Gender and Class in "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" by George Orwell and "The First Lady Chatterley" by D.H. Lawrence

... An extract from Orwell's notebooks recounts how as a boy he used to sit and listen to his mother and her friends conversations about men. He tells how he formed the impression from listening to these discussions that women thought all men to be "large, ugly, smelly and ridiculous" and that men mistreated women in all that they did, but mainly by forcing themselves upon them sexually; in Orwell's words "as a cock would do a hen." The opening of chapter six seems to echo this and while it is tongue-in-cheek; it's obvious from this passage that Orwell was addressing primarily a male audience. His women seem to slot fairly easily into just a few categories; the passive and self-sacrificing, the ridiculous, and the hard and judgmental. The lower-class women who visit the McKechnie library are described as 'dim-witted' and read trashy novels but low-rate female authors while Mrs. Wisbeach and

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