An unprecedented litigation of the century
On October 20, 1960, a lawsuit of the century was being staged in the Old Bailey Street Criminal Court.
The protagonist who affects the mood of the trial is not a person or a thing, but a book that has been banned for 32 years - Lawrence's "Madame Chatterley's Lover"!
This is an unprecedented contest between literature and justice.
The cause of the incident is that penguin publishing house, in order to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the death of the great writer Lawrence, reprinted the unbridged edition of his "masterpiece" "Madame Chatterley's Lover" in 200,000 copies.
The Chief Prosecutor of Central London considered the book "immoral tendencies to corrupt the hearts and minds of readers" and prosecuted Penguin Press, causing a sensation in the cultural world.
On the day of the trial, many famous writers and scholars came to support them, such as "Wasteland" author T. S. Elliott, Howard Manor author E. M. Foster, philosopher Bertrand Russell and 35 other celebrities appeared as witnesses.
When they accused the book of moral decay and the reader's mind and that it was not appropriate to publish it, they argued for Lawrence's argument:
In Lawrence's machine age, everyone regarded money as the spirit of all things... What people have to do is to re-establish normal human relations, the most important of which is the relationship between men and women who love each other, and this kind of human normalcy is not shameful.
What makes people cry is that because many people in the jury have not read the book, judge Bourne decided to adjourn the court for 3 days and wait for everyone to read it and then make an overall judgment...
It is worth mentioning that Judge Bourne is a pure-hearted believer, which makes everyone dare not expect much from this lawsuit, after all, the large-scale "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and "Pure Heart" are contrary to how to look at it.
But the result was a surprise:
At the reconsider, many different denominations of believers sided with Lawrence, and Christian Bishop John Robinson argued that Lawrence was trying to portray the relationship between men and women with a real feeling as some kind of sacred, holy act of communication.
Catholic lawyer John Steface praised the novel's literary and moral merits, arguing that its publication in its entirety was a major contribution to culture.
Compared with the prosecutors still clinging to the "Lawrence does not miss every opportunity to write sex", "this book involves too many issues related to desire, easy to lead people to degenerate" and other unoriginal arguments, the jury after discussion, the court ruled that "Madame Chatterley's Lover" is a literary work with profound connotations, and Penguin Publishing won the case.
The 200,000 copies they printed for the first time were sold out on the day of listing, and then the emergency printing was a record, selling more than 3 million copies of books in three months.
A 6-day trial turned into a "public release" of Lawrence's work, making him famous again 30 years after his death!
So what shocking things did this controversial novel write?
Madame Chatelet's "Unrequited Love"
The story takes place in Europe during the industrial age of the early 20th century.
The heroine of the novel, Connie, is a girl from a noble and vibrant background who is ordered to marry Cliff, a noble descendant of the right family.
The originally enviable fairy couple was changed by Cliff's injuries on the battlefield and his lower body was paralyzed and he lost the ability to live as a husband and wife.
With love and compassion for her husband, Connie accompanied him away from the city and returned to live in his hometown of Ragby Manor, taking care of his food and clothing.
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As for life between husband and wife, Cliff's conception was the same as that of the British nobility: marriage seemed to him to be nothing more than a means of maintaining class status and social order.
Therefore, he never took the initiative to taste the forbidden fruit before marriage, and after marriage, he was also interested, he believed that "sex is nothing more than an uncivilized or mechanical act, and he advocates spiritual love without a trace of lust."
After being unable to do anything, Cliff tried to mentally imprison his little wife Connie, more than once instilling in her the concept of "spiritual love" without desire and without desire.
Cliff, like the industrial age in which he lived, denied the flesh, denied love, and after being disabled, he turned himself into a "machine" in the context of the industrial age.
But Connie was only 23 years old, watching her husband spend all his time writing novels and running the coal mine, spending only formulaic time with himself every day, and going back to his room at night.
The boring life day after day makes her feel the beauty of her husband's so-called "spiritual love", but feels that life is passing in the void, but she is powerless to break free.
This instinctive repression made her seek relief outwardly, so she found a lover who was also high society, but she soon found the same numbness and indifference in the other person as her husband, and she fled quickly.
Intriguingly, Cliff knew about his wife's affair, but he did not stop it, and even explicitly asked Connie to "borrow seeds", he would not ask who the father of the child was, but the only requirement was that the other party must be upper class!
He needed a titular child to inherit his noble "Chatellet" surname and his vast assets.
He automatically transformed himself and Connie into "tool men" who maintained the class, but even as a tool man, the idea of dignity and inferiority in his bones could not be shaken:
The nobility is the nobility, the bottom is the bottom, even in such an unbelievable thing as "borrowing seeds", the class cannot be overstepped!
In his eyes, it is acceptable to find a lover of the same class, but if it is cross-class, it is undoubtedly a "unrequited love"!
The selfishness and coldness of human nature squeezed out by class concepts are absurd and realistic.
But when Connie saw the forester Mellers taking a bath in the forest, his strong body lines and strong male breath awakened her long-suppressed longing, and all ethics lost their meaning at that moment.
The novel reads:
A sense of loneliness touched her and made her feel that he was a completely lonely person. He has such a perfect white body, and his heart is lonely.
In addition to this, he has a pure beauty of life. It is a warm white flame that burns as the silhouette of a life reveals itself, and this fire has a contour that can be touched: the body! ”
Disgusted by the hypocritical civilization of the upper class, he chose to self-exile and returned to the mountains to plant flowers and raise chickens to become the forest keeper of the Chatelei family.
