lawrence’s Connie perceives women to be good people who are not around to make a man’s life miserable. Her statement may represent Kern’s “event” in that a small rejection against Connie points to major problems with patriarchy. How can change occur when communication is closed? A grander “significance” may lie in individual character statements (Kern 51). Yet, Connie’s place in this conversation is to be silent focusing on Lawrence’s broken men who are centered on “male revival” and feminine blame (Scott 221). This closed-ended-conversation adds pity to Connie’s position and pity is not a form of liberation when we look deeper into women's issues. However, Lawrence does give the reader a new look into how women are just as sexual as men from a masculine point of view. In the end, women need to be in control of their own potential (e.g., feminine authorship) for change to occur (“Documentary”).

Works Cited

• Irigaray, Luce. “Commodities Amongst Themselves.” Literary Theory: an Anthology. Edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Revised ed. Blackwell, 1998, pp. 574-577.

• Kern, Stephen. The Modernist Novel: a Critical Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 2011.

• Lawrence, D. H. Lady Chatterley's Lover. Edited by Michael Squires and Doris Lessing, Penguin Books, 2006.

• Miller, Marlowe A. Masterpieces of British Modernism. Greenwood Press, 2006.

• Scott, Bonnie K. The Gender of Modernism: a Critical Anthology. Indiana Univ. Pr., 1990.

• Vagabondways2. “Documentary on Women's Liberation Movement.” YouTube, YouTube, 27 June 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOsLjbpHV8M.