How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
He was only caught in the general, popular recoil of the young against convention and against any sort of real authority. Fathers were ridiculous: his own obstinate one supremely so. (1.29)
Like all kids, Clifford is rebelling against his father. It sounds here like this rebellion against convention is something new—is Lawrence implying that youth revolt is a symptom or a cause of modernity's problems?
Quote #2
For Connie had adopted the standard of the young: what there was in the moment was everything. And moments followed one another without necessarily belonging to one another. (2.23)
Young people never think about consequences. Anyone who's ever had a parent or a teacher has heard this one—but is Lady Chatterley's Lover buying into it? Would it be better to live without thinking about consequences? Thinking too much about the future might just end up trapping you at Wragby.
Quote #3
He was the trembling excited sort of lover, whose crisis soon came, and was finished. There was something curiously childlike and defenceless about his naked body: as children are naked. His defences were all in his wits and cunning, his very instincts of cunning, and when these were in abeyance he seemed doubly naked and like a child, of unfinished, tender flesh, and somehow struggling helplessly. (3.89)
Michaelis has all the sexual stamina of a post-adolescent, but Connie finds that kind of appealing—or, at least she will until she finds herself a real man.
Quote #4
It was her youth which rebelled. These men seemed so old and cold. Everything seemed old and cold. (6.35)
Lawrence can't seem to decide if Clifford's friends are all immature or all old before their time. Maybe they're both at the same time—immature and jaded. It's an ugly combination.
Quote #5
She understood perfectly well why people had cocktail parties, and jazzed, and Charlestoned till they were ready to drop. You had to take it out some way or other, your youth, or it ate you up. But what a ghastly thing, this youth! (6.37)
Connie sympathizes with kids who just want to go out clubbing and drinking—you have to get your kicks out somehow—but she still thinks it's awful. If only there were a better way to enjoy being young…
Quote #6
If you were young, you just set your teeth, and bit on and held on, till the money began to flow from the invisible; it was a question of power. It was a question of will; a subtle, subtle, powerful emanation of will out of yourself brought back to you the mysterious nothingness of money a word on a bit of paper. It was a sort of magic, certainly it was triumph. (6.110)
Lawrence isn't totally down on youth. Young people have a blind sort of willpower that can make them successful. The problem seems to be that they focus on all the wrong things.
Quote #7
"Oh no! Not if trade was good, there wouldn't be. But if things were bad for a long spell, the young ones might go funny. I tell you, they're a selfish, spoilt lot." (9.49)
Ivy Bolton has pretty cliché ideas about the youth of today: they're selfish and spoiled, and they only raise a fuss about things because they don't have anything better to do. We'd love to hear what she'd have to say about the Occupy Wall Street folks.
Quote #8
How warm and lovely it was to hold a child in one's lap, and the soft little arms, the unconscious cheeky little legs. (10.257)
There's youth, and then there's babies. It's hard to tell where Lawrence is drawing the lines here: babies are good; man-babies are bad. Youth is good; youths, as in young people, are not so good.
Quote #9
Young life! And so fearless! So fearless, because so defenceless. All the other people, so narrow with fear! (10.260)
The best thing about being young is that you have no sense of self-preservation. (Some might say that's the worst thing.)
Quote #10
Clifford is way too old be young. Sure, it can stink to be an adult (wait until you have to start paying bills), but there are other ways to stay young than to actually try to crawl back into the womb.
Clifford is way too old be young. Sure, it can stink to be an adult (wait until you have to start paying bills), but there are other ways to stay young than to actually try to crawl back into the womb.