"Lawrence, D. H - Lady Chatterley's Lover" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lawrence D. H)

The Chatterleys, two brothers and a sister, had lived curiously
isolated, shut in with one another at Wragby, in spite of all their
connexions. A sense of isolation intensified the family tie, a sense of
the weakness of their position, a sense of defencelessness, in spite
of, or because of, the title and the land. They were cut off from those
industrial Midlands in which they passed their lives. And they were cut
off from their own class by the brooding, obstinate, shut-up nature of
Sir Geoffrey, their father, whom they ridiculed, but whom they were so
sensitive about.

The three had said they would all live together always. But now Herbert
was dead, and Sir Geoffrey wanted Clifford to marry. Sir Geoffrey
barely mentioned it he spoke very little. But his silent, brooding
insistence that it should be so was hard for Clifford to bear up
against.

But Emma said No! She was ten years older than Clifford, and she felt
his marrying would be a desertion and a betrayal of what the young ones
of the family had stood for.

Clifford married Connie, nevertheless, and had his month's honeymoon
with her. It was the terrible year 1917, and they were intimate as two
people who stand together on a sinking ship. He had been virgin when he
married and the sex part did not mean much to him. They were so close,
he and she, apart from that. And Connie exulted a little in this
intimacy which was beyond sex, and beyond a man's 'satisfaction'.
Clifford anyhow was not just keen on his 'satisfaction', as so many men
seemed to be. No, the intimacy was deeper, more personal than that. And
sex was merely an accident, or an adjunct, one of the curious obsolete,
organic processes which persisted in its own clumsiness, but was not
really necessary. Though Connie did want children if only to fortify
her against her sister-in-law Emma.

But early in 1918 Clifford was shipped home smashed, and there was no
child. And Sir Geoffrey died of chagrin.




Chapter 2



Connie and Clifford came home to Wragby in the autumn of 1920. Miss
Chatterley, still disgusted at her brother's defection, had departed
and was living in a little flat in London.

Wragby was a long low old house in brown stone, begun about the middle
of the eighteenth century, and added on to, till it was a warren of a
place without much distinction. It stood on an eminence in a rather