Terrible things have happened to our world, and , as we try to rebuild it and bring hope back into our lives, there will be many things to prevent our progress. Yet, we must do our best to get around them and continue living.
This was Constance Chatterley's view of the world. She had suffered greatly because of the war, and now her life would never be the same.
In the year 1917,she married Clifford Chatterley, an English soldier, while he was home for a month's rest from the war. She was twenty-three and he, twenty-nine. After their honey-moon, he rejoined the war only to be horribly injured. Clifford managed to stay alive, but he would never walk again.
When finally released from doctor's care in 1920, he and his wife, Constance, returned to Wragby Hall, Clifford's childhood home. His father had died just before his release from hospital, so Clifford replaced his as master of the house. He then became known as Sir Clifford, and his wife, Constance, Lady Chatterley.
Having little money and no family nearby, married life began a little difficulty for the couple. They were alone in a large, sad home.Clifford, no longer having the ability to have children, returned to his homeland with only one idea: to keep his family's name alive by living as long as he could.
Yet, Clifford did not seem very sad. It appeared that he had lost, along with his ability to walk, his ability to suffer. He always looked to be in a very good mood. But sometimes, there could be seen, behind his bright blue eyes, a strange and empty look that told of hidden feelings. It was as if something inside of him had died.
His wife, Constance, had the look of a woman from the countryside; however, her family was quite wealthy and she had received an unusually excellent education. She and her sister, Hilda, had been to all of the intellectual and artistic capitals of Europe, where they learned, through direct experience, about art, philosophy, and politics.
When they turned fifteen, they were sent to music school in Germany. They enjoyed their time there, playing with the boys and challenging them to political discussions. The sisters felt completely free and happy. They, of course, fell in and out of love; but love, for them, was nothing compared to the conversation they had with the boys.
By the age of eighteen, both Hilda and Constance had each had several boyfriends. The boys they played and talked with all wanted love and sex from the girls. The two sisters did not want the same thing as the boys, but they eventually decided that they might to go ahead and make an offer to the best of the group.
As they had expected, the sex was disappointing. The girls found themselves feeling less love for the young men afterwards. In some cases they even felt hatred for the boys, for at times it seemed like they had tried to take away from the girls what was most important to them: their freedom. And more than anything in the world, a girl's greatest purpose in life is to find and keep as much freedom as possible.
Women have always known that sex was least important in a relationship. Unfortunately, men have always demanded sex, like animals. What was even worse was that women had to give the men what they wanted, because if they did not, just like a child, the men would somehow find a way to destroy the relationship. However, giving a man her body did not mean that the woman also had to give up her freedom. In reality, by allowing the men to achieve their pleasure, women could do with these men whatever they pleased.
So by the time the war arrived, both Hilda and Constance had experienced love several times each. They, however, never fell in love with someone unless they could have a good conversation with them. And sex could never happen without, first, having a highly intelligent talk.
Eventually, the sisters each found themselves a love. Hilda's was a young engineer, and Constance's was a musician. During sex the sisters would come close to feeling they could give up everything for the boys, but then they would remember that it was only a moment's pleasure and nothing to lose their freedom over.
Then the war arrived and the two girls were quickly sent back to England to attend their mother's funeral. Within the first year of the war, both Hilda's engineer and Constance's musician were killed. They cried heavily, but inside they had really already forgotten them.
The girls then lived with their father and began to make friends with many students from Cambridge University, who were young, intelligent, and against everything. Soon, Hilda got married to an older man who still associated with the Cambridge fellows but now worked for the government. They lived comfortably in Westminster and enjoyed close friendships with the best members of the English government.
Constance, on the other hand, met a young Cambridge man named Clifford Chatterley, who at the time was only twenty-two. His family was much wealthier than Connie's. He had just returned to England, after having studied a short while in Germany, to become an officer in the army.
Connie's intelligence and ease strongly impressed Clifford. She had real ideas about the world, while he just followed all of the other young men in their hatred of everything popular. He thought that everything around him was stupid: his father, the government, the army, and the war. He laughed at his father when he cut down his forest to supply the military with wood. He had a big laugh over this with his older brother, Herbert, and his sister, Emma. However, as he laughed, he started to see how stupid he, himself, was. Then he thought of Connie and how people like her were seperated from the stupidest of society because they had true intelligence and a healthy, worldly view of things.
Then, in 1916, Clifford's brother was killed in the war, which made Clifford next in line to replace his father, Sir Geoffrey, whenever he died, as the master of Wragby Hall. The idea of this both pleased and frightened him. He and his father were such different people. Sir Geoffrey was a man of England,while Clifford wanted to be, like Connie, a man of the world. It seemed impossible, and yet it was going to one day happen.
Sir Geoffrey demanded that Clifford marry and have a son who could carry the Chatterley name into the future. Clifford did not take any of that very seriously. But then the war made Clifford begin to feel the need for something safe and comfortable. He felt that the time had come to marry. So he married Constance Reid in that horrible year of 1917.
At the time, he had never had sex before. However, their love for each other was so strong that the sex seemed unimportant, even to Clifford, who proved to be very different from most men. For him, sex was just a small part of the relationship that he could easily do with or without. Connie soon had a little more motivation for sex, because she decided that she would like to have a child. But, as we know, in 1918 Clifford's body was badly damaged and no child could ever come after that, and then Sir Geoffrey soon died from sadness.
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