Lady Chatterley's Lover is both an extension of and an opposition to the novels of social criticism Lawrence wrote in the 1920s. Realizing that society would never be reformed through the political and spiritual leadership of superior men, Lawrence returned to his earlier themes (in The White Peacock [1911], Sons and Lovers [1913], and Women in Love [1920]), and emphasized a kind of sexual relationship which expresses love and natural passion as the only salvation for a mechanized society. Had the book been published without fuss when it was written, no doubt it would now have a respected place in the Lawrence canon, for it is one of his final visions of social dissolution and individual regeneration, but in style and sweep it is not quite the equal of books like Sons and Lovers, Women in Love or the best of his short fiction.

Lawrence chose to experiment with...