How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"So long as you can forget your body you are happy," said Lady Bennerley. "And the moment you begin to be aware of your body, you are wretched. So, if civilization is any good, it has to help us to forget our bodies, and then time passes happily without our knowing it." (7.43)
Lady Bennerley has it all backwards. The problem with civilization isn't that we think about our bodies too much but that we don't think about them enough. So says D.H. Lawrence, at least.
Quote #2
"Yes, he sort of couldn't take it for natural, all that pain. And it spoilt his pleasure in his bit of married love. I said to him: If I don't care, why should you? It's my look-out!—But all he'd ever say was: It's not right!"(11.165)
Here, Ivy Bolton is remembering that her husband was afraid to have sex with her after watching her give birth. She takes it naturally—sex leads to birth, and birth leads to pain, and that's just the way bodies work—but her husband just can't handle it. You get the sense that Mellors would be able to watch Connie give birth pretty cheerfully.
Quote #3
"No," she said. "I liked your body." "Did you?" he replied, and he laughed. "Well, then, we're quits, because I liked yours." (12.86-87)
So much for women not being visual. The only reason Connie can give for wanting to have sex with Mellors is that she thought he was hot. That's good enough for us, and it's definitely good enough for Mellors.
Quote #4
It seemed so still, like him, with a curious inward stillness that made her want to clutch it, as if she could not reach it. All her soul suddenly swept towards him: he was so silent, and out of reach! And he felt his limbs revive. Shoving with his left hand, he laid his right on her round white wrist, softly enfolding her wrist, with a caress. And the flame of strength went down his back and his loins, reviving him. And she bent suddenly and kissed his hand.(13.217)
This tender little moment between Connie and Mellors takes place behind Clifford's back—literally. They're pushing Clifford's wheelchair together, and he's just made an idiot of himself. Watching Clifford have a temper tantrum makes Connie realize how lucky she is to have a virile gamekeeper living across the lawn.
Quote #5
She was silently weeping, and he lay with her and went into her there on the hearthrug, and so they gained a measure of equanimity.(14.210)
There's nothing better than make-up sex, especially if it takes place on a hearthrug. These two don't talk it out; they just do it and get over it, and there's something to be said for that approach. (According to Lawrence, that is. We have no comment.)
Quote #6
"You say a man's got no brain, when he's a fool: and no heart, when he's mean; and no stomach when he's a funker. And when he's got none of that spunky wild bit of a man in him, you say he's got no balls. When he's a sort of tame." (14.20)
If I only had a brain—or a heart—or a stomach—or working testicles. Here, Mellors breaks down a man's personality into his body parts, kind of like a reflexology chart that assigns different organs to different parts of the foot. So much for the mind-body divide.
Quote #7
It was a strange pallid figure lifting and falling, bending so the rain beat and glistened on the full haunches, swaying up again and coming belly-forward through the rain, then stooping again so that only the full loins and buttocks were offered in a kind of homage towards him, repeating a wild obeisance. (15.96)
Connie's out dancing naked in the rain like a total lunatic, and Mellors is admiring the sight. There's something funny about the way he talks about her though: the figure is "it," not "she," and he uses words like "haunches,""belly," and "loins." It sounds more like he's about to butcher her than make love to her.
Quote #8
"Tha's got such a nice tail on thee," he said, in the throaty caressive dialect. "Tha's got the nicest arse of anybody. It's the nicest, nicest woman's arse as is! An' ivery bit of it is woman, woman sure as nuts. Tha'rt not one o' them button-arsed lasses as should be lads, are ter! Tha's got a real soft sloping bottom on thee, as a man loves in 'is guts. It's a bottom as could hold the world up, it is!" (15.110)
Mellors likes big butts, and he cannot lie (you get the sense that D. H. Lawrence shares his admiration). No skinny jazz-girls for him; he likes them soft, round, and old-fashioned. Real women have curves, indeed.
Quote #9
"An' if tha s***s an' if tha pisses, I'm glad. I don't want a woman as couldna s*** nor piss."(15.111)
Sometimes, bodies do gross things. That's just the way bodies are, and if you want to live the life of the body you have to accept it. In the immortal words of the famous children's book, "Everybody poops."
Quote #10
"Give me the body. I believe the life of the body is a greater reality than the life of the mind: when the body is really wakened to life. But so many people, like your famous wind-machine, have only got minds tacked on to their physical corpses." (16.72)
By this point in the book, Connie is a total convert. She's gone from being a brainy artist-type to rejecting the life of the mind almost totally.Unnatural and morbid, minds are tacked onto bodies like brains pickling gently in jars full of formaldehyde on the shelf of some mad scientist's lab.