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.
