Lady Chatterley’s Lover

At lunch, Connie lectures Hilda about all the things she is missing out on. This annoys Hilda, who insists that all she wants is “complete intimacy”—even though that idea seems boring to Connie. Hilda feels that Connie has become a “slave” to Mellors’s desires, while Connie uses her resentment of Hilda to conjecture that she must resent all women. 

When they get to London, Connie is glad to reunite with Sir Malcolm, who has recently gotten remarried to a rich young woman. Connie has always been her father’s favorite, and the two have go on fun excursions together. As they walk or sit, Connie observes her father’s masculinity in his strong—albeit aging—legs. She realizes that her time with Mellors has made her newly attuned to “the existence of legs.”

Unfortunately, Connie thinks everyone else around her seems tired and blank. When they get to Paris, Connie sees a little more “sensuality”—but here, too, all people think about is “money, money, money.” Connie begins to feel afraid of the world, which she sees is being overrun by the Americans and English, all of whom lack “tenderness.” Indeed, Connie now agrees with Mellors that people are “alike” everywhere; even travel, supposedly leisure, feels determined and money-grubbing. Connie wishes she were at Wragby.

Finally, they arrive in Venice. They are staying at a little place called the Villa Esmeralda; on the way over, Hilda and Connie take a gondola, steered by a gondolier named Giovanni. Giovanni convinces the sisters to hire him for the duration of their trip so that they can have easy transport away from the dull Scottish couple who is hosting them.

Though there are a good deal of other people staying at the villa, Hilda and Connie think that most of them are very boring. Sir Malcolm takes his daughters to restaurants and plays, and to the Lido—but through it all, Connie can only think of the excess. “Too many ices, too many cocktails,” she thinks, “too many men-servants wanting tips […] altogether far too much enjoyment!” Even Michaelis has found his way to Venice, and he follows Hilda and Connie around.  

Hilda likes this drugged kind of pleasure, especially when she goes to jazz clubs and dances intimately with strangers. But Connie just wants to get in the gondola and go to some quiet part of the city, where she can bathe alone. Unfortunately, even this peace is complicated when Giovanni—thinking the two sisters are looking to have sex—hires his friend Daniele as a sort of sex worker. Connie and Hilda want no such thing, and Connie thinks it is extremely sad that even sex can be converted into money.

As the weeks pass, Connie discovers two things. First, she now senses that she is pregnant; there is something full and “stupefying” about the way her body feels. And second, Clifford writes to inform Connie that Mellors’s wife, hearing that Mellors had started on a divorce, returned and claimed residency in his cottage. Connie writes to Mrs. Bolton to get more information. Around this time, Duncan Forbes, an artist and longtime friend of the Reid family, arrives in Venice.

Mrs. Bolton writes back clarifying the story. Apparently, Bertha broke into Mellors’s cottage, forcing Mellors to stay with his mother. While at the cottage, Bertha found evidence that Mellors was having an affair, and she spread rumors of this to the entire town of Tevershall. Connie is horribly depressed by this news, feeling that Mellors’s association with the awful Bertha somehow implicates him, too.

Connie confides in Duncan Forbes, who comforts her by telling her that people merely hate those who have good sex—“it’s the one insane taboo left.” Duncan’s words allow Connie to feel fondly towards Mellors again, and she impulsively includes a note to him in her next letter to Mrs. Bolton. In the note, Connie assures Mellors that she is on his side and that this trouble with Bertha will pass.

Soon, Clifford writes again, updating Connie on the scandal and saying that all the colliers’ wives are now on Bertha’s side. He mocks Mrs. Bolton as being a bottom-feeder, obsessed with the lowest gossip; he also hints that he is firing Mellors because of the rumors. Clifford even shares a particularly odd conversation he had with Mellors: when he chided Mellors for the affair, Mellors merely replied that, “it’s not for a man i’ the shape you’re in, Sir Clifford, to twit me for havin’ a cod atween my legs.” Finally, Clifford encourages Connie to stay on vacation until the scandal dies down.

Connie is irritated and confused until she gets a letter from Mellors himself. Mellors’s letter clarifies what exactly Bertha knows; she found Connie’s initials (‘C.S.R.’) scribbled all over the house and put together that Mellors was likely having an affair with Lady Chatterley herself. Mellors ends his letter by announcing that he is leaving Wragby and will go to London instead. Connie is angry that Mellors did not ask about her at all in this letter.

To distract from her anxiety, Connie spends her days with Duncan Forbes, whose longtime crush on her has been reignited. Duncan thinks that everyone feels as lonely as he does, remarking that Daniele—despite being so handsome—looks so solitary. But Connie knows that Daniele is married with two young children. “Perhaps,” Connie muses, “only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe.”