As he introduces Constance, the novel’s female protagonist, Lawrence paints a vivid portrait of her upbringing and background through a series of allusions. These references locate her within a specific historical and cultural niche. They also set the stage for the many contradictions in her character that will guide the trajectory of Lady Chatterley’s Lover:
Her father was the once well-known R.A., old Sir Malcolm Reid. Her mother had been one of the cultivated Fabians in the palmy, rather pre-Raphaelite days. Between artists and cultured socialists, Constance and her sister Hilda had had what might be called an aesthetically unconventional upbringing. They had been taken to Paris and Florence and Rome to breathe in art, and they had been taken also in the other direction, to the Hague and Berlin, to great Socialist conventions, where the speakers spoke in every civilized tongue, and no one was abashed.
The Royal Academy of Art is Britain’s most longstanding and prestigious artistic institution. By saying Connie’s father was a “once well-known” member, Lawrence immediately situates their family within a realm of respectable, recognized artistic achievement. The allusions that follow—to the "cultivated Fabians" and the "pre-Raphaelite" society her mother belonged to—refer to an important period of intellectual and artistic revolution in Britain, which began in the 1880s. The Fabian Society was a group that advocated for socialist ideals. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was an art movement that rejected previously strict academic standards and celebrated detailed, naturalistic art. An association with these two groups suggests that her parents were well-connected, well-known, and somewhat bohemian. These allusions help explain her “somewhat aesthetically unusual upbringing.”
Connie's exposure to both the world of art (through visits to Paris, Florence, and Rome) and politics (via the Socialist conventions she attends in The Hague and Berlin) suggest that she’s been given every opportunity to see the changes happening in early-20th-century Europe and to learn from them. She’s still the daughter of an English aristocrat, however, and so her intellectual modernity is necessarily in conflict with the traditional expectations for women of this class. Through these allusions, Lawrence demonstrates that Connie is both an "ancient type" and a "modern woman." These are qualities that initially attract the staunchly English and conservative Clifford Chatterley to her and then, later, distance him from her.
As Connie and Mellors share a quiet moment together amidst a storm, the narrative employs an allusion and a simile to depict the atmosphere in Mellors's house:
She sat and ruminated. The thunder crashed outside. It was like being in a little ark in the Flood.
In the Christian Bible’s first book Genesis, there’s a section that describes how in ancient times the Earth was drowned in an enormous “Flood” as a punishment for the sins of mankind. Noah and his children—the one family that were spared—received instructions from God to build an enormous boat. They floated on this boat until the floodwaters drained away. This “ark” has become a common reference in English for anything that provides salvation and protection during a catastrophe. Connie thinks of Mellors’s house as being like an ark because it’s a refuge from the societal (and literal) tempest outside.
This allusion, which Lawrence uses as a simile in this passage, illustrates the sense of safety and isolation Connie feels in this small dwelling. While she’s there, she’s detached from the external world and its chaos. Moreover, when Lawrence likens her enclosure with Mellors to being in an “ark,” he’s also implicitly comparing the pair to the biblical boat’s other inhabitants.
The Bible says that Noah was told to find one mated pair of every animal on the earth to shelter on the ark. He was supposed to do this so that the world could be repopulated after the flood. In this scene, Mellors and Constance are a “mated pair” of animals, sheltering from the flood and waiting to see the results of the tumult they’ve caused. Lawrence emphasizes this comparison with wordplay. As Connie is pondering her situation, she isn't thinking, but "ruminating." This word means to "chew over" something. When it's used to describe a human, it refers to someone going over complicated ideas in their mind. However, in the literal sense, "ruminating" is the process of regurgitating chewed grass and re-chewing it. It's what cows do to get all the nutrients out of their food. Connie isn't just thinking in this scene, then—she's specifically thinking like an animal.
