As he explains why Clifford has become so cold and withdrawn after returning from World War I, Lawrence employs a metaphor referring to a partial death:
It was obvious in the anxious brightness of his eyes, how proud he was, after the great shock, of being alive. But he had been so much hurt that something inside him had perished, some of his feelings had gone. There was a blank of insentience.
When he says that "[s]omething inside him perished," Lawrence is pointing out the psychological damage that traumatic wartime injuries can do to veterans like Clifford. It is not just that the nerves in his legs and back have “perished,” preventing him from moving. His personality has suffered a debilitating injury, too. While the “anxious brightness” of Clifford’s eyes suggests his relief at being alive, the underlying blankness suggests that it is only for show. Clifford is not proud of living, but rather of having survived the "great shock" of his accident. His survival has come at a high price, especially given that he can no longer father a child and continue his family’s line.
The physical injuries Lord Chatterley sustained are only part of a deadly emotional and psychological wound. The war has numbed him, creating an internal void where his personality used to be. Lawrence expands on this through his description of the "blank of insentience” within Clifford. "Insentience" means "being incapable of feeling things." Clifford isn’t just hurt, he has partially “perished.”
In the novel’s first chapters, Lawrence delves into the 19th century’s complex ideas about sexual freedom and its connotations for middle-class women. When Constance and Hilda are in Germany, they freely engage in sex and question why it should ever be taboo to “give” themselves sexually if they wish to:
Why couldn’t a girl be queenly, and give the gift of herself? So they had given the gift of themselves, each to the youth with whom she had the most subtle and intimate arguments. The arguments, the discussions were the great thing: the lovemaking and connexion were only a sort of primitive reversion and a bit of an anti-climax.
Lawrence uses the words “lovemaking” and “connexion” here as euphemisms for sexual relations. The phrase "gift of themselves" alludes to virginity. In referring to virginity as a "gift," Lawrence is provocatively emphasizing a traditional view of female purity. At this time, virginity was still regarded as a woman’s most valuable asset, something to be preserved and only “given” in exchange for marriage. It is an asset that the girls own, but that society doesn’t believe they have the right to spend.
However, the narrator suggests in this passage that the actual value and significance of sex might be misunderstood. The “gift” of virginity is reimagined here as a true “gift” that should be given voluntarily. When a gift is given and something is expected in return, it’s not a gift but a trade. Sex without marriage, then, is a real “gift,” a way of expressing affection without reciprocity. When he asks if a girl can be “queenly” and give this “gift,” Lawrence implies that a woman "giving herself" can be a magnanimous, generous act.
Moreover, the passage also points to the idea that sex itself isn’t actually the point of these interactions. By presenting the act of “connexion” as "only a sort of primitive reversion and a bit of an anti-climax," Lawrence challenges conventional 19th-century perceptions of sex’s value. He’s overtly stating here that it’s the “subtle and intimate arguments” that Hilda and Connie have that are actually the “great thing.” Compared to these, sex seems like an “anti-climax.” This is also wordplay, as it’s implied repeatedly that neither sister actually ever orgasms from these “connexions.” The “climax” of their pleasure in these relationships is not a sexual one, but an intellectual one.
General Tommy Dukes, as he argues with Clifford about the superiority of the “mental life” over the physical, gives a compelling speech emphasizing the indispensability of bodily experiences. He does so using a metaphor that compares a human body to an apple growing on a tree:
But mind you, it’s like this: while you live your life, you are in some way an Organic whole with all life. But once you start the mental life you pluck the apple. You’ve severed the connexion between the apple and the tree: the organic connexion. And if you’ve got nothing in your life but the mental life, then you yourself are a plucked apple... you’ve fallen off the tree. And then it is a logical necessity to be spiteful, just as it’s a natural necessity for a plucked apple to go bad.
Dukes employs the metaphor of a "plucked apple" to explain the consequences of not being in tune with one’s physical urges. People who “live their life,” to Dukes, are people who maintain an “organic connexion” between their bodies and the world. He argues that the consequences of an over-reliance on the "mental life" must be that a person is severed from the “tree” of organic connection to the world. Doing so, according to him, makes deterioration unavoidable. Dukes believes that, just as an apple can do nothing but over-ripen and rot once it has been “plucked” from the tree, individuals who disconnect from their physicality are doomed to become "spiteful."
