Maria Rise từ Edava, Kerala, India

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12/22/2024

Dữ liệu người dùng, đánh giá và đề xuất cho sách

Maria Rise Sách lại (11)

2018-07-22 18:30

Allegiant Movie Tie-In Edition (Divergent) Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn

Sách được viết bởi Bởi: Veronica Roth

I’m not exactly your romance type of guy; this was, in fact, my first romance novel – ever. And I admit, I was attracted to it solely because of the legendary controversy surrounding it, its lewd cover, and Wordsworth Editions’ unbeatable bargain price. The novel was written by a man – D. H. Lawrence – from the perspective of a woman, the titular Lady Constance “Connie” Chatterley. It tells of her life as a wife of an aristocrat who comes back from war paralyzed from the waist down, and the love she develops for the estate’s gamekeeper, Mellors. Though the central theme may be ‘love’, on paper that is, this novel is largely about hate. More specifically, Connie’s hate for pretty much everything that comes her way. This novel is very far from a dynamic story; there’s very little story at all, actually, and the majority of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” focuses on Connie’s feelings about plenty of things. An event happens, briefly described in a few sentences, and then the pages go on at length immersing the reader in Connie’s whirlwind of emotions. Immersing, when used in a book review, is usually a good thing – but not here. Why? Because the substance you’ll be immersed in is extreme boredom, and his writing style is, at times, very dull and extremely repetitive. Lawrence was, I presume, trying to get philosophical about many topics – such as love, relationships, sex, the decay of society in general, the coming of a new breed of people and an altogether new era, etc. In a small percentage of them, he actually succeeded in offering real food for thought, even completely nailing the point on occasions, especially the parts relating to “modern” society – and mind you, this was written in 1928. But mostly, he fails, because instead of coming off witty and wickedly amusing as, for example Oscar Wilde’s, Lawrence’s words up add up no nothing more than jumbled, pointless ramblings which often have the same conclusion – how Connie hates something. Seriously, you know those drinking games, usually applied when watching films? Well, if the reader would take a shot whenever Connie mentions or thinks how she “hates something/someone”, the whole book club would be drunk in a blink of an eye. And it goes on and on and on and on, and there only so much whining a man can take. I seriously thought of simply dropping the novel about a third of the way in, because I’ve really had it. But given the circumstances of my then current whereabouts – in the country, absent many wonders of the modern world – I persisted, and it sort of paid off in the end. If you can push through the dreadful emotional bullshit, there is in fact, a part where Connie’s husband – Sir Clifford – and Connie’s lover – the gamekeeper Mellors – share their view on the world, humanity and the future. Here Lawrence shines, because he manages to convey two takes on the same matter from different points of view – the common worker vs. the industrialist. And he does in such a way that you can understand from where each man is coming from, and get behind both. Here’s a condensed transcript of what Mellors has to say: “The English middle classes have to chew every mouthful thirty times because their guts are so narrow, a bit as big as a pea would give them a stoppage. They’re the mingiest set of ladylike snipe ever invented, arse licking till their tongues are tough. A generation of ladylike prigs with half a ball each. [Everyone] is getting priggish and half-balled and narrow-gutted. It’s the fate of mankind, to go that way. Their spunk is gone dead. Motor cars and cinemas and aeroplanes suck the last bit out of them. Money, money, money! All the modern lot get their real kick out of killing the old human feeling out of man, a quid for every foreskin, two quid for each pair of balls. It’s all alike. Pay ‘em money to cut the world’s cock. Ay, it will [end]. When the last real man is killed, and they’re all tame: white, black, yellow, all colours of tame ones: then they’ll all be insane. Because the root of sanity is in the balls. [Then] they’ll make their own grand little act of faith. They’ll offer one another up. If we go on in this way, intellectuals, artists, government, industrialists and workers will all frantically be killing off the last human feeling, the last bit of their intuition, the last healthy instinct. And I’d tell them: look! What have yer done to yerselves, wi’ the blasted work? Yer ought ter be alive an’ beautiful, an’ yer ugly an’ laf-dead. That’s workin’ for money! Look at your Teverhsall! It’s horrible. It’s because it was built