After marrying Baronet Clifford Chatterley, Constance "Connie" Reid moves from London to the impressive Chatterley estate in Wragby. They consummate the marriage and Clifford returns to fight in World War I the following day. Weeks later, Clifford comes home, paralysed from the waist down, leading him to need full time care. Connie does her best but, over time, his handicap, as well as his impotence and lack of affection toward her, begin to wear on her.

As Clifford wants an heir, he suggests Connie has an affair purely to impregnate her. When her sister Hilda visits, she notices Connie's exhaustion and hires Mrs Bolton to be Clifford’s caretaker. One afternoon after being sent to check on some pheasant chicks at the nearby cottage, Connie meets Oliver Mellors, the reserved lower class gamekeeper who also returned from the war to find his wife had left him. There is an instant connection between the two of them, which soon turns into passionate sex. Using the chicks and long walks as her excuse, Connie visits the cottage more and more. Taken aback by Oliver’s surprising tenderness, the two begin a fervent love affair.

Noticing signs of early pregnancy, Connie suggests the idea of travelling to Venice with Hilda in order to have the supposed affair, while the rumour that they are actively trying to conceive spreads through town. Oliver is furious, believing Connie used him to have a child, but she tells him she only wants him. Hilda comes to collect Connie for the trip and is told about Oliver. She is disappointed, but leaves to let Connie spend the night with him. Oliver’s wife's new partner Ned comes by the cottage, seeking part of his war pension as they are not yet divorced, and finds evidence of Connie.

Ned spreads rumours about Oliver and Connie. When Clifford hears, he sacks Oliver just as Connie is about to leave for Venice. The pair promise to reunite when they can, and she returns to the manor to confront Clifford, explaining his lack of affection drove her away. Connie reveals she is in love with Oliver and is pregnant with his child; Clifford declares he will never give her a divorce. As Connie leaves London to Venice, Mrs Bolton promises to put the word out that she is looking for Oliver.

News has spread by word of mouth that a Lady gave up her title and wealth for a gamekeeper because she loves him. After some months in Venice, Connie tires of its smallness and returns to England. A letter arrives to Connie from Oliver, who has since found another house and a well paid job, calling for her to join him in Scotland. She drives nearly 800km to find him and share a simple life in the countryside.

The story concerns a young married woman, the former Constance Reid (Lady Chatterley), whose upper-class Baronet husband, Sir Clifford Chatterley, described as a handsome, well-built man, is paralysed from the waist down because of a Great War injury. Constance has an affair with the gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. The class difference between the couple highlights a major motif of the novel. The central theme is Constance's realisation that she cannot live with the mind alone. That realisation stems from a heightened sexual experience that Constance has felt only with Mellors, suggesting that love requires the elements of both body and mind.

Books

Lady Chatterley's Lover was re-imagined as a love triangle set in contemporary Silicon Valley, California in the novel Miss Chatterley by Logan Belle (the pseudonym for American author Jamie Brenner) published by Pocket Star/Simon & Schuster, May 2013.[42]

Film and television

Lady Chatterley's Lover has been adapted for film and television several times:

• L'Amant de lady Chatterley (1955), French drama film starring Danielle Darrieux, was banned in the United States because it "promoted adultery", but was released in 1959 after the Supreme Court reversed that decision.[43]
• Edakallu Guddada Mele (On top of Edakallu Hill) (1973), an Indian Kannada language film starring Jayanthi and directed by Puttanna Kanagal, was loosely based on the Kannada novel of the same name which was inspired by Lady Chatterley's Lover.
• Sharapancharam (Bed of Arrows) (1979), an Indian Malayalam language film starring Jayan and Sheela and directed by Hariharan, was loosely based on Lady Chatterley's Lover.
• Lady Chatterley's Lover (1981), French film directed by Just Jaeckin and produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, starred Sylvia Kristel and Nicholas Clay. (Jaeckin had previously directed Kristel in Emmanuelle, which was released in 1974.)
• Lady Chatterley (1993), is a BBC Television serial which was directed by Ken Russell for BBC Television; it starred Joely Richardson and Sean Bean and incorporated some material from the longer second version John Thomas and Lady Jane.
• Milenec lady Chatterleyové (1998) is a Czech television version directed by Viktor Polesný and starring Zdena Studenková (Constance), Marek Vašut (Clifford), and Boris Rösner (Mellors).[44]
• Ang Kabit ni Mrs Montero (Mrs. Montero's Paramour, 1998) is a Filipino soft-core film adapted by director Peque Gallaga.
• The French director Pascale Ferran[45] filmed a French-Language version (2006) with Marina Hands as Constance and Jean-Louis Coulloc'h as the gamekeeper, which won the Cesar Award for Best Film in 2007. Marina Hands was awarded best actress at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.[46] The film was based on John Thomas and Lady Jane, Lawrence's second version of the story. It was broadcast on the French television channel Arte on 22 June 2007 as Lady Chatterley et l'homme des bois (Lady Chatterley and the Man of the Woods).
• Lady Chatterley's Daughter (Lady Chatterley's Ghost) (2011)[47] an American film. Director/Fred Olen Ray. Actress/Cassandra Cruz.
• Lady Chatterley's Lover (2015) is a BBC television film starring Holliday Grainger, Richard Madden and James Norton.[48] Produced by Hartswood Films and Serena Cullen Productions, it was first broadcast on BBC One on 6 September 2015.[49] It was released by Netflix as a drama series and stars Madden as the eponymous lover, Oliver Mellors; Grainger as Lady Chatterley; and Norton as Lady Chatterley’s disabled husband, Sir Clifford Chatterley.[50]
• Lady Chatterley's Lover (2022) is a film directed by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre and starring Emma Corrin and Jack O’Connell as Constance Reid and Mellors, respectively. It was released on 25 November 2022 in UK cinemas and on 2 December 2022 on Netflix.[51]

Use of character

The character of Lady Chatterley appears in Fanny Hill Meets Lady Chatterly (1967),[52] Lady Chatterly Versus Fanny Hill (1974)[53] and Young Lady Chatterley (1977). Bartholomew Bandy meets her shortly after her 1917 marriage in the novel Three Cheers for Me (1962, revised 1973) by Donald Jack.

Radio

Lady Chatterley's Lover has been adapted for BBC Radio 4 by Michelene Wandor and was first broadcast in September 2006.[54]

Theatre

This section does not cite any sources. (May 2013)

Lawrence's novel was successfully dramatised for the stage in a three-act play by British playwright John Harte. Although produced at the Arts Theatre in London in 1961 (and elsewhere later on), his play was written in 1953. It was the only D.H. Lawrence novel ever to be staged, and his dramatisation was the only one to be read and approved by Lawrence's widow, Frieda. Despite her attempts to obtain the copyright for Harte to have his play staged in the 1950s, Baron Philippe de Rothschild did not relinquish the dramatic rights until his film version was released in France.

Only the Old Bailey trial against Penguin Books for alleged obscenity in publishing the unexpurgated paperback edition of the novel prevented the play's transfer to the much bigger Wyndham's Theatre, for which it had already been licensed by the Lord Chamberlain's Office on 12 August 1960 with passages censored. It was fully booked out for its limited run at the Arts Theatre and well reviewed by Harold Hobson, the prevailing West End theatre critic of the time.

A new stage version, adapted and directed by Philip Breen and produced by the English Touring Theatre and Sheffield Theatres, opened at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, between 21 September and 15 October 2016, before touring the UK until November 2016.[55][56][57]