Page 89 - lady-chatterlys-lover

was a word that had had its day. It was somehow cancelled.
All the great words, it seemed to Connie, were cancelled for
her generation: love, joy, happiness, home, mother, father,
husband, all these great, dynamic words were half dead
now, and dying from day to day. Home was a place you lived
in, love was a thing you didn’t fool yourself about, joy was
a word you applied to a good Charleston, happiness was a
term of hypocrisy used to bluff other people, a father was an
individual who enjoyed his own existence, a husband was
a man you lived with and kept going in spirits. As for sex,
the last of the great words, it was just a cocktail term for
an excitement that bucked you up for a while, then left you
more raggy than ever. Frayed! It was as if the very material
you were made of was cheap stuff, and was fraying out to
nothing.
All that really remained was a stubborn stoicism: and
in that there was a certain pleasure. In the very experience
of the nothingness of life, phase after phase, TAPE af-
ter TAPE, there was a certain grisly satisfaction. So that’s
THAT! Always this was the last utterance: home, love, mar-
riage, Michaelis: So that’s THAT! And when one died, the
last words to life would be: So that’s THAT!
Money? Perhaps one couldn’t say the same there. Mon-
ey one always wanted. Money, Success, the bitch-goddess,
as Tommy Dukes persisted in calling it, after Henry James,
that was a permanent necessity. You couldn’t spend your
last sou, and say finally: So that’s THAT! No, if you lived
even another ten minutes, you wanted a few more sous for
something or other. Just to keep the business mechanically

Lady Chatterly’s Lover