Midlands Term Analysis

He seemed alert in the foreground, but the background was like the Midlands atmosphere, haze, smoky mist. And the haze seemed to be creeping forward. So when he stared at Connie in his peculiar way, giving her his peculiar, precise information, she felt all the background of his mind filling up with mist, with nothingness. And it frightened her. It made him seem impersonal, almost to idiocy.

And dimly she realized one of the great laws of the human soul: that when the emotional soul receives a wound 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 reassumed habit. Slow, 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.

“So proud!” she murmured, uneasy. “And so lordly! Now I know why men are so overbearing! But he's lovely, really. Like another being! A bit terrifying! But lovely really! And he came to me!”—She caught her lower lip between her teeth, in fear and excitement.

The man looked down in silence at the tense phallos, that did not change […]. “Tha ma’es nowt o’ me, John Thomas. Art boss? of me? Eh well, tha’rt more cocky than me, an’ that says less. John Thomas! Dost want her? Dost want my Lady Jane? […] Tell Lady Jane tha wants cunt. John Thomas, an’ th’ cunt o’ Lady Jane!”