“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.”

“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically” is the first line of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which Elfrieda Von Riesen recites to Yolandi Von Riesen in a conversation shaped by a dream of leaving loved ones behind. The line’s refusal to treat tragedy tragically arrives not as an abstract maxim but amid a sisterly exchange that mixes tenderness, teasing, and the prospect of separation.

The dream behind the quotation

Yolandi tells Elfrieda about a dream in which she was leaving everyone she knew. On a sunny afternoon, the people she loved had gathered to wave goodbye; seeing them reminded her of their love, and she no longer wanted to go, though she still felt she had to. Elfrieda asks whether she appeared in the dream. Yolandi assures her that she did, smiling and waving alongside the others.

The quotation follows this imagined farewell. Its language of tragedy meets a scene in which love both makes departure harder and gathers around the person who must leave. The dream does not explain what leaving means, but the sisters’ exchange gives the literary line an immediate emotional setting: a goodbye imagined among people whose presence makes it painful.

A literary line, delivered as a challenge

After reciting the opening sentence, Elfrieda directs Yolandi to read the novel herself. Yolandi asks how the line continues, but Elfrieda refuses to supply the rest and says she cannot believe Yolandi has not read the book. She recommends that Yolandi revisit an old classic instead of poring over the Hobo Museum newsletter.

The moment is teasing rather than solemn. Yolandi likens the exchange to a Karate Kid conversation and asks whether Elfrieda is trying to impart wisdom; she also notes that her sister is still lecturing her about what to read. That familiar complaint gives the quotation a particular voice: Elfrieda offers a line about tragedy, then turns the conversation into an affectionate literary reprimand rather than explaining its meaning for her sister.

The line’s tension

The sentence holds two positions together: the age is tragic, yet its tragedy is not to be treated tragically. In this scene, that tension is carried by the contrast between Yolandi’s dream, with its painful farewell, and the sisters’ lightly argumentative exchange. The quotation does not erase the dream’s sorrow; Elfrieda’s insistence that Yolandi read the novel herself leaves the thought open for her to encounter beyond the conversation.

The exchange also leaves a small uncertainty between them. When Yolandi responds with playful skepticism to Elfrieda’s claim that her throat is sore and she cannot talk anymore, Elfrieda whispers that Yolandi does not believe her. Against that intimate friction, the quoted line can sound at once like a wry literary provocation and an effort to meet a difficult feeling without reducing it to solemnity.