Lady Chatterley's Lover: An Accident of History?

We didn't read D.H. Lawrence in college (No great surprise, really, considering the hullabaloo that was raised over Jonathan Swift). I was impelled to read Women in Love by Emma, because it was her favorite book. I completely agree with her assessment. The book is great because of its characters, and because of the dialog and interactions between them. There are multiple sympathetic characters. The main protagonists are two sisters, Ursula and Gudrun, and friends who fall in love with them, Birkin and Gerald. All four have different perspectives on love, philosophy, and human relationships, and all four discuss their ideas in sparkling, intelligent dialog (they are, in Brianna's phrase, "intellectual gladiators"). Even minor characters, such as the Pussum and Gerald's mother, have a certain appeal. The ending of the book is surprising, and no one narrative squelches the others. The book is a novel and not a manifesto.
Lady Chatterley's Lover, on the other hand, IS a manifesto. I perhaps like the book still less in that I disagree with the manifesto. Lawrence's philosophy, that people are only fulfilled in so much as they are sexually fulfilled, is hardly new or unique. Perhaps if I liked it, I would find it "powerful" or "compelling." Even those who agree, however, must admit that that the book is not multi-vocal. Constance Chatterley is portrayed essentially as a bitch in heat -- a needy womb - whose needs are met by the erect, masculine, and uncomplicated gamesman Mellors. These are the protagonists. The antagonists are, essentially, everyone else -- the "unnatural" modern man who has been deadened by industrial labor or the scholar who has been made effete by over-concentration on the mind. This latter type is given flesh in Chester Chatterley -- whose lower parts are debilitated by actual handicap as well as disinclination. There is little serious discussion between the pro- and anti-sensualists. One side is simply right and the other wrong, thus stymieing the potential for brilliant dialog that exists in WiL. The book also fails due to the play-by-play sexual activity between Constance and Mellors. A story consists of highlighting important events that together make a plot. As a reviewer recently said about Jane Smiley's new novel, extremely detailed accounts of other people's sex lives can, in fact, be boring. Finally, I found myself unsympathetic to the book because of its portrayal of women. WiL made me wonder why Lawrence was ever accused of sexism; LCL made me see why.

Yet LCL is undoubtedly Lawrence's best-known work. It appears on lists of "canonical" literature, and is discussed in history books. This is, of course, because it was banned for its four letter words and explicit sexuality until 1959. Since then, though, how many people have read LCL rather than WiL merely because it is the "canonical" Lawrence work? How many have read the Iliad rather than the Odyssey because it is first sequentially? How many works in the canon are there because of their length, the controversy they raised, or how well they fit into a freshman-level literature course? A good argument, I suppose, for reading multiple works to truly know an author.