Sexism In Lady Chatterley's Lover

D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover was first published in 1928. However, it was banned in numerous countries for many decades after its publication. In the United Kingdom, the novel was banned until 1960. The setting of Lady Chatterley’s Lover takes place in the English midlands, the coal country, in the aftermath of World War I. Sir Chatterley has returned from the the frontlines of the war with severe injuries and is now confined to a wheelchair, with no hope for recovery. The sudden limitations that Sir Chatterley’s new condition puts on the Chatterley’s marriage accentuates the disparities between Sir Clifford and Lady Chatterley’s personalities. Moreover, Clifford no longer feels he can engage in sexual intimacy with his wife, much

One example is found in chapter 17: “Humanity has always had a strange avidity for unusual sexual postures, and if a man likes to use his wife, as Benvenuto Cellini says, ‘in the Italian way’, well that is a matter of taste. But I had hardly expected our game-keeper to be up to so many tricks. No doubt Bertha Coutts herself first put him up to them. In any case, it is a matter of their own personal squalor, and nothing to do with anybody else.” (pg. 395). “The Italian way” is an allusion to anal sex. In the 21th century, anal sex has become much more accepted among the progressive classes of Western societies. However, that was not the case when the novel was first published. At that time, and for many decades to come, British law equated anal sex to bestiality. Lawrence, most likely very aware of the reactions he could garner, keeps his references very discreet and accessible only to those with the relevant cultural capital. His discretion proved incredibly valuable when the novel was tried in Britain in 1960, as the judge did not understand the allusion. The trial could easily have had a very different outcome if the judge had realized Lawrence was describing a sexual act forbidden by British