How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
To get away from the house...she must get away from the house and everybody. The wood was her one refuge, her sanctuary (3.2)
If we were stuck in a house with a bunch of pretentious dudes all day, we'd want to get away, too. There's nothing like being surrounded by people you have nothing in common with to make you feel like you're better off holing up in a hut somewhere.
Quote #2
"Oh, you're quite right!" he said, turning his head away, and looking sideways, downwards, with that strange immobility of an old race that is hardly here in our present day. It was that that really made Connie lose her power to see him detached from herself. (3.45)
Michaelis may be vulgar and not very good in bed, but Connie finds herself wanting to connect with him anyway. It's a good thing, too, because Clifford sure isn't going to be reaching out to her any time soon.
Quote #3
Again he looked into her eyes, with that calm, searching detached glance. A man very much alone, and on his own. (6.75)
Mellors has been burned, and he's ready to hole up in a cabin in the woods, probably about two steps away from firing off manifestos to all the local newspapers. Can mail bombs be far behind?
Quote #4
Yet in some curious way it was a visionary experience: it had hit her in the middle of the body. She saw the clumsy breeches slipping down over the pure, delicate, white loins, the bones showing a little, and the sense of aloneness, of a creature purely alone, overwhelmed her. Perfect, white, solitary nudity of a creature that lives alone, and inwardly alone. And beyond that, a certain beauty of a pure creature. Not the stuff of beauty, not even the body of beauty, but a lambency, the warm, white flame of a single life, revealing itself in contours that one might touch: a body! (6.130)
Weirdly, what Connie likes about Mellors is that he's totally independent. Lady Chatterley's Lover is a little incoherent on the subject of isolation. Is it good to be independent? Or are we all supposed to have cuddle parties and flash mobs?
Quote #5
They were all inwardly hard and separate, and warmth to them was just bad taste. (7.17)
Here's a perfect example of how it's not clear what Lawrence wants us to do. Mellors is sexy because he's independent; but the upper classes are "hard and separate" in their independence. Make up your mind, D. H.
Quote #6
She listened to the tapping of the man's hammer; it was not so happy. He was oppressed. Here was a trespass on his privacy, and a dangerous one! A woman! He had reached the point where all he wanted on earth was to be alone. And yet he was powerless to preserve his privacy; he was a hired man, and these people were his masters. (8.36)
The problem with the world is that you can't really get off the grid. Even if you live in a hut in the woods, you have to get your food from somewhere. The nature of the modern world is to be connected—but, like Facebook, it may not be much of a connection.
Quote #7
He had been gradually dying, with Connie, in the isolated private life of the artist and the conscious being. Now let all that go. Let it sleep. (9.68)
Again, what's going on with isolation? Clifford was isolated, and that was bad; but now he's connected to the rest of the world through Mrs. Bolton—and that seems to be worse, as though it lowers him in Connie's eyes.
Quote #8
And he would sit alone for hours listening to the loudspeaker bellowing forth. It amazed and stunned Connie. But there he would sit, with a blank entranced expression on his face, like a person losing his mind, and listen, or seem to listen, to the unspeakable thing. (10.2)
Is he really connected when he listens to radio transmissions from Munich, or is he just more apart? Lawrence seems to think that technology and machinery can't bring people together, but there's no denying that it's useful and it brings Clifford out of his self-imposed hibernation.
Quote #9
There was nothing between them. She never even touched him nowadays, and he never touched her. He never even took her hand and held it kindly. No, and because they were so utterly out of touch, he tortured her with his declaration of idolatry. (10.23)
At this point, Connie and Clifford are headed straight for divorce—they just don't know it yet. We'd make a joke about a Kardashian marriage, but honestly this is just too depressing.
Quote #10
The industrial noises broke the solitude, the sharp lights, though unseen, mocked it. A man could no longer be private and withdrawn. The world allows no hermits. And now he had taken the woman, and brought on himself a new cycle of pain and doom. (10.109)
We keep going back to Facebook, but it really is the perfect example: the modern world is both isolating (we're all just disembodied brains pecking away at our computers, alone in our rooms) and constantly pushing you to connect (if you're not on Facebook, you're basically not part of society). Mellors has the same problem: he wants to be independent and alone, but people keep sending him friend requests.