Netflix’s ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ stirs discourse on censorship trials
Looking back, it’s quite laughable that this book was ever banned, because I think it’s far from being offensive. Rather, it’s a fascinating tale,” remarked actor Jack O’Connell in an interview about DH Lawrence’s last - and arguably his most notorious - novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the story of which has inspired many film scripts over the years. Currently featured among the ‘Top Searches’ on Netflix, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s latest cinematic adaptation has once again stirred discourse on why this scandalous literary piece had to be censored for decades.
The plot of the Netflix film revolves around a young aristocratic woman Constance (Connie) Reid - played by Emma Corrin (remember Princess Diana on The Crown Season 4) - who gets married to an upper-class baronet, Sir Clifford Chatterley - played by Matthew Duckett - and is now addressed as Lady Chatterley. Unfortunately, Clifford suffers an injury during World War I and has since been paralysed from the waist down. The couple then relocate to their sprawling Wragby estate, situated near a mining village. Lonely and worn out, Connie secretly starts an affair with the property’s gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors (Jack). Their forbidden love soon grows into a passionate and emotional bond between two people deprived of compassion and human connection.
The hard-nosed lawyers, politicians and literary thinkers of England at that time found the narrative insufferable and way out of line. According to them, it contained explosive material that could potentially pollute the minds of women and the working class, thanks to Penguin selling the book at an affordable price. This, among other factors, eventually led to its prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act. Securing permission to commercially publish the uncensored version became a matter of great concern. It was only after Lawrence’s death (in March, 1930) that heavily censored editions of the novel were published in the UK and the US.
Nearly three decades later, Barney Rosset - the publisher of Grove Press in New York - sued the US Post Office in 1959 for trying to expropriate his unexpurgated edition of the literary piece. Thankfully, Appeals Judge Frederick van Pelt Bryan observed that “Lady Chatterley’s Lover had significant literary merit and to exclude the novel from being mailed on the grounds of obscenity would fashion a rule which could be applied to a substantial portion of the classics of our literature, and that such a rule would be inimical to a free society”.
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