That about sums it up, to be honest.

Lady Chatterley's Lover is an interesting book. I've long been told that it's boring as hell and for all it's being banned and being a source of ridicule, they barely even hold hands. Having read it... It's not that at all.

I can see why people find it boring. Scandalous, smutty scenes are interlaced with large passages of conversation about the world and the role of men and women within it. I've seen people say that D.H. Lawrence clearly had a lot to say but didn't know how to say it, but honestly, I think he did. He talks at length about social classes and gender roles, as well as the world in their present time and his thoughts on what will come to pass next. All of this is dispersed by the imagery of Lady Chatterley sitting in the corner of the room, meekly required to be an audience to the male ponderings whilst not allowed to join in herself.

And yet, all this is lost amid the smut. Oh goodness, the sex scenes are a thing in themselves. Lady Chatterley's Lover is largely endless sex scenes with a bloke who hates women for what they make him feel, almost as much as he hates himself. This is interwoven with Mellors' monologues on class and women. Yet Lady Chatterley fawns over him, her vibe being of a 'silly' woman obsessed with a subpar man, for why wouldn't a woman be?

Each sex scene seems to include Mellors and Lady Chatterley weaving flowers into the pubes whilst Mellors pretends his penis is another entity with a name and one can assume, it's own little job. Perhaps as Mellors works in the Chatterley's gardens, little Mellors is working on his own part of the Lady's gardens. Bad jokes aside, whilst this is often described as literary or high-brow smut, it's definitely lower than the level you could find on Wattpad.

Let us remember that this book was outrageous for 1928. D.H. Lawrence's prose is beautiful, and he weaves a tale of forbidden love that still has us talking about it almost 100 years later. Perhaps it's that the history around this book is more interesting than the book itself. There's lot to feel indifferent to, but at the end of the day, the characters are complex and the situation messy. We can all relate to the need for connection with another and a desire for the greener grass over yonder.

All in all, for a classic that's still talked about today, it's not life-changing. I didn't love this, and I didn't hate it, so ⭐⭐⭐ from me. I'd probably describe Lady Chatterley's Lover as a horror story, rather than a romance or a classic. After all, in its heart, it's about the horror of misogyny and hetronomative mundanity.