In the process of Making Coops, Hatching Chicks, and Feeding Chicks, Connie felt a yearning for life that had a fatal attraction for her stagnant life, and she fell in love with the man who made her passionate again!
But Mellers is hurt by love, the first woman he meets avoids sex like a tiger, and the two are unhappy; the second woman hates every skin kiss; the third becomes his wife, but she uses sex as a weapon, which needs To be extremely flattered by Mellers in exchange for it...
He was tired of this life, and unlike Cliff, he took the initiative to extinguish his desires and vowed never to dwell on women again.
Connie's intrusion made him very impatient at first, but in the end he could not resist such a passionate flower-like beauty, he found a long-lost innocence in her, Connie did not hide his feelings, and enjoyed it to the fullest.
Mellers was also gradually brought up, and their love was ignited in the wood huts, between the woods, and in the heavy rain.
But it is also the book's warm and straightforward description of their private meetings, so that the book fell into a huge controversy, and it will be banned for 32 years!
In the second half of the plot, Connie is pregnant with the crystallization of love with Mellers, but Cliff also discovers that his wife's lover is an inferior person he does not despise at all, and at the same time Mellers's vicious ex-wife also appears, ready to sabotage the relationship between the two...
As for the result, there will be no spoilers here, and students who like it can go to see the original uncut novel, and the excitement is far beyond my ability to express.
Many people wonder why the author Lawrence wrote such a novel that violates social good customs and is labeled as "encouraging extramarital love", which is closely related to his life experience.
Lawrence its people
If you know the life of Lawrence, you will find that in this book, his own traces are very heavy:
He lived in the booming industrial age, and although his mother was a well-educated teacher, his father was a miner who could not read a few words.
The asymmetry of the spiritual world and economic constraints have led to frequent quarrels between parents and a painful life of sex and lovelessness.
Lawrence also grew into a melancholy man in this environment, hating the industrial age when people were controlled by indifferent machines, the worship of money, and the twisted relationships between people.
What was even more painful was that he lost his ability to do so due to illness, and his wife subsequently had an affair with someone else...
A heavy blow filled his works with criticism of this environment, and at the same time he praised love and life, and persistently and helplessly used "the love of the unity of spirit and flesh" to fight against the external indifferent environment.
He argues that:
"Sex and beauty are the same thing, just as fire and fire are the same thing."
Thus was born this one, which he wrote for two years, but contrary to social morality, "Madame Chatterley's Lover".
After the completion of the book, everyone was extremely disgusted with his attitude, no one was willing to help him publish, and he was forced to hide in Italy at his own expense and secretly printed 1,000 copies and sent them to the bookseller, hoping that someone could find out about his goodness.
But reality is not a novel after all, and his hopes have been dashed.
At the same time, his poor physical condition did not allow him to wait any longer, and he tried to cut out the larger scale of content and exchange compromise for publication, but still without success.
He said sadly: "For 300 years, Madame Chatelet's Lover will not be understood by the world!" ”
In 1930, Lawrence left this world with deep regret at the age of 45.
It was not until 1960, when Penguin Publishing Bravely stood up for his name, and there was an encounter at the beginning of the article, and "Madame Chatterley's Lover", which was banned for 32 years, was able to come out, and finally could comfort Lawrence's spirit in heaven!
Behind the straightforward "sexual writing", the desire for the beauty of human nature
From being regarded as an "erotic novel" to now being regarded as "the world's top ten classic love novels", the literary value of "Madame Chatterley's Lover" has finally been re-established, and its thinking on marriage and human nature has also provided people with a different perspective.
In fact, Cliff's "spiritual love" is not wrong, but he is not compatible with Connie's spirit.
Rather than conceding for "sex," Connie is more eager to feel that primal "life force," to feel that she truly exists between heaven and earth.
Cliff's "vitality" was "castrated" by the industrial age long before he was disabled, and replaced by a sense of mission rooted in the bones of the aristocratic class.
In the book, Cliff represents the conservative British aristocratic class and capitalist civilization, he is willing to give everything in order to maintain the class, and his "disability" is a metaphor for the decline of industrial civilization;
The forester Mellers represents the ideologically progressive common class, who, although disgusted with decadent industrial civilization, is powerless to change the status quo;
Lawrence, on the other hand, pins his hopes on Connie, who represents the advancement of thought, who has the courage and potential to break this rotten system, so he gives Connie the purest beauty of primitive humanity!
In his writing, the sex of Connie and Mellers is as sound and wonderful as the tides and rain and dew in nature, and it is a utopian adult fairy tale, seemingly vulgar but noble; seemingly dirty, but clean.
In the words of critic Richard Hogart, it is:
"Madame Chatterley's Lover is not a dirty book. It's clean, serious and aesthetically pleasing. If we insist on treating it as obscene, it means that we ourselves are dirty. ”
To this day, it still influences the writing style of many later writers:
The modern writer Lin Yutang was influenced by it to write "Red Peony";
Because of Connie, Chen Zhongzhong created the rebellious role of Tian Xiao'e in "White Deer Plain";
In addition, Zhang Xianliang's "Half of a Man is a Woman", Jia Pingwa's "Waste Capital", Wang Xiaobo's "Golden Age", etc., are all inspired by "Madame Chatelei's Lover" to varying degrees!
What inspires them is not only their bold ink on love affairs, but also the pursuit of the pure beauty of human nature.
Space is limited, and I can't go into any more detail about Madame Chatterley's Lover, but for an in-depth look at the novel, click on the link below.
Take home this original genuine translation of the original book that has gone through ups and downs without deletion
Mrs. Chatelet's lover Hardcover Undefined [Leader Book House] ¥45 Purchase