Dukes is speaking in absolute contradiction to Clifford’s previous point, here. While Clifford believes that prioritizing the intellect and disregarding the body is the most moral and noble of choices, Dukes disagrees fundamentally. The strong verb “plucked” points to this, as “plucking” an apple is a measured, deliberate act. Anyone who chooses to “pluck” themselves from the tree of bodily experience, Dukes states, will by “natural necessity” become a bad apple.
Lawrence’s depiction of the tragically stunted Clifford Chatterley is a tragic example of the effects of war trauma on the psyche. Connie, as she reflects on how he has changed, comes to a horrible realization about the true nature of his disabling injury:
And dimly she realized one of the great laws of the human soul: that when the emotional soul receives a wounding shock, which does not kill the body, the soul seems to recover as the body recovers. But this is only appearance. It is really only the mechanism of the re-assumed habit. Slowly, slowly the wound to the soul begins to make itself felt, like a bruise, which only slowly deepens its terrible ache, till it fills all the psyche. And when we think we have recovered and forgotten, it is then that the terrible after-effects have to be encountered at their worst.
As Connie tries to understand Clifford’s new coldness, she comes to realize one of the “great laws” of the “human soul.” In this quotation, Lawrence explores the disconnect between physical wholeness and psychological healing. Clifford looks as if he has mentally recovered from his injury, and his body has healed as much as it can. Because of this, his outward attitude follows suit, but as Lawrence says, “this is only the mechanism of the re-assumed habit.” This quotation asserts that the healing of the “soul” is much more complex and evasive than that of the body. Even if a person seems fully recovered, they might discover that the trauma they have experienced “makes itself felt like a bruise,” appearing deep from under their skin and aching. Beneath Clifford’s “chirpy” facade, his emotional wounds gape and fester, numbing him to love and pleasure.
As Connie and Mellors have sex, she realizes that for the first time in her life she isn’t in control of the sexual power dynamic. Lawrence describes this realization through visual imagery and a metaphor of a sea anemone. During their lovemaking, Connie feels an intense pressure building:
Whilst all her womb was open and soft, and softly clamoring, like a sea-anemone under the tide, clamoring for him to come in again and make a fulfilment for her.
A sea anemone is a soft, delicate little marine creature that opens and closes its one orifice in response to its environment. It is sightless, speechless, and immobile, only able to react to things that happen to it instead of taking action. This metaphor mirrors Connie's unexpected response to sex with Mellors. The idea of the sea anemone’s “mouth clamoring” ultimately echoes the silent dilation and closing of both an anemone's cavity underwater and a human vagina as it is penetrated. Lawrence goes further than this, saying that it’s not just her vagina that desires Mellors’s presence, but that her “womb” is “open and soft” in response to his penetration. While Connie had previously understood sex to be a way for her to reclaim power, with Mellors she is suddenly and involuntarily pushed into submission. Her internal organs are acting on their on accord.
This passage’s imagery evokes a sense of profound vulnerability. The texture of a sea anemone’s flesh is very much like the mucous membranes of a human vulva, and the reader gets a vivid picture of the yearning pinkish “mouth” opening and closing in this scene. The “tide” that Lawrence describes also evokes the image of repeating movements back and forth, like those Connie and Mellors are making during intercourse. Connie is swept up in a tide of sensations, unable to regain self-control as she “clamors” for fulfillment in an unfamiliar way.
As Constance walks through the woods at Wragby in spring, she feels that the rejuvenation of the earth after winter is lining up with her own sexual and emotional reawakening. Lawrence uses metaphor and simile in this passage to draw parallels between Connie and a world breathlessly close to being in bloom:
She went to the wood next day. It was a grey, still afternoon, with the dark-green dogs-mercury spreading under the hazel copse, and all the trees making a silent effort to open their buds. Today she could almost feel it in her own body, the huge heave of the sap in the massive trees, upwards, up, up to the bud-tips, there to push into little flamey oak-leaves, bronze as blood. It was like a ride running turgid upward, and spreading on the sky.
Lawrence’s language in this passage illustrates a profound connection between Connie and her surroundings. This is a stark departure from her previous discontentment and loss of “connexion” with nature. Connie is surrounded by flowers waiting to bloom and burst. Instead of feeling distant from them, though, she feels aligned with their "silent effort." The metaphor of sap rising through the trees in spring also suggests that there’s a direct interplay between the external world’s changing seasons, and the sexual thaw Mellors has started in Connie.
