The jury╒s verdict on Lady Chatterley╒s Lover is a triumph of common sense ╤ and the more pleasing because it was unexpected.
We shall never know, of course, precisely what the jury thought. They could acquit on either of two grounds ╤ that the book was simply not obscene, or that, even if it was, its literary and other merits nevertheless justified its publication as being for the public good. As ordinary men and women, with their feet well planted on the ground and with the judge╒s injunction not to get lost ╥in the higher realms of literature, education, sociology, and ethics╙ in their ears, they would be likely to look at the straightforward question of obscenity. In hearing the defence evidence they may have wondered at the inconsistencies in what the ╥experts╙ said in support of the book (inconsistencies some of which the judge mentioned in his summing-up). But they may have wondered still more at the prosecution╒s theme that the book put promiscuity on a pedestal and that it contained only ╥padding╙ between bouts of sexual intercourse. These charges were too exaggerated to survive a reading of the book.
Physical love plays an important part in the book. It is the chief theme ╤ though there is an important secondary theme in the sterility, ugliness, and inhumanity of life in a Midland mining community and in a society devoted to money-making. The theme of physical love calls for detailed description of sexual acts. These are what make the book controversial. But their purpose is an honest one. It is to show the redeeming power of that love and the importance of tenderness. D. H. Lawrence emphasises that where harshness or brutality exist a couple cannot come to a full and harmonious relationship together. Mellors (the gamekeeper) is shown from an early stage as warm and kind, and where he is passionate he is ╥wholesome.╙ That is the key to his influence over Lady Chatterley. To the judge╒s question whether there is ╥any spark of affection╙ until late in the book the answer is ╥yes.╙ The compassion of Mellors for the wretchedness of Lady Chatterley is what brings them together at first.
Mellors and Lady Chatterley are nevertheless in an immoral relationship. Here some of the defence witnesses were vulnerable ╤ especially the four Church of England clergy who courageously came forward to give evidence. Yet there is a valid answer to the charge of immorality. It is, first, that the Chatterleys╒ marriage had already withered from within. The wife had sought to hold together her companionship with a husband half paralysed and half mad, but her efforts did not avail. Secondly, she herself is changed by Mellors from frustration and physical decline to being vitally alive. Thirdly, their relationship becomes a dedicated one ╤ and, contrary to the prosecution╒s view, with a real hope of ultimate and lasting marriage. (That plainly lies behind the concluding letter.) Fourthly, as one of the clergy said, this is a novel and not a tract. Novels deal with life as it is.
