Submitted by Agreeable-Roof7429 t3_zvuwvj in books
I'm rereading Lady Chatterley's Lover and there are some sex passages that are super vague but seem to potentially not be referring to plain PIV sex. Curious if anyone has thoughts as to what they're actually doing (my first thought was anal but maybe my mind is in the gutter 🫣)
"Burning out the shames, the deepest, oldest shames, in the most secret places. It cost her an effort to let him have his way and his will of her. She had to be a passive, consenting thing, like a slave, a physical slave. Yet the passion licked round her, consuming, and when the sensual flame of it pressed through her bowels and breast, she really thought she was dying: yet a poignant marvelous death."
"In the short summer night she learned so much she would have thought a woman would have died of shame. Instead of which, the shame died. Shame, which is fear: the deep organic shame, the old, old physical fear, which crouches in the bodily roots of us, and can only be chased away by the sensual fire, at last, it was roused up and routed by the phallic hunt of the man, and she came to the very heart of the jungle of herself. She felt, now, she had come to the real bedrock of her nature, and was essentially shameless"
Lonely-Host t1_j1rhsyo wrote
I think this section is supposed to invite a reading of anal sex while still working without it. The winks and nudges come further down the page though:
"One had to be strong to bear him. But it took some getting at, the core of the physical jungle, the last and deepest recess of organic shame..."
And right after that, a historical allusions to Greek Vases.
"The same on the Greek vases, everywhere! The refinements of passion, the extravagances of sensuality! And necessary, forever necessary, to burn out false shames and smelt out the heaviest ore of the body into purity. With the fire of sheer sensuality."
There's a lot of other stuff going on in the sex scene regarding the feminine role in sensuality ("giving in") and the sex as a vehicle for transcending both the self and social mores. Adding sodomy only hammers home these points, as it was illegal at the time even between heterosexual couples, and it has historically been viewed as the ultimate submission/receiving act. But the scene also works if you just think they had super animalistic sex.
Apparently, people defending the book in the obscenity trial worried that the prosecution would read the passage as a scene of sodomy, which was still illegal then some 30 years after initial publication:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/21/sodomys-low-profile-in-lady-chatterley-trial