" I guess it is bound to happen."
Parkin, the gamekeeper, muttered as if in relief after he and Lady Chatterly consummated their first sexual affair.
And the rest is...
Torture.
This is what i felt for the poor Lady Chatterly's lover after i saw the 2006 French version (Pascale Ferran, director).
On the social level, Lady Chatterly has everything to lose but she plays her part like an unabashed heroine, as if she knows she can get away with the fling. Ever the loyal wife to her invalid husband, she temporarily breaks this bond because i believe she felt entitled to explore her womanhood, even if she has to condescend to her status, and which probably embolden her too because she has the upperhand if she preys upon her servant. Say it isn't so though, because they soon recognize their feelings for each other, and that is also when they realize the limits of their relationship.
Initially portrayed as a brute, Parkin softens down and is eventually able to release that layer of his sensitivity. He loves, re-learns to love and at the same time he cries for the burden that he has to pay for the price of his freedom. He cannot be nor he cannot give what he doesn't have - nobility.
Lady Chatterly shed a tear too when Parkin left, a happy tear for the baby that Parkin fathered and will be the heir of the lady's invalid husband, and another happy tear for the separation because she has opened up the heart of an uncouth creature.
And so the unabashed heroine survives...
1 comment:
I think the depressing thing about this novel is that neither of them seem to get a great deal out of their relationship, except torture-by-the-strictures-of-their-time the same strictures they rebel against but which will win out in the end.
A bit like those Victorian novels where the main character always had to die at the end whether good or bad, to make some obscure point about morality.
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