In this novel by D.H. Lawrence, we see so many examples of toxic masculinity, the patriatchy, and the expectations of women back in the 1900s (they are sooo, blegh. So glad I wasn't born then, I would've been so screwed).
So the book is about a woman, Connie, stuck in a shitty marriage with a condescending, holier-than-thou, self-absorbed, spoiled asshole, Clifford (yeah, I don't like him). Connie used to be a relatively 'free' woman with agency over herself -- as much as a woman could have in that period of time. Until Clifford. And so, with a certain awareness of her constant loss of freedom and control over her life, Connie attempts to find her own excitement and a recovering sense of agency by having an affair (which is double slap in the face to Clifford because she's going to other guys for the one thing that he literally cannot give her. Take that, pendejo); but well, Clifford ruins that too. Of course he does.
Throughout the novel, it seems as though Connie does have some sense of autonomy over herself, but that's kind of just an illusion she tells herself to make her life a little bit less miserable. Along those lines, in one of her conversations with Clifford about class mobility (-ish), Connie thinks, "What was the good of discontented people who fitted in nowhere?" (95). But doesn't lump herself in that category, although throughout her rendering of her and Clifford's life, she totally fits in with those discontented people. She doesn't really fit in with the lower classes, nor the middle, or the higher classes. She's a little bit of all of them, she "was at once cosmopolitan and provincial" (3). She's much more aware of the material differences between the classes than others in the upper class, and she's more open to explore her sexuality than aristocrats, but less than those in the working class.
This thing [her affair] that was supposed to be uniquely and wonderfully hers in a relationship so focused on Clifford, ended up being appropriated by him. Just as her life was. Now, when she thinks of another man, Clifford's hand is on her shoulder evaluating the sex appeal right there with her. He's this pervasive pest in Connie's life, that not only keeps stripping away her autonomy bit by bit, but that is also making her sick, literally; she even comes to acknowledge Clifford's abuse and destruction of her previous 'free' spirit and mind by saying, "how ravished one could be without ever being touched. Ravished by dead words become obscene, and dead ideas become obsessions" (97). It feels like Connie is his puppet and he’s a sort of puppet master. She cuts a string and he pulls the one next to it tighter to himself. She cuts another, and he grabs another and pulls tighter. Until the remaining ones are so tight that they're strangling her; until she has to stop cutting because it's either that or die suffocated, and who wants to die so young when there’s still so much life in front of them (even if their life is boring as shit)?
Her body’s not hers anymore, as she no longer recognizes it as it once was. Her affairs are no longer hers, since Clifford inserted himself there. Her desire for a child is no longer hers, since he took away the dream of it and replaced it with a need to keep the Chatterley line alive. I think that since Clifford isn't able to participate in many of life's aspects, he lives mostly in the theoretical and not the reality, and tries to impose this kind of thinking on Connie by keeping himself, and by extension, Connie locked up in Wragby. Clifford doesn't distinguish this theoretical world from the reality of it and that there's a bridge between the two; while Connie lives on the bridge between the two. Her life is no longer about hopes and desires and dreams, but about Clifford. And that honestly sucks. Really sucks. Even the concept/plan of having a child, which, ideally, should be about love and the child being the physical representation of the love between the two, he turns into something from which he could benefit from, without really taking Connie's feelings into consideration, although she's the one who is actually going to bear the child and raise it.
When she walks through Shipley, she describes the manor as "more alive" (166), giving the sense that she sees Wragby as a dead or dying place and, by extension, her life there as well, making us remember the Void she kept mentioning in regards to her and Clifford's life. With her being more interested in life and all of its romanticized aspects, she describes the industrialized life as one "with utterly no beauty in it, no intuition, always 'in the pit'" (169). Which begs the question, is the pit just a physical representation of her Void? Her boring, dreary, shitty life with Clifford?
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It's so fucking annoying how women are considered guys’ property. I mean, sure, when you're in a relationship, your partner is your person and you're theirs, but it’s a MUTUAL thing, not just for the guys to claim.
My mom always said this little phrase to my dad, “lo que es tuyo es mío y lo que es mío es mío (what is yours is mine and what is mine is mine). Which you know, is funny if you think about it in the context of my mom taking one of my dad’s pillows and my dad trying to steal one of hers. But it is definitely not funny in the ultimately pervasive way this funny little phrase was -- and kind of still is -- imposed onto women by the men in their lives. We see this so much in Connie’s life with Clifford. Everything of Connie’s is Clifford’s and everything of Clifford's is Clifford’s. Insofar that it extends to Connie’s sexual affairs; an activity that the husband is usually not made aware of, less of all involved in, but something that Clifford does anyway, since “lo que es tuyo es mío y lo que es mío es mío.”
"For, of course, being a girl, one's whole dignity and meaning in life consisted in the achievement of an absolute, a perfect, a pure and noble freedom. What else did a girl's life mean?" (3).
The worst part is, is that that ridiculous little phrase was not only such a part of women’s life before, but it remains one until now. In parts of the world, the father still sells the daughter off to marriage in exchange for a sizable dowry; and so then the woman instead of being her father’s becomes her husband’s. But when is she going to be given the chance to become her own? When are WE going to be able to truly own ourselves? And this goes back to the relationship between the dialogue in The Torture Garden and rape mentality. If that toxically masculine thought of “I own the world and it is my oyster and mine only” doesn't go away, then there will never be a time when women will truly own themselves. As it is not only men who perpetuate this lack of feminism, but the mothers who raise them and were raised that way themselves; and even if men might, with their own intellectual will, start straying away from those overly masculine ideals, the roaring voice of those still against feminism and the equality between women and men might lead them back towards their side of the conversation.
We're always waiting. "But she was born to wait" (129). We wait for men to give us an opening. In this particular quote, Connie is waiting for her lover. But that's not all she's really waiting for, is it? She's waiting for the excitement of the escape of the affair to begin. She's waiting for her life to start. For her to be able to take control of her life and for her life to actually be hers. This whole book is about waiting. Are we always going to be waiting?
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