while you were working for money! Look at your girls! It’s because the men aren’t men, that the women have to be. They don’t care about you, you don’t care about them. It’s because you spent your time working and caring for money. You can’t talk nor move nor live, you can’t properly be with a woman. You’re not alive!” Sir Clifford says, on the same matter: “What would be the use of striking again! Merely ruin the industry, what’s left to it; and surely the owls are beginning to see it. It fills their bellies, even if it can’t keep their pockets quite so flush. People can be what they like and feel what they like and what they like, strictly privately, so long as they keep the form of life intact, and the apparatus. No, there will be no more strikes, because strikes will be made as good as impossible. We shan’t ask the [people]. We shall do it while they aren’t looking; for their own good, to save the industry. For everybody’s good! For theirs even more than mine. I can live without the pits. They can’t. They’ll starve if there’s no pits. I’ve got other provision. My dear, they will have to let me dictate terms; if I do it gently. There will be a mutual understanding when they realize that industry comes before the individual. It’s the only way to feed all the mouths and clothe all the bodies. Giving away all we have to the poor spells starvation for the poor just as much as for us. Disparity is fate. You can’t start altering the make-up of things. And when the jealousy and discontent starts, do your best to stop it; somebody’s got to be the boss of the show – and that’s the men who own and run the industries. Who has given them all they have that’s worth having: all their political liberty, and their education, such as it is, their sanitation, their health-conditions, their books, their music, everything? Who has give it to them? Have they give it to themselves? No! All the Wragbys and Shipleys of England have given their part, and must go on giving. No, the men will not hate me, and don’t fall into errors: in your sense of the word, they are not men. They are animals you don’t understand, and never could. Nero’s slaves were extremely little different from our colliers or the Ford motor car workmen. It is the masses: they are the unchangeable. An individual may arise from the masses. But the emergence doesn’t alter the mass. It is one of the most momentous facts of social science. Bread and circuses! Only today education is one of the substitutes we have for a circus. What is wrong today, is that we’ve made a profound hash of the circuses part of the porgramme, and poisoned our masses with a little education.” For these two chapters, Chapter 13 (Clifford) and 15 (Mellors), I didn’t consider the time spent on this novel wasted. Finally, we come to the main course – sex! Explicit descriptions of sexual intercourse, is for what this novel garnered fame and achieved the status it has today. I was expecting something crazy and off the chain. But, aside an occasional ‘cunt’ or ‘fuck’, the prose is, in fact, quite tame. Lawrence gets very poetic in describing the actual act of sex, rarely focusing on the physical aspects of it, but the emotional – usually, again from Connie’s perspective. Here’s an example: “It was a night of sensual passion, in which she was a little startled and almost unwilling: yet pierced again with piercing thrills of sensuality, different, sharper, more terrible than the thrills of tenderness, but, at the moment, more desirable. Though a little frightened, she let him have his way, and the reckless, shameless sensuality shook her to her foundations, stripped her to the very last, and made her a different woman of her. It was not really love. It was not voluptuousness. It was sensuality sharp and searing as fire, burning the soul to tinder.” Your regular emotionally-driven mumbo-jumbo women find so alluring, you’d say. Well, I’d say, too, if I didn’t read the introduction where it had been said that the cited text is actually a description of anal sex. I bet my ass (har har) you could place the paragraph in a children’s book, and no one would notice. So no, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” is not really that controversial or obscene, certainly not by today’s standards. Well, finally… the question: to read or not to read? Not really, especially if you’re a man. This novel doesn’t offer anything of value, except the said philosophical chapters – though, about 2/3 in, the novel does pick the pace a little, and even becomes sort of interesting. But you have to get to there, and I found that 1/3 just barely enough not to consider this a complete piece of boring garbage. Rating: 3/10

Người đọc Maria Rise từ Edava, Kerala, India

Người dùng coi những cuốn sách này là thú vị nhất trong năm 2017-2018, ban biên tập của cổng thông tin "Thư viện Sách hướng dẫn" khuyến cáo rằng tất cả các độc giả sẽ làm quen với văn học này.