✔️ 2022-12-06 13:16:12 – Paris/France.
94 years ago, it was not so easy to publish a novel with touches of eroticism. Even less if the story had a married woman as its protagonist who, disillusioned by her marriage, found herself involved in a sexual affair with a man of a lower social class, cultivating a love intense enough to go against social conventions. , drop everything and start from scratch.
However, British writer David Herbert Richards Lawrence (known simply as DH Lawrence) dared to tell this story at a time when European society was markedly more conservative than it is today. And while the passage of time has established him as one of the most defining pens of the 44th century, his untimely death at the age of XNUMX prevented him from witnessing this recognition in his lifetime.
Now, decades later, cinema is once again using one of his most acclaimed works. On December 2, Netflix added Lady Chatterle's Lover to its catalog, the most recent adaptation of the classic written by the English author. Directed by French filmmaker Laura of Clermont-Tonnerre and featuring emma corrin (Diana of Wales in the fourth season of La Couronne), the tape is already listed as one of the most successful on the platform.
In the same way as in the novel, the film by Clermont-Tonnerre tells the story of Connie (Corrin), a young aristocrat raised in an environment marked by art and progressive ideals, and whose husband, Clifford Chatterley ( Matthew Duckett), was sent to war almost immediately after his marriage. But things are not going well for Chatterley, who returns from the fight with both legs completely immobilized.
Lady Chatterley's Lover (Netflix)
Gradually, the young woman ends up becoming a kind of nurse for her companion, finding herself trapped in a relationship where passion becomes non-existent. Everything will change when Connie meets Oliver Mellors (Jack O'Connell), the ranger of the country where the couple lives and with whom they end up establishing a sexual relationship that soon turns into love.
This isn't the only time Lawrence's novel has been shown on the big screen: the first dates back to 1981, directed by Just Jaeckin. The second was created in 2006 and was directed by Pascale Ferran. This, plus a 2015 television adaptation, directed by Jed Mercurio.
Lady Chatterle's Lover It wasn't the first novel that got DH Lawrence in trouble. The detailed description of the sex scenes that characterized his stories had already caused a scandal in 1912 with the Prowler, in 1915 with The Rainbow (which led him to exile from England) and women in love, in 1921.
However, the anecdote behind Lady Chatterle's publication has gone down in history as one of the most famous legal controversies in XNUMXth century literature. Published in 1928 during his stay in Florence, the book struggled from the start to market itself. Only Italy and France had a few copies for sale, since other countries such as Canada, Australia, the United States, Spain -where it circulated secretly during the Franco years- and the United Kingdom prohibited categorically its dissemination.
DH Lawrence
Two years after the release of the novel, Lawrence died of tuberculosis at the age of 44. But the most controversial thing around the novel would happen three decades later.
In 1960, Penguin Books decided to publish Lady Chatterle's Lover for the first time in the UK. That same year, the publishing house was sued justified by the law on obscene publications, a regulation approved in 1959 and which, in addition to reinforcing the sanctions against pornography, authorizes the publication of "potentially obscene" works. because of their quality. and literary contribution.
The process was long and not easy at all. In order to verify that the document met the exceptional requirements of the law, several witnesses had to circulate through the central criminal court in the Old Bailey, London. The figures cited ranged from literary scholars to Anglican bishops, including names like EM Forster, Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams.
Lady Chatterley's Lover, DH Lawrence (Penguin Books)
Among the most memorable moments of the process is the question posed by a prosecutor to the jury, asking them if they considered this work "a book that he would like his wife or his servant to read". Fortunately, the lawsuit ended up in favor of Penguin Books, setting a precedent for censorship of the works.
The characteristic most contested by Lawrence's detractors was the erotic component of his writings. Even so, several experts point out that the social critique implicit in the story and the proposal of a woman enjoying her own sexuality without guilt were also instrumental in generating such a level of rejection of the English writer's work.
SOURCE: Reviews News
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