Describing the spring rush of sap into the forest, Lawrence details the process of "the huge heave of the sap in the massive trees, upwards, up, up to the bud-tips, there to push into little flamey oak-leaves, bronze as blood." This complex sentence evokes a sense of powerful, irrepressible energy that mirrors Connie’s own sexual awakening. The sentence’s repetition and short, punchy diction make it feel as if it is itself “rushing.” The oak-leaves, about to open, are as "flamey" and "bronze as blood." This evokes the idea of blood rushing through the body, coloring the leaves like Connie’s blushes of excitement and arousal.
In the simile that follows, Lawrence likens the sap to "a ride running turgid upward, and spreading on the sky." This further emphasizes the idea that Connie and the world are both experiencing intense renewal and excitement. The choice of the word "turgid" here is important. When something is “turgid” it is engorged with liquid. It’s a term that is often associated with an erect penis. Here, the trees themselves seem to be “erect” to Connie, and the sap that thumps through them is about to burst through, “spreading on the sky” like ejaculating semen. Everything, including the end of winter and the return of life to the “hazel copse” has taken on an exciting, erotic tinge for Lady Chatterley.
Connie's drive towards Wragby in Chapter 11 takes on a pall of uncomfortable reflection, as she ponders the rapid changes sweeping over postwar England. Lawrence uses a metaphor referencing ink and writing to explain this thought process. Connie muses to herself that:
This is history. One England blots out another. The mines had made the halls wealthy. Now they were blotting them out, as they had already blotted out the cottages. The industrial England blots out the agricultural England. One meaning blots out another.
The idea of a "new" England overshadowing the old points to the tension between progress and preservation. Connie feels mournful about the inevitability of the industrial changes her own husband is helping to achieve.
When something is “blotted out,” it means that it is covered up or obscured by something darker. Like ink dropping onto a page, Connie believes the “mines” will cover up all traces of “the agricultural England.” The metaphor literally evokes the choking black smoke of the mining industry, as well as its power to replace rural ways of life. Through this metaphor of one England “blotting out” another, Lawrence critiques the relentless march of industrialization. While bringing wealth and advancement to the “halls” of the wealthy, Connie feels that increased industrial presence will also erase the beauty of the countryside and that “history” will blot out the “halls” just like the cottages.
Mellors admires Connie's body during their final night together, wistfully narrating his impressions of it in Black Country dialect filled with idiom and metaphor:
He stroked her tail with his hand, long and subtly taking in the curves and the globe-fullness.
“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!”
Mellors is having both an emotional and a sexual reaction to Constance's body in this scene. As he's complimenting her, his voice catches in his throat. Lawrence emphasizes the "caressive" qualities of Midlands English when he describes Mellors's speech here. When Mellors has a hold on himself, his English can be almost as standard and formal as Constance's or Clifford's. When he's overcome with a feeling, however, he reverts to a more heightened version of regional diction. This stronger accent is accompanied by several regional idioms that give the reader a sense of local color and increase the realism of the scene. Mellors isn't quoting Shakespeare to woo Constance. He's speaking plainly and honestly, especially when he uses idioms like “sure as nuts.”
This idiom refers to the stores of nuts and acorns that squirrels make to sustain themselves in the winter. When he says that Connie's bottom is "ivery bit" womanly "as sure as nuts," he's pointing out the obviousness of its size and "globe-fulness." It's "womanly" to him because it's not a small "button" bottom, but a "soft and sloping" one. He's also implying that Connie has a good store of "arse" squirreled away for coming times. It's so big and fine, he goes on to say, that it could "hold up the world." By this, he means to praise its strength, but he also means that it's an excellent example of a nice "woman's arse."
In this passage, the author employs two metaphors to depict the cumulative impact sex with Mellors has on Connie. The metaphors describe Connie as being "pierced" during sex and shaken to her "foundations." Lawrence also uses a simile comparing sensuality and desire to "fire," since during this encounter Connie has the following experience:
[...] she was a little startled and almost unwilling: yet pierced again with piercing thrills of sensuality, different, sharper, more terrible than the thrills of tenderness, but, at the moment, more desirable. Though a little frightened, she let him have his way, and the reckless, shameless sensuality shook her to her foundations, stripped her to the very last, and made a different woman of her. It was not really love. It was not voluptuousness. It was sensuality sharp and searing as fire, burning the soul to tinder. Burning out the shames, the deepest, oldest shames, in the most secret places [...]
