First Things First (and other mentions)
C.S. Lewis on reading:
It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between... Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books… Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes… Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. (Introduction to Athanasius’ On the Incarnation).
“Nearly 60% of respondents in Generation Z — who were born between 1997 and 2012 — said they would take the job of social media influencer over their current gig.” (source)
Children now ‘biggest perpetrators of sexual abuse against children’ (The Guardian)
“[The Director] explains to the boys that human beings no longer produce living offspring. Instead, surgically removed ovaries produce ova that are fertilized in artificial receptacles and incubated in specially designed bottles.” (summary of Brave New World)
Might Huxley have gotten this specific idea from Lawrence?Looking into the Test Tube: The Birth of IVF on British Television
The Red Wheelbarrow, by William Carlos Williams
so much dependsupon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
Acton’s version:
so much dependsupon
the virtue of
the man
whom you
adore
and whether you
can trust him
Teen Vogue features young woman with double mastectomy (do not click if you do not want to see the photo of this woman)
“I must, I must, I must increase my bust!” from Judy Blume, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. (Published 1970)
Quotes
Women, sex, freedom…
For, of course, being a girl, one’s whole dignity and meaning in life consisted in the achievement of an absolute, a perfect, a pure and noble freedom. What else did a girl’s life mean? To shake off the old and sordid connections and subjections.
And however one might sentimentalize it, this sex business was one of the most ancient, sordid connections and subjections. Poets who glorified it were mostly men. Women had always known there was something better, something higher. And now they knew it more definitively than ever. The beautiful pure freedom of a woman was infinitely more wonderful than any sexual love. The only unfortunate thing was that men lagged so far behind women in the matter. They insisted on the sex thing like dogs.
Both sisters had had their love experience by the time the war came, and they were hurried home. Neither was ever in love with a young man unless he and she were verbally very near: that is unless they were profoundly interested, TALKING to one another…. The paradisal promise: Thou shalt have men to talk to! — had never been uttered. It was fulfilled before they knew what a promise it was. (12-13)
Big Fertility is not as new as you think
[Conversation amongst various intellectuals at the Chatterley’s mansion]
Olive was reading a book about the future, when babies would be bred in bottles, and women would be “immunized”.
“Jolly good thing too!” she said. “Then a woman can live her own life.” Strangeways wanted children, and she didn’t.
“How’d you like to be immunized?” Winterslow asked her, with an ugly smile.
“I hope I am; naturally,” she said. “Anyhow the future’s going to have more sense, and a woman needn’t be dragged down by her functions.”
“Perhaps she’ll float off into space altogether,” said Dukes.
“I do think sufficient civilization ought to eliminate a lot of the physical disabilities,” said Clifford. “All the love-business for example, it might just as well go. I supposed it would if we could breed babies in bottles.”
“No!” cried Olive. “That might leave all the more room for fun.”
[...]
“So long as you can forget your body you are happy,” said Lady Brennerly. “And the moment you begin to be aware of your body, you are wretched. So, if civilization is any good, it has to help us forget our bodies, and then time passes happily without our knowing it.” (94-5)
[And a bit later]
“…There may even come a civilization of genuine men and women, instead of all little lot of clever-jacks, all at the intelligence-age of seven. It would be even more amazing than men of smoke or babies in bottles.”
“Oh, when people begin to talk about real women, I give up,” said Olive.
“Certainly nothing but the spirit in us is worth having,” said Winterslow.
“Spirits!” said Jack, drinking his whiskey and soda.
“Think so? Give me the resurrection of the body!” said Dukes. “But it’ll come, in time, when we’ve shoved the cerebral stone away a bit, the money and the rest. Then we’ll get a democracy of touch, instead of a democracy of pocket.”
Public virtue and private life
[Clifford and Connie in discussion, and they’re referencing coal-miners who might go on strike.]
[Clifford] “What would be the use of their striking again! Merely ruin the industry, what’s left of it; and surely the owls are beginning to see it!”
“Perhaps they don’t mind ruining the industry,” said Connie.
“Ah, don’t talk like a woman! The industry fills their bellies, even if it can’t keep their pockets quite so flush,” he said…
“But didn’t you say the other day that you were a conservative-anarchist?” she asked innocently.
“And did you understand what I meant?” he retorted. “All I meant is, people can be what they like and do what they like, strictly privately, so long as they keep the form of life intact, and the apparatus.”
Connie walked on in silence a few paces. Then she said, obstinately:
“It sounds like you are saying an egg may go as addled as it likes, so long as it keeps its shell on whole. But addled eggs do break of themselves.”
“I don’t think people are like eggs,” he said. “Not even angels’ eggs, my dear little evangelist.” (227)
[And later, when Connie travels without Clifford]
In Paris at any rate she felt a bit of sensuality still. But what a weary, tired, worn-out sensuality. Worn-out for lack of tenderness… given and taken. The efficient, sometimes charming women knew a thing or two about the sensual realities: they had that pull over their jigging English sisters. But they knew even less of tenderness. Dry, with the endless tension of will, they too were wearing out. The human world was just getting worn out. Perhaps it would turn fiercely destructive. A sort of anarchy! Clifford and his conservative anarchy! Perhaps it would be conservative much longer. Perhaps it would develop into a very radical anarchy. (320-1)
Who would you want to make a baby with?
[Connie thinking to herself, before her affair…]
Love, sex, all that sort of stuff, just water-ices! Lick it up and forget it. If you don't hang on to it in your mind, it's nothing. Sex especially ... nothing! Make up your mind to it, and you've solved the problem. Sex and a cocktail: they both lasted about as long, had the same effect, and amounted to about the same thing.
But a child, a baby! that was still one of the sensations. She would venture very gingerly on that experiment. There was the man to consider, and it was curious, there wasn't a man in the world whose children you wanted. Mick's children! Repulsive thought! …Tommy Dukes? ... he was very nice, but somehow you couldn't associate him with a baby, another generation. He ended in himself. And out of all the rest of Clifford's pretty wide acquaintance, there was not a man who did not rouse her contempt, when she thought of having a child by him. There were several who would have been quite possible as lovers, even Mick. But as people to have children with! Ugh! Humiliation and abomination. So that was that! (93)
…
[After Connie has been sleeping with Mellors]
"If I had a child!" she thought to herself; "if I had him inside me as a child!" —and her limbs turned molten at the thought, and she realized the immense difference between having a child to oneself, and having a child to a man whom one's bowels yearned towards…it made her feel she was very different from her old self, and as if she was sinking deep, deep to the center of all womanhood and the sleep of creation.
It was not the passion that was new to her, it was the yearning adoration. She knew she had always feared it, for it left her helpless; she feared it still, lest if she adored him too much, then she would lose herself, become effaced… She feared her adoration, yet she would not at once fight against it… she would give up her hard bright female power; she was weary of it, stiffened with it; she would sink in the new bath of life, in the depths of her womb… (201-203).
Mellors is “kind to the female in her”:
There was something, a sort of warm naïve kindness, curious and sudden, that almost opened her womb to him. But she felt he might be kind like that to any woman. Though even so, it was curiously soothing, comforting. And he was a passionate man, wholesome and passionate…he was kind to the female in her, which no man had ever been. Men were very kind to the person she was, but rather cruel to the female, despising her or ignoring her altogether. Men were awfully kind to Constance Reid or to Lady Chatterley; but not to her womb they weren't kind. And he took no notice of Constance or of Lady Chatterley; he just softly stroked her loins or her breasts.” (pg 180-1)
Tenderness beneath his honesty