Chapter Lawrence's Characters of Lady Chatterley's Lover - Study Guide by D.H. Lawrence

Lawrence's Characters

In his "Study of Thomas Hardy", Lawrence wrote that Hardy's 'passionate, individual, wilful characters find conventional security unfrilfilling, and thus die, either from lack of strength to bear their isolation or from their community's revenge on them. Tess Durbeyfield, for instance, having '...sided with the community's condemnation other...' finds that she 'has become inert'. Whereas Hardy's characters usually acquiesce, yield, submit or succumb, however, Lawrence's seem to struggle. Connie is 'aware of a growing restlessness' but, instead of succumbing to any kind of depression, she follows her 'urge of madness' and tries to ' rush off across the park and lie prone in the bracken. To get away from the house - she must get away...' Mellors, too, feels an acute inner despair, but is presented differently, through objective action, such as the saluting of Connie and the carrying of a gun, rather than through narrated monologue. This is significant, for, whereas Lawrence presents us with much of Connie's initial perspective, Mellors provides his own, having already begun to transform himself by being 'alone' so that he can heal 'a big wound from old contacts...' Through Connie he seeks to transform his social and emotional incompleteness into something positive and life affirming, through sexual fulfilment and social completion.