The metaphor Lawrence uses here—Connie being "pierced" during her sexual experiences—serves to illustrate the profound impact that her emotional connection with Mellors provokes. Their connection is “different, sharper, more terrible” than mere pleasure, making her feel vulnerable. All of the references to “piercing” here refer to the act of penetrative sex, where Mellors “pierces” her vagina with his penis. However, Mellors is also symbolically “piercing” her personality, which feels transformative. Connie’s sense of self is being penetrated and altered as her body is. Sex here isn’t just burning or “piercing” but functions like a force of nature. When the author describes Connie as being shaken to her "foundations," he likens her to a structure enduring an earthquake or a bombing. The “reckless, senseless” intensity of their sex leaves her no room to hide. She’s exposed.
The simile in this passage makes another comparison of Connie and Mellors’s relationship to "fire." While this “fire” often references their fragile, forbidden bond—a flame they must nurture—here it’s a destructive, cleansing force. Sex with Mellors puts Connie in a crucible, where she’s reduced to her most basic elements. This encounter "burns" away her inhibitions and shame, leaving her stripped down, purified, and renewed.
During her last night of sex with Mellors before she leaves for Venice with Hilda, Connie experiences several important insights into her own character. The author depicts this through two metaphors and through personifying her sense of shame. As Connie and Mellors reach a climax, she feels:
Shame, which is fear: the deep organic shame, the old, old physical fear which crouches in the bodily roots of us, and can only be chased away by the sensual fire, at last it was roused up and routed by the phallic hunt of the man, and she came to the very heart of the jungle of herself.
When he describes shame, Lawrence depicts it as an animal living inside Connie's body and psyche. During her relationship with Mellors, Connie has come to understand much more about her sexual self and intellectual capacity. She previously held deep-seated fears and anxieties about her worthiness and personhood, but Mellors “rouses” and “routs” her shame. He does this through the “sensual fire” of their physical relationship. Lawrence uses metaphors comparing fire to passion several times in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. As elsewhere, their "fire" refers to the heat and energy Mellors and Connie generate together.
The second metaphor in this passage points to the complexity of human sexuality. Connie has spent much of the novel working through the enormous changes in her expectations, ambitions, and preconceptions since taking up with Mellors. When she has this moment of clarity during sex with him, she comes to the “heart of the jungle” of herself. She has fought through all the complexities of her marital and social life to realize how she understands masculinity and femininity. When she reaches her own "heart," she has overcome "shame" and "fear."
The scene this passage sets is very dark and primal, especially when Connie comes to “the heart of herself.” The author's language is full of sexual references. The “phallic hunt” Lawrence describes equates Mellors’s erect penis to the spears ancient hunters carried. The “tangled jungle” here also refers to Connie's pubic hair and equates the “phallic hunt” reaching her “heart” to penetrative sex. As often happens in this novel, a mental change is represented by describing a sexual act.
In the letter he writes her at the end of the novel, Oliver Mellors tells Connie Chatterley about his anxieties and hopes for their future through several metaphors:
If things go on as they are, there’s nothing lies in the future but death and destruction, for these industrial masses. I feel my inside turn to water sometimes, and there you are, going to have a child by me. But never mind. All the bad times that ever have been, haven’t been able to blow the crocus out: not even the love of women.
In this letter, Mellors describes his concerns that the future of England, its class system, and its colonies is going to be very bad. He describes this fear as “turning his insides to water.” He isn’t actually being liquified: this metaphor refers to the stomach-turning effects of terror. Rather than being firmly filled with solid organs, his fear makes him feel full of “water” when he thinks of the future. The metaphor also expresses his kinship with Connie, who is pregnant with his child. He realizes that she must also be scared. He sees her as newly vulnerable due to her pregnancy. Mellors might be anxious, but some of Connie’s insides have literally turned to water as she grows her child inside her and waits for the uncertain future to come.
Mellors isn’t hopeless, however. The second metaphor in this passage suggests that he believes people will always be resilient in the face of hardship and struggle. Even though there have been lots of “bad times,” he writes, those trials haven’t been able to “blow the crocus out.” Crocuses are purple flowers that burst out of the ground everywhere in the English springtime. They have bright orange stamens, which are often compared to flames. When Mellors says that the “bad times” haven’t blown “the crocus” out, he means that people have always kept going through adversity. Even if things are complex, the “flames” of the crocuses always return. They won't be "blown out" by the "death and destruction" he sees coming.
