Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)

by D.H. Lawrence

Novel

321 pages

Beginning:

“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habits, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen,” (3).

Somewhere in the middle:

“It seems to me absolutely true, that our world, which appears to us the surface of all things, is really the bottom of a deep ocean: all our trees are submarine growths, and we are weird, scaly-clad submarine fauna, feeding ourselves on offal like shrimps. Only occasionally the soul rises grasping through the fathomless fathoms under which we live, far up to the surface of the ether, we there is true air. I am convinced that the air we normally breathe is a kind of water, and men and women are a species of fish,” (285).

End:

“But a great deal of us is together, and we can but abide by it, and steer our courses to meet soon. John Thomas says goodnight to lady Jane, a little droopingly, but with a hopeful heart